1. Bd. Hugelmann, K.G. Der Reichsgedanke bei Nikolaus von Kues. Wolf., Erik. Idee und Wirklichkeit des Reiches im deutschen Rechtsdenken des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Larenz, Karl. Sittlichkeit und Recht, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des deutschen Rechtsdenkens und zur Sittenlehre.--2. Bd. Schönfeld, Walther. Die Geschichte der Rechtswissenschaft im Spiegel der Metaphysik.

The topic of self-interest raises large and intractable philosophical questions–most obviously, the question “In what does self-interest consist?” The concept, as opposed to the content of self-interest, however, seems clear enough. Self-interest is interest in one's own good. To act self-interestedly is to act on the motive of advancing one's own good. Whether what one does actually is in one's self-interest depends on whether it actually does advance, or at least, minimize the decline of, one's own good. Though it may (...) be difficult to tell whether a person is motivated by self-interest in a particular instance, and difficult also to determine whether a given act or decision really is in one's self-interest, the meaning of the claims in question seems unproblematic. My main concern in this essay is to make a point about the content of self-interest. Specifically I shall put forward the view that meaningfulness, in a sense I shall elaborate, is an important element of a good life. It follows, then, that it is part of an enlightened self-interest that one wants to secure meaning in one's life, or, at any rate, to allow and promote meaningful activity within it. Accepting this substantial conception of self-interest, however, carries with it a curious consequence: the concept of self-interest which formerly seemed so clear begins to grow fuzzy. Fortunately, it comes to seem less important as well. In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit distinguishes three sorts of theories about self-interest–hedonistic theories, preference theories, and what he calls “objective-list theories." Hedonistic theories hold that one's good is a matter of the felt quality of one's experiences. (shrink)

No consensus yet exists on how to handle incidental fnd-ings in human subjects research. Yet empirical studies document IFs in a wide range of research studies, where IFs are fndings beyond the aims of the study that are of potential health or reproductive importance to the individual research participant. This paper reports recommendations of a two-year project group funded by NIH to study how to manage IFs in genetic and genomic research, as well as imaging research. We conclude that researchers (...) have an obligation to address the possibility of discovering IFs in their protocol and communications with the IRB, and in their consent forms and communications with research participants. Researchers should establish a pathway for handling IFs and communicate that to the IRB and research participants. We recommend a pathway and categorize IFs into those that must be disclosed to research participants, those that may be disclosed, and those that should not be disclosed. (shrink)

For over thirty years Susan Wolf has been writing about moral and nonmoral values and the relation between them. This volume collects Wolf's most important essays on the topics of morality, love, and meaning, ranging from her classic essay "Moral Saints" to her most recent "The Importance of Love.".

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

Diese Festschrift für Michael Fischer ist ein Patchwork und eine wunderbare Mischung aus Wissenschaft, Persönlichem, Freundschaft und Genuss. Sie setzt sich aus unterschiedlichen und vielseitigen Texten, Zeichnungen und Bildern zusammen, von Menschen, die ihn begleitet haben, manche viele Jahre, manche nur eine kurze, aber entscheidende Zeit. Studentinnen und Studenten, die von ihm gelernt haben, Kolleginnen und Kollegen, die mit ihm Ideen entwickelt, Projekte initiiert und geforscht haben, Freunden aus Kunst und Kultur, Theater, Oper und den Bühnen des Lebens, nämlich: Eric (...) Hobsbawm, Claudio Magris, André Glucksmann, Wolf Singer, Johannes Hahn, Volker Gerhardt, Thomas Fischer, Rudolf (+) und Gundl Hradil, Helga Rabl-Stadler, Gerard Mortier, Jürgen Flimm, Brita Steinwendtner, Veit Heinichen, Peter Ruzicka, André Tubeuf, Thomas Oberender, Stefan Zweifel, Hermann Lübbe, Eduardo Chitas, Wilhelm Donner, Hans Eichhorn, Reinhard Kacianka, Tina Perisutti, Ulrich H. J. Körtner, Markus Hengstschläger, Henriette und Conrad Ulrich-Hürlimann, Michael Hagner, Thomas Macho, Johann Weyringer, Birgit Recki, Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Andreas Cesana, Kurt Seelmann. (shrink)

This essay is primarily concerned with one type of moral luck – luck in how things turn out. Do acts that actually lead to harm deserve the same treatment as similar acts that, by chance, do not lead to harm? This paper argues that we must recognize the truth in two, opposing tendencies in such cases.

