In 1873, within two years of the publication of The Descent of Man, Friedrich Max Mueller wrote: There is one difficulty which Mr Darwin has not sufficiently appreciated … There is between the whole animal kingdom on the one side, and man, even in his lowest state, on the other, a barrier which no animal has ever crossed, and that barrier is – Language … If anything has a right to the name of specific difference, it is language, as we (...) find it in man, and in man only … If we removed the name of specific difference from our philosophic dictionaries, I should still hold that nothing deserves the name of man except what is able to speak … a speaking elephant or an elephantine speaker could never be called an elephant.' and ‘If a pig were ever to say to me, “I am a pig” it would ipso facto cease to be a pig’. (shrink)

This is the first volume to address directly the question of the speciation of modern Homo sapiens. The subject raises profound questions about the nature of the species, our defining characteristic, and the brain changes and their genetic basis that make us distinct. The British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences have brought together experts from palaeontology, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, genetics and evolutionary theory to present evidence and theories at the cutting edge of our understanding of these issues.Palaeontological and (...) genetic work suggests that the transition from a precursor hominid species to modern man took place between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago. Some contributors discuss what is most characteristic of the species, focussing on language and its possible basis in brain lateralization. This work is placed in the context of speciation theory, which has remained a subject of considerable debate since the evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory. The timing of specific transitions in hominid evolution is discussed, as also is the question of the neural basis of language. Other contributors address the possible genetic nature of the transition, with reference to changes on the X and Y chromosomes that may account for sex differences in lateralization and verbal ability. These differences are discussed in terms of the theory of sexual selection, and with reference to the mechanisms of speciation.These essays will be vital reading for anyone interested in the nature and origins of the species, and specifically human abilities. (shrink)

Worship is a topic that is rarely considered by philosophers of religion. In a recent paper, Tim Bayne and Yujin Nagasawa challenge this trend by offering an analysis of worship and by considering some difficulties attendant on the claim that worship is obligatory. I argue that their case for there being these difficulties is insufficiently supported. I offer two reasons that a theist might provide for the claim that worship is obligatory: (1) a divine command, and (2) the demands of (...) justice with respect to God's redemption of humanity. I also challenge the soundness of some of the analogies they employ in their argument. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

In this paper we respond to Benjamin Crowe's criticisms in this issue of our discussion of the grounds of worship. We clarify our previous position, and examine Crowe's account of what it is about God's nature that might ground our obligation to worship Him. We find Crowe's proposals no more persuasive than the accounts that we examined in our previous paper, and conclude that theists still owe us an account of what it is in virtue of which (...) we have obligations to worship God. (shrink)

Crowe presents the evolution of Lonergan's thinking on Christology in the context of the radical developments contained within his other theological writings.

This work approaches international law as more than merely information contained in international legal norms, & does not view international law as a body of ...

Volume 10, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 237-245.

The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed exposition of Heidegger's conception of philosophy as "destruction [Destruktion]." My thesis is that the ultimate motivation for engaging in this practice of Destruktion is the value of an "authentic" way of life. That is, "destruction" is a philosophical practice that aims at cultivating authenticity as a concrete possibility for individual men and women. I argue for this claim by first of all examining the theological sources for Heidegger's notion of "destruction," (...) with a particular focus on Luther. Second, I provide a detailed exposition of the development of "destruction" in Heidegger's work from the 1920's, and of the ideas intimately linked with it. ;In Chapter One, I undertake to clarify Heidegger's philosophical position on the importance of religion and theology not only for Western intellectual history as a whole, but also for his own idiosyncratic philosophical project. In Chapter Two I explore the role that his study of Luther played in the development of Heidegger's conception of philosophy as "destruction." In Chapter Three, I lay some necessary groundwork for my later discussion by examining Heidegger's conception of human selfhood. In Chapter Four, I undertake to give a thorough account of Heidegger's conception of an "inauthentic" way of life. In Chapter Five, I examine Heidegger's views about the way public discourse, particularly intellectual discourse, is oftentimes complicit in an inauthentic way of life. In Chapter Six, I locate Heidegger's conception of authenticity within the tradition of Romantic personalism, and show how he investigates the roots of this tradition in primitive Christianity. In Chapter Seven, I present an explication of Heidegger's conception of an "authentic life" by focusing on his works before and including Being and Time. Having laid the groundwork for understanding the meaning of "destruction" in Chapters One through Seven, I begin an explicit examination of the nature of Heidegger's conception of philosophy in Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine is the culmination of my argument, in which I focus on the idea of "destruction," and show that it is everywhere linked with Heidegger's ideal of an authentic way of life. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effect of the countervailing forces within organizations of formal systems that direct employees toward ethical acts and informal systems that direct employees toward fraudulent behavior. We study the effect of these forces on deception, a key component of fraud. The results provide support for an interactive effect of these formal and informal systems. The effectiveness of formal systems is greater when there is a strong informal “push” to do wrong; conversely, in the absence of a strong (...) push to do wrong, the strength of formal systems has little impact on fraudulent behavior. These results help to explain why the implementation of formal systems within organizations has been met with mixed results and identifies when formal systems designed to promote ethical behavior will be most efficacious. (shrink)

Sheds new light on Heidegger's early theological development.

Throughout his long and controversial career, Martin Heidegger developed a substantial contribution to the phenomenology of religion. In Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religion, Benjamin D. Crowe examines the key concepts and developmental phases that characterized Heidegger's work. Crowe shows that Heidegger's account of the meaning and structure of religious life belongs to his larger project of exposing and criticizing the fundamental assumptions of late modern culture. He reveals Heidegger as a realist through careful readings of his views on religious (...) attitudes and activities. Crowe challenges interpretations of Heidegger's early efforts in the phenomenology of religion and later writings on religion, including discussions of Greek religion and Hölderlin's poetry. This book is sure to spark discussion and debate as Heidegger's work in religion and the philosophy of religion becomes increasingly important to scholars and beyond. (shrink)

J. G. Fichte (1762–1814) articulates and defends a conception of autonomy as rational self-identification. This paper reconstructs this conception and examines various difficulties recognized by Fichte during the earliest phases of his career (1780s–1790s), with the heterogeneity of natural drives and freedom as the principal threat. Theoretically, this heterogeneity is overcome for Fichte by his deduction of the compound nature of humanity as a condition of rational agency. But, from the standpoint of the deliberating agent herself, this deduction is not (...) sufficient. The harmony of nature and freedom is, for Fichte, a desideratum of practical rationality, and so must be addressed as such. Fichte's argument at this point is that a further perspective on oneself must be at least implicit in the moral outlook of a deliberating agent in order for this harmony to be attained on a practical level. This is because the harmony that is achieved at the deliberative level is occasional, temporary, and fundamentally uncertain. The required perspective turns out to be religious faith, the idea that the ‘infinite task’ of morality is eternally realized in divine reason, or that there is a ‘moral world order’ in which nature and freedom are reconciled. (shrink)

The natural law tradition in ethics and jurisprudence has undergone a revival in recent years, sparked by the work of John Finnis and the 'new natural law theorists' in the early 1980s. The ensuing decades have seen the emergence of an increasingly rich body of natural law scholarship, but this diversification has gone unnoticed by many outside the field. This article seeks to clarify the relationship between the core claims of the new natural law outlook and the more specific views (...) of individual authors. It begins by discussing the place of the new natural law theory within contemporary natural law scholarship. It then offers an account of the core elements of the new natural law framework that emphasises their compatibility with a range of ethical and philosophical viewpoints. (shrink)

Two epistemological critiques of non-naturalism are not always carefully distinguished. According to the Causal Objection, the fact that moral properties cannot cause our moral beliefs implies that it would be a coincidence if many of them were true. According to the Evolutionary Objection, the fact that evolutionary pressures have influenced our moral beliefs implies a similar coincidence. After distinguishing these epistemological critiques, I provide an extensive defense of the Causal Objection that also strengthens the Evolutionary Objection. In particular, I formulate (...) a “Master Causal Objection” featuring the controversial premise that non-naturalism can provide no adequate explanation for moral knowledge. I defend this premise by first narrowing down the range of candidate explanations to conceptual, constitutive, and evolutionary explanations, and then considering and eliminating each of these in turn. My discussion of evolutionary explanations suggests that non-naturalists must refute the Causal Objection in order to refute the Evolutionary Objection. (shrink)

The first part of this paper consists of an exposition of the views expressed by Pierre Duhem in his Aim and Structure of Physical Theory concerning the philosophy and historiography of mathematics. The second part provides a critique of these views, pointing to the conclusion that they are in need of reformulation. In the concluding third part, it is suggested that a number of the most important claims made by Duhem concerning physical theory, e.g., those relating to the Newtonian method, (...) the limited falsifiability of theories, and the restricted role of logic, can be meaningfully applied to mathematics. (shrink)

Mediation is becoming more and more prominent as a mode of legal dispute resolution. The problem of legitimacy in mediation raises the question of why mediation is legitimate as a means of settling social disputes. This issue mirrors a long-running and deep-seated problem of legitimacy in law generally. We argue that the most promising strategy for justifying the normative force of law - namely, that law provides a mutually beneficial mechanism of social coordination - does not translate straightforwardly to the (...) mediation context. A distinctive response to the problem of legitimacy in mediation is therefore needed. The consensual nature of mediation may render it legitimate in some contexts, but it is unlikely to do so in others. Our conclusion is threefold: the problem of legitimacy in mediation exists; it is distinct from the problem of legitimacy in law generally; and the problem is more intractable than is generally thought. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 24 Accounts of non-naturalist moral perception have been advertised as an empiricist-friendly epistemological alternative to moral rationalism. I argue that these accounts of moral perception conceal a core commitment of rationalism—to substantive a priori justification—and embody its most objectionable feature—namely, “mysteriousness.” Thus, accounts of non-naturalist moral perception do not amount to an interesting alternative to moral rationalism.

From antiquity to the present, humans have debated whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. This presentation will survey this debate, examining the roles played in it by science, religion, philosophy, and other areas of human learning. One thesis that will be developed is that whether or not extraterrestrials exist, ideas about them have strongly influenced Western thought.

Two of the most prominent evolutionary debunking arguments are Sharon Street's Darwinian Dilemma for Normative Realism and Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Atheism. In the former, Street appeals to evolutionary considerations to debunk normative realism. In the latter, Plantinga appeals to similar considerations to debunk atheism. By a careful comparison of these two arguments, I develop a new strategy to help normative realists resist Street's debunking attempt. In her Darwinian Dilemma, Street makes epistemological commitments that ultimately support Plantinga's structurally similar (...) argument. If Street succeeds in debunking normative realism, I argue, then she also succeeds in debunking atheism. But atheism is a suppressed premise of the Darwinian Dilemma as well as a commitment of almost all normative anti-realists. If Street's argument entails theism, then the Darwinian Dilemma is internally incoherent and should be abandoned by almost everyone. (shrink)

The notorious difficulty of Heidegger's post-Second World War discussions of 'the gods', along with scholarly disagreement about the import of those discussions, renders that body of work an unlikely place to look for a substantive theory of religion. The thesis of this article is that, contrary to these appearances, Heidegger's later works do contain clues for developing such a theory. Heidegger's concerns about the category of 'religion' are addressed, and two recent attempts to 'de-mythologize' Heidegger's 'gods' are examined and criticized. (...) The paper concludes by outlining four substantial contributions that Heidegger's later work makes to a phenomenological account of religion. (shrink)

This paper discusses the implications of the ethical theory of Emmanuel Levinas for theoretical debates about legal obligation. I begin by examining the structure of moral reasoning in light of Levinas's account of ethics, looking particularly at the role of the third party (le tiers) in modifying Levinas's primary ethical structure of the face to face relation. I then argue that the primordial role of ethical experience in social discourse, as emphasised by Levinas, undermines theories, such as that of H. (...) L. A. Hart, that propose a systematic distinction between legal and moral species of obligation. (shrink)

Physical attractiveness is highly valued in our society and impacts a variety of decisions made by organizations. Generally speaking, research findings suggest that the more attractive the person, the greater the likelihood of favorable employment-related decisions. It follows then, that those considered physically unattractive will suffer adversely in some employment-related decisional contexts — decisions that may prevent them from achieving the good life. Until recently, discrimination against unattractive people has been considered nothing more than a moral or ethical issue. However, (...) with the introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, attractiveness as an employment-related criteria may become a legal issue. In this essay, we propose that the history of social and legal trends, coupled with uncertainties and ambiguities within the ADA, represents a possible expansion of protection for physically unattractive people. (shrink)

The technique of nuclear transplantation – popularly known as cloning – has been integrated into several different histories of twentieth century biology. Historians and science scholars have situated nuclear transplantation within narratives of scientific practice, biotechnology, bioethics, biomedicine, and changing views of life. However, nuclear transplantation has never been the focus of analysis. In this article, I examine the development of nuclear transplantation techniques, focusing on the people, motivations, and institutions associated with the first successful nuclear transfer in metazoans in (...) 1952. The conflict between embryologists and geneticists over the mechanisms of differentiation motivated Robert Briggs to pursue nuclear transplantation experiments as a way to resolve the debate. Briggs worked at the Lankenau Hospital Research Institute, a research facility devoted to the study of cancer. The goal of understanding cancer would play a role in the development of the technique, and the story of nuclear transplantation sheds light on the role that biomedical contexts play in biological research in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

While the last several decades have seen a renaissance of scholarship on J. G. Herder (1744?1804), his moral philosophy has not been carefully examined. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap, and to point the way for further research, by reconstructing his original and systematically articulated views on morality. Three interrelated elements of his position are explored in detail: (1) his perfectionism, or theory of the human good; (2) his sentimentalism, which includes moral epistemology and a theory (...) of moral education; and (3) his theism, which deepens and justifies these other elements. (shrink)