The rhetoric of Principia Ethica, as of not a few philosophy books, is that of the clean break. Moore claims that the vast majority of previous writing on ethics has been misguided and that an entirely new start is needed. In its time, however, the book’s claims to novelty were widely disputed. Reviews in Mind, Ethics, and The Journal of Philosophy applauded the clarity of Moore’s criticisms of Mill, Spencer, and others, but said they were “not altogether original,” had (...) for the most part “already been brought out by other critics,” and were even “the standard criticisms.”1 To the Mind reviewer, “The book indicates throughout how strongly the author has been affected by Sidgwick’s views.”2 Hastings Rashdall rejected as historically inaccurate Moore’s claim that only Sidgwick before him had recognized that “good” is indefinable: “To say nothing of writers who (like Mr. Moore and myself) learned the doctrine largely from Sidgwick, I should contend that it was taught with sufficient distinctness by Plato ..., Aristotle, and a host of other writers who have studied in their school.”3 Rashdall also described Moore’s principle of organic unities as just “a new and striking way of stating a very old truth.”4 Some recent commentators have taken a similar line. Bernard Williams has said that much of Principia Ethica comes from Sidgwick,5 while Thomas Baldwin, discussing the book’s substantive values, has said the principle of organic unities “was expressly stated by Bradley,” while “McTaggart had for some years extolled the value of love, and the value of art is a central theme of romanticism.”. (shrink)

I defend Pascal's Wager from a particular way of evading it, the mixed strategy approach. The mixed strategies approach suggests that Pascal's Wager does not obligate one to believe in God, because one can get the same infinite expected utility from other strategies besides the strategy of believing in God. I will show that while there's nothing technically wrong with the mixed strategy approach, rationality requires it to be applied in such a way that Pascal's Wager doesn't lose any force.

Akhil Reed Amar, The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, xi + 272 pp.

In Bradley, I offered an analysis of Sleeping Beauty and the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics. I argued that one can avoid a kind of easy confirmation of EQM by paying attention to observation selection effects, that halfers are right about Sleeping Beauty, and that thirders cannot avoid easy confirmation for the truth of EQM. Wilson agrees with my analysis of observation selection effects in EQM, but goes on to, first, defend Elga’s thirder argument on Sleeping Beauty and, second, (...) argue that the analogy I draw between Sleeping Beauty and EQM fails. I will argue that neither point succeeds. 1 Introduction2 Background3 Wilson’s Argument for ⅓ in Sleeping Beauty4 Reply: Explaining Away the Crazy5 Wilson's Argument for the Breakdown of the Analogy6 Reply: The Irrelevance of Chance7 Conclusion. (shrink)

This chapter explores the term “landscape” and its utility for indigenous people. If indigenous people do not have an understanding of the term, the question is posed whether “landscape” is merely a form of “restricted” speech that is meant to signify power and authority over them and the land they call home. In Australia, certain literary works describe the rich relationship indigenous people have with their land, providing a foundation for the study of “cultural landscapes.” These works share the common (...) trait of presenting a way in which landscape becomes evidence of the cosmological processes that define kinship, group alignments, and cultural practices. (shrink)

Richard Brandt’s “Second Puzzle” for utilitarianism asks: What is meant to count as benefit or utility? In addressing this puzzle, Brandt dismisses “objective” theories of utility as prejudging substantive moral issues and opts for “subjective” theories of utility based either on desire-satisfaction or happiness, so as to welcome people with a variety of substantive moral commitments into his utilitarian system. However, subjective theories have difficulties finding principled grounds for elevating one desire over another. Brandt attempts to circumvent the difficulties through (...) his “reformed definition” of rationality, a definition that hinges on his notion of cognitive psychotherapy. Cognitive psychotherapy asserts that a desire is rational only once it is vividly exposed to relevant, available information. I argue that Brandt’s notion of cognitive psychotherapy tacitly builds substantive metaphysical and ethical commitments into his reformed definition of rationality, thus rendering his theory of utility an objective theory. Answering Brandt’s “Second Puzzle” forces not only Brandt, but also utilitarians more generally, to take up substantive metaphysical and ethical commitments from the outset, commitments that substantially predetermine the outcomes generated by their utilitarian systems. (shrink)

Some Christians do in fact think of the question euphemistically, like this. And some like to suppose, further, that when the children find that Hawaii is a bit like hell - it's far too hot and the locals are giving them a hard time - Father will relent and welcome them to his mansions on high.

In the 1940s, the ‘modern synthesis’ (MS) of Darwinism and genetics cast genetic mutation and recombination as the source of variability from which environmental events naturally select the fittest, such ‘natural selection’ constituting the cause of evolution. Recent biology increasingly challenges this view by casting genes as followers and awarding the leading role in the genesis of adaptations to the agency and plasticity of developing phenotypes—making natural selection a consequence of other causal processes. Both views of natural selection claim to (...) capture the core of Darwin’s arguments in On the Origin of Species. Today, historians largely concur with the MS’s reading of Origin as a book aimed to prove natural selection the cause (vera causa) of adaptive change. This paper finds the evidence for that conclusion wanting. I undertake to examine the context and meaning of all Darwin’s known uses of the phrase vera causa, documenting in particular Darwin’s resistance to the pressure to prove natural selection a vera causa in letters written early in 1860. His resistance underlines the logical dependence of natural selection, an unobservable phenomenon, on the causal processes producing the observable events captured by the laws of inheritance, variation, and the struggle for existence, established in Chapters 1–3 of Origin. (shrink)

The ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates (477-399 BCE), liked to pose questions in abstract terms. What is Justice? What is Beauty? What is Goodness? And so on. Not surprisingly, many who tried to answer tied themselves up in knots. And so it is also with the highly general question: What is truth?