We develop and apply a multi-dimensional account of explanatory depth towards a comparative analysis of inflationary and bouncing paradigms in primordial cosmology. Our analysis builds on earlier work due to Azhar and Loeb (2021) that establishes initial conditions fine-tuning as a dimension of explanatory depth relevant to debates in contemporary cosmology. We propose dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy as two further dimensions of depth in the context of problems with instability and trans-Planckian modes that afflict bouncing and inflationary approaches respectively. In (...) the context of the latter issue, we argue that the recently formulated trans-Planckian censorship conjecture leads to a trade-off for inflationary models between dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy. We conclude with the suggestion that explanatory preference with regard to the different dimensions of depth is best understood in terms of differing attitudes towards heuristics for future model building. (shrink)

Genomic research results and incidental findings with health implications for a research participant are of potential interest not only to the participant, but also to the participant's family. Yet investigators lack guidance on return of results to relatives, including after the participant's death. In this paper, a national working group offers consensus analysis and recommendations, including an ethical framework to guide investigators in managing this challenging issue, before and after the participant's death.

A standard line in the contemporary philosophical literature has it that physical theories are equivalent only when they agree on their empirical content, where this empirical content is often understood as being encoded in the equations of motion of those theories. In this article, we question whether it is indeed the case that the empirical content of a theory is exhausted by its equations of motion, showing that (for example) considerations of boundary conditions play a key role in the empirical (...) equivalence (or otherwise) of theories. Having argued for this, we show that philosophical claims made by Weatherall (2016) that electromagnetism in the Faraday tensor formalism is equivalent to electromagnetism in the vector potential formalism, and by Knox (2011) that general relativity is equivalent to teleparallel gravity, can both be called into question. We then show that properly considering the role of boundary conditions in theory structure can potentially restore these claims of equivalence and close with some remarks on the pragmatics of adjudications on theory identity. (shrink)

(2013). Moral Ground. Ethics, Policy & Environment. ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/21550085.2013.844582.

The current explosion of genetic knowledge and the rapid proliferation of genetic tests has rightly provoked concern that we are approaching a future in which people will be labeled and disadvantaged based on genetic information. Indeed, some have already suffered harm, including denial of health insurance. This concern has prompted an outpouring of analysis. Yet almost all of it approaches the problem of genetic disadvantage under the rubric of “genetic discrimination.”This rubric is woefully inadequate to the task at hand. It (...) ignores years of commentary on race and gender demonstrating the limits of antidiscrimination analysis as an analytic framework and corrective tool. Too much discussion of genetic disadvantage proceeds as if scholars of race and gender had not spent decades critiquing and developing antidiscrimination theory.Indeed, there are multiple links among race, gender, and genetics. Dorothy Roberts has discussed the historical links between racism and genetics, while she and others have begun to map connections between gender and genetics. (shrink)

This paper begins with a discussion of two features of the everyday task environment. First, the everyday task environment is designed, and an important part of the design is the provision of explicit information to guide the individual in the adaptation of his activity. Second, some task environments are semi‐permanent. These two features of the task environment reveal some important characteristics in the psychology of the individual. When novelty occurs, expansion in the range of behavior of the individual is guided (...) by a process of internalization of information provided in the task environment by another. Because of the semi‐permanence of home task environments, there is pay‐off in organizing behavior in terms of the particulars of those environments. The body of this paper examines these ideas from the perspective of FLOABN. FLOABN is a computational cognitive model of an individual acquiring skill at using household and office devices. (shrink)

In this first book-length examination of the Cartesian theory of visual perception, Celia Wolf-Devine explores the many philosophical implications of Descartes’ theory, concluding that he ultimately failed to provide a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception. Wolf-Devine traces the development of Descartes’ thought about visual perception against the backdrop of the transition from Aristotelianism to the new mechanistic science—the major scientific paradigm shift taking place in the seventeenth century. She considers the philosopher’s work in terms of its background (...) in Aristotelian and later scholastic thought rather than looking at it "backwards" through the later work of the British empiricists and Kant. Wolf-Devine begins with Descartes’ ideas about perception in the _Rules _and continues through the later scientific writings in which he develops his own mechanistic theory of light, color, and visual spatial perception. Throughout her discussion, she demonstrates both Descartes’ continuity with and break from the Aristotelian tradition. Wolf-Devine critically examines Cartesian theory by focusing on the problems that arise from his use of three different models to explain the behavior of light as well as on the ways in which modern science has not confirmed some of Descartes’ central hypotheses about vision. She shows that the changes Descartes made in the Aristotelian framework created a new set of problems in the philosophy of perception. While such successors to Descartes as Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume accepted the core of his theory of vision, they struggled to clarify the ontological status of colors, to separate what is strictly speaking "given" to the sense of sight from what is the result of judgments by the mind, and to confront a "veil of perception" skepticism that would have been unthinkable within the Aristotelian framework. Wolf-Devine concludes that Descartes was not ultimately successful in providing a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception, and because of this, she suggests both that changes in the conceptual framework of Descartes are in order and that a partial return to some features of the Aristotelian tradition may be necessary. (shrink)

In his works on argumentation, Aristotle develops three main forms: apodeictical, dialectical, and rhetorical argumentation; dialectic is subdivided into several subspecies. The purpose of this paper is to discuss all of the forms described by Aristotle, to examine their differences and to point out their interrelations. This leads to an examination of the differentiating criteria and their applicability in the case of each argumentation form—and in particular to the question regarding the number of criteria that are necessary to describe each (...) form clearly and unambiguously. It is argued that Aristotle’s works on argumentation contain an implicit system of argumentation forms that is based on no more than three criteria. (shrink)

How can we solve the paradox of false-belief understanding: if infants pass the implicit false belief task by nonverbal behavioural responses why do they nonetheless typically fail the explicit FBT till they are 4 years old? Starting with the divide between situational and cognitive accounts of the development of false-belief understanding, we argue that we need to consider both situational and internal cognitive factors together and describe their interaction to adequately explain the development of children’s Theory of Mind ability. We (...) then argue that a further challenge is raised for existing accounts by helping behaviour versions of the FBT. We argue that the common two-stage accounts are inadequate: we need to allow for three central stages in a continuous development. Furthermore, drawing on Perner et al.’s and Perner and Leahy’s : 491–508, 2016) recent mental files account, we provide a new account of the development of these three stages of ToM ability by describing the changes of the structure and organisation of mental files including the systematic triggering role of types of situations. Thereby we aim to establish a situational mental file account as a new and adequate solution to the paradox of false-belief understanding. (shrink)

February 21st will mark the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the death of Spinoza, which occurred on February 21st, 1677. The visitor to the Hague may still see, in the Paviljoensgragt, the small two-storied house in the top rooms of which Spinoza spent the last six years of his short life. A tablet placed under the top windows commemorates the fact. It was in these rooms that Spinoza completed his Ethica, which may perhaps be regarded as the greatest masterpiece in the history (...) of Metaphysics. The house is in danger of being pulled down, and the Spinoza Society is endeavouring to secure it as a memorial to Spinoza, and a centre of philosophic studies. It is not so long since the house-breakers I had their way with the home of Erasmus in Rotterdam. It would be sad indeed if the abode of another of the greatest Humanists were to meet with a like fate. It is to be hoped that the revived I interest in Spinoza which we are witnessing now may take the I practical form of saving this precious relic, which may well serve to promote the peace and goodwill among men which Spinoza had so much at heart. (shrink)

With the originality and energy that have marked his earlier works, Eric Wolf now explores the historical relationship of ideas, power, and culture. Responding to anthropology's long reliance on a concept of culture that takes little account of power, Wolf argues that power is crucial in shaping the circumstances of cultural production. Responding to social-science notions of ideology that incorporate power but disregard the ways ideas respond to cultural promptings, he demonstrates how power and ideas connect through the (...) medium of culture. Wolf advances his argument by examining three very different societies, each remarkable for its flamboyant ideological expressions: the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, the Aztecs of pre-Hispanic Mexico, and National Socialist Germany. Tracing the history of each case, he shows how these societies faced tensions posed by ecological, social, political, or psychological crises, prompting ideological responses that drew on distinctive, historically rooted cultural understandings. In each case study, Wolf analyzes how the regnant ideology intertwines with power around the pivotal relationships that govern social labor. Anyone interested in the history of anthropology or in how the social sciences make comparisons will want to join Wolf in _Envisioning Power_. (shrink)

Previous research suggested a role of gaze in preference formation, not merely as an expression of preference, but also as a causal influence. According to the gaze cascade hypothesis, the longer subjects look at an item, the more likely they are to develop a preference for it. However, to date the connection between viewing and liking has been investigated predominately with self-paced viewing conditions in which the subjects were required to select certain items from simultaneously presented stimuli on the basis (...) of perceived visual attractiveness. Such conditions might promote a default, but non-mandatory connection between viewing and liking. To explore whether the connection is separable, we examined the evaluative processing of single naturalistic food images in a 2 x 2 design, conducted completely within subjects, in which we varied both the type of exposure (self-paced versus time-controlled) and the type of evaluation (non-exclusive versus exclusive). In the self-paced exclusive evaluation, longer viewing was associated with a higher likelihood of a positive evaluation. However, in the self-paced non-exclusive evaluation, the trend reversed such that longer viewing durations were associated with lesser ratings. Furthermore, in the time-controlled tasks, both with non-exclusive and exclusive evaluation, there was no significant relationship between the viewing duration and the evaluation. The overall pattern of results was consistent for viewing times measured in terms of exposure duration (i.e., the duration of stimulus presentation on the screen) and in terms of actual gaze duration (i.e., the amount of time the subject effectively gazed at the stimulus on the screen). The data indicated that viewing does not intrinsically lead to a higher evaluation when evaluating single food images; instead, the relationship between viewing duration and evaluation depends on the type of task. We suggest that self-determination of exposure duration may be a prerequisite for any influence from viewing time on evaluative processing, regardless of whether the influence is facilitative. Moreover, the purported facilitative link between viewing and liking appears to be limited to exclusive evaluation, when only a restricted number of items can be included in a chosen set. (shrink)

Oversight of human gene transfer research presents an important model with potential application to oversight of nanobiology research on human participants. Gene therapy oversight adds centralized federal review at the National Institutes of Health's Office of Biotechnology Activities and its Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee to standard oversight of human subjects research at the researcher's institution and at the federal level by the Office for Human Research Protections. The Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research oversees human gene (...) transfer research in parallel, including approval of protocols and regulation of products. This article traces the evolution of this dual oversight system; describes how the system is already addressing nanobiotechnology in gene transfer: evaluates gene therapy oversight based on public opinion, the literature, and preliminary expert elicitation; and offers lessons of the gene therapy oversight experience for oversight of nanobiotechnology. (shrink)

Answering important public health questions often requires collection of sensitive information about individuals. For example, our understanding of how HIV is transmitted and how to prevent it only came about with people's willingness to share information about their sexual and drug-using behaviors. Given the scientific need for sensitive, personal information, researchers have a corresponding ethical and legal obligation to maintain the confidentiality of data they collect and typically promise in consent forms to restrict access to it and not to publish (...) identifying data.The interests of others, however, can threaten researchers' promises of confidentiality when legal demands are made to access research data. In some cases, the subject of the litigation is tightly connected to the research questions, and litigants' interest in the data is not surprising. Researchers conducting studies on tobacco or occupational or other chemical exposures, for example, are relatively frequent targets of subpoenas. (shrink)

_Naturalism and Democracy_, first published in German in 2014, presents a long-awaited commentary on Spinoza’s _Political Treatise _. It gives a detailed analysis of Spinoza’s latest theory of State and Law, with special attention to his democratic approach.

Excerpt from Die Überwindung des Schopenhauerschen Pessimismus Durch Friedrich Nietzsche Obwohl der