Leading legal scholar John Witte, Jr. explores the role religion played in the development of rights in the Western legal tradition and traces the complex interplay between human rights and religious freedom norms in modern domestic and international law. He examines how US courts are moving towards greater religious freedom, while recent decisions of the pan-European courts in Strasbourg and Luxembourg have harmed new religious minorities and threatened old religious traditions in Europe. Witte argues that the robust promotion and protection (...) of religious freedom is the best way to protect many other fundamental rights today, even though religious freedom and other fundamental rights sometimes clash and need judicious balancing. He also responds to various modern critics who see human rights as a betrayal of Christianity and religious freedom as a betrayal of human rights. (shrink)

Aristotle's defense of Dunamis -- Power and potentiality -- Rational and nonrational powers -- The priority of actuality -- Ontological hierarchy, normativity, and gender.

We reconstruct recent work on macrosocial stress as if it were an instance of a research strategy that tests point-alternative hypotheses within a full-fledged research program. Because this strategy is free of various deficits that beset dominant strategies, our article demonstrates one way in which the confidence crisis may be overcome.

Substance and Essence in Aristotle is a close study of Aristotle's most profound—and perplexing—treatise: Books VII-IX of the Metaphysics. These central books, which focus on the nature of substance, have gained a deserved reputation for their difficulty, inconclusiveness, and internal inconsistency. Despite these problems, Witt extracts from Aristotle's text a coherent and provocative view about sensible substance by focusing on Aristotle's account of form or essence. After exploring the context in which Aristotle's discussion of sensible substance takes place, (...) class='Hi'>Witt turns to his analysis of essence. Arguing against the received interpretation, according to which essences are classificatory, Witt maintains that a substance's essence is what causes it to exist. In addition, Substance and Essence in Aristotle challenges the orthodox view that Aristotelian essences are species-essences, defending instead the controversial position that they are individual essences. Finally, Witt compares Aristotelian essentialism to contemporary essentialist theories, focusing in particular on Kripke's work. She concludes that fundamental differences between Aristotelian and contemporary essentialist theories highlight important features of Aristotle's theory and the philosophical problems and milieu that engendered it. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Gender is a book about gender essentialism: what it is and why it might be true.

The eighteenth-century American founders believed that religion is special and deserves special constitutional protection, and that all peaceable faiths must be drawn into the constitutional process and protection. The founders introduced six constitutional principles for the protection of religious freedom: freedom of conscience, free exercise of religion, religious pluralism, religious equality, separation of church and state, and no state establishment of religion. Since the 1940s, the United States Supreme Court has upheld these religious freedom principles in more than 170 cases, (...) albeit unevenly of late. Moreover, in recent years religious freedom has come under sharp popular and academic attack, particularly as religious pathologies have come to light and religious freedom claims have clashed with sexual liberty claims. This article calls for a return to the first principles of religious freedom for all, at home and abroad, and for a new balance between religious freedom and other fundamental rights claims. (shrink)

We are all immersed in a sea of social norms, but they are sometimes tricky to observe with any clarity. They are often invisible to us and emerge only when they are not observed. Social norms are important to understand because they are both limiting of our freedom, such as gendered and racialized norms, and at the same time the very conditions of our agency. Social Goodness presents an original, externalist answer to the question of the source or origin of (...) social role normativity. Rather than grounding social normativity in the attitudes of persons, the book argues for an externalism that roots social role normativity in the social world itself: in its positions, institutions, and larger architecture. The core insight of externalism is that the function or structural feature of an enterprise or activity can bring with it normative demands quite independently of the attitudes of those who engage with it. According to the artisanal model, just as a carpenter, ceramicist, or chef is responsive to and evaluable under a set of artisanal norms or techniques, so too is a mother and or an academic or a President. The source of normativity is this technique or expertise, independent of the preferences, endorsements, or recognitive attitudes of individuals. The artisanal model for social role normativity has resources to explain both the "stickiness" or persistence of social norms and our ability to criticize existing norms and to engage in normative self-creation--to create new normative selves. The artisanal model also has resources to capture and express the social situatedness, locality, and materiality of social roles. The relational ontology of social roles, implicit in the artisanal model, provides a useful frame to consider both hierarchical and oppressive social relations. (shrink)

Many philosophers working on personal identity and ethics say that personal identity is constituted by stories: narratives people tell or would tell about their lives. Most of them also say that this is personal identity in the ‘characterization sense’, that it is the notion people in ordinary contexts are interested in, and that it raises the ‘characterization question’. I argue that these claims are inconsistent. Narrativists can avoid the incompatibility in one of two ways: They can concede that their view (...) is not about the constitution but the epistemology of personal identity. Or they can say that it is not about personal identity at all. (shrink)

This article proposes an innovative methodology for enhancing the technical validation, legal alignment and interdisciplinarity of attempts to encode legislation. In the context of an experiment that examines how different legally trained participants convert select provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) into machine-executable code, we find that a combination of manual and automated methods for coding validation, which focus on formal adherence to programming languages and conventions, can significantly increase the similarity of encoded rules between coders. Participants nonetheless (...) encountered various interpretive difficulties, including syntactic ambiguity, and intra- and intertextuality, which necessitated legal evaluation, as distinct from and in addition to coding validation. Many of these difficulties can be resolved through what we call a process of ‘legal alignment’ that aims to enhance the congruence between encoded provisions and the true meaning of a statute as determined by the courts. However, some difficulties cannot be overcome in advance, such as factual indeterminacy. Given the inherently interdisciplinary nature of encoding legislation, we argue that it is desirable for ‘rules as code’ (‘RaC’) initiatives to have, at a minimum, legal subject matter, statutory interpretation and technical programming expertise. Overall, we contend that technical validation, legal alignment and interdisciplinary teamwork are integral to the success of attempts to encode legislation. While legal alignment processes will vary depending on jurisdictionally-specific principles and practices of statutory interpretation, the technical and interdisciplinary components of our methodology are transferable across regulatory contexts, bodies of law and Commonwealth and other jurisdictions. (shrink)

Ethical evaluation of deep brain stimulation as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease is complicated by results that can be described as involving changes in the patient’s identity. The risk of becoming another person following surgery is alarming for patients, caregivers and clinicians alike. It is one of the most urgent conceptual and ethical problems facing deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease at this time. In our paper we take issue with this problem on two accounts. First, we elucidate what is (...) meant by “becoming another person” from a conceptual point of view. After critically discussing two broad approaches we concentrate on the notion of “individual identity” which centers on the idea of “core attitudes”. Subsequently we discuss several approaches to determine what distinguishes core attitudes from those that are more peripheral. We argue for a “foundational-function model” highlighting the importance of specific dependency relations between these attitudes. Our second aim is to comment on the possibility to empirically measure changes in individual identity and argue that many of the instruments now commonly used in selecting and monitoring DBS-patients are inappropriate for this purpose. Future research in this area is advised combining a conceptual and an empirical approach as a basis of sound ethical appraisal. (shrink)

Feminist Metaphysics is the first collection of articles addressing metaphysical issues from a feminist perspective.

It has often been claimed that orthodox thinking about personal identity undermines the moral authority of advance directives in dementia by implying that the signer of the directive is numerically different from the severely demented patient. This is the ‘identity problem'. I introduce the problem, outline some well‐known solutions, and explain why they might be deemed unattractive. I then propose an alternative solution. It promises to be compatible with orthodox thinking about personal identity. I discuss three ways in which it (...) might be challenged and find that none is convincing. Personal identity is no bar to the moral authority of advance directives. (shrink)

Stress is increasingly being recognized as one of the main factors that is negatively affecting our health, and therefore there is a need to regulate daily stress and prevent long-term stress. This need seems particularly important for adults with mild intellectual disabilities who have been shown to have more difficulties coping with stress than adults without intellectual disabilities. Hence, the development of music therapy interventions for stress reduction, particularly within populations where needs may be greater, is becoming increasingly important. In (...) order to gain more insight into the practice-based knowledge on how music therapists lower stress levels of their patients with MID during music therapy sessions, we conducted focus group interviews with music therapists working with adults with MID from different countries and clinical institutions in Europe. Results provide an overview of the most-used interventions for stress reduction within and outside of music. Data-analysis resulted in the further specification of therapeutic goals, intervention techniques, the use of musical instruments, and related therapeutic change factors. The main findings indicate that music therapists used little to no receptive interventions for stress reduction, but preferred to use active interventions, which were mainly based on musical improvisation. Results show that three therapy goals for stress relief could be distinguished. The goal of “synchronizing” can be seen as a sub goal because it often precedes working on the other two goals of “tension release” or “direct relaxation,” which can also be seen as two ways of reaching stress reduction in adults with MID through music therapy interventions. Furthermore, the tempo and the dynamics of the music are considered as the most important musical components to reduce stress in adults with MID. Practical implications for stress-reducing music therapy interventions for adults with MID are discussed as well as recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Because of the intellectual attraction of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, its conccpts are often borrowed to conceptualized evolutionary change also in non-biological domains. However, a heuristic strategy like that is problematic. An attempt is therefore made to identify generic features of evolution which transcend domain-specific characteristics. Epistemological, conccptual, and methodological implications are discussed, and the ontological question is raised how non-biological evolutionary theories can be accommodated within the Darwinian world view of modern sciences.

Ein Leitmotiv der medizinethischen Auseinandersetzung mit der tiefen Hirnstimulation (THS) ist die Beschäftigung mit Fragen personaler Identität. Da es sich bei personaler Identität auch um ein Problem der theoretischen Philosophie handelt, wird in diesem Aufsatz nicht nur die praktische Frage nach der ethischen Legitimation der THS durch informierte Einwilligung gestellt und ein modifiziertes Legitimationskriterium für wesensändernde THS erarbeitet. Vielmehr wird zunächst versucht, das Problem, um das es in der Debatte um THS und personaler Identität geht, besser zu verstehen.

Ein Leitmotiv der medizinethischen Auseinandersetzung mit der tiefen Hirnstimulation (THS) ist die Beschäftigung mit Fragen personaler Identität. Da es sich bei personaler Identität auch um ein Problem der theoretischen Philosophie handelt, wird in diesem Aufsatz nicht nur die praktische Frage nach der ethischen Legitimation der THS durch informierte Einwilligung gestellt und ein modifiziertes Legitimationskriterium für wesensändernde THS erarbeitet. Vielmehr wird zunächst versucht, das Problem, um das es in der Debatte um THS und personaler Identität geht, besser zu verstehen.

Before replication becomes mainstream, the potential for generating theoretical knowledge better be clear. Replicating statistically significant nonrandom data shows that an original study made a discovery; replicating a specified theoretical effect shows that an original study corroborated a theory. Yet only in the latter case is replication a necessary, sound, and worthwhile strategy.

The current gridlock around climate change and how to address our global sustainability issues can be understood as resulting from clashes in worldviews. This article summarizes some of the research on worldviews in the contemporary West, showing that these worldviews have different, and frequently complementary, potentials, as well as different pitfalls, with respect to addressing climate change. Simultaneously, the overview shows that, because of their innate reflexivity and their capacity to appreciate and synthesize multiple perspectives, individuals inhabiting integrative worldviews may (...) have particular potentials with respect to addressing climate change. In the conclusion I argue that the policy challenge is to develop strategies that inspire the different worldview groups to actualize their potentials while mitigating their pitfalls, as well as to unite and mobilize them around a single vision that speaks to them all. (shrink)

This chapter first outlines the general evolution of the European Union's (EU) decision‐making regime. The pattern of EU decision making has traditionally varied across policy fields to a degree that is unknown in the national constitutional law of its member states, where laws and administrative rules are usually made according to fairly standard procedures covering all policy areas. Such policy‐related variation has been a constant feature throughout the history of European integration. The chapter then examines EU legislative decision making, and (...) reviews administrative rule making by the EU institutions. The chapter then describes other relevant forms of decision making in the European Union. Finally, it shows how successive revisions of the European treaties such as Single European Act, Treaty of Maastricht, Treaty of Amsterdam, Treaty of Nice, and Treaty of Lisbon have incrementally modified the decision‐making regime of the European Union. (shrink)

Empirical tests of Schwartz’s theory of culture-level value priorities have predominantly been performed using an averaging approach–as values of the average individual in a culture. However, from a theory of measurement standpoint such an approach seems inadequate. We argue that the averaging approach is an insufficiently accurate methodology in capturing the compatibilities-incompatibilities between values of individuals within cultures. We propose an approach based on the distribution of values of individuals in a given culture–the distribution approach. Using data from two rounds (...) of the European Social Survey, we show how frequencies of specific individual value priorities in a culture can be used towards the description of culture-level value preferences. We recommend a re-conceptualization of Schwartz’s culture-level value theory to an orthogonal two-dimensional structure, namely as Preservation vs. Alteration and Dominance vs. Amenability, which we explain based on heterogeneity in socioecological indicators across countries. We conclude that societal challenges may influence the cultural value climate across countries. (shrink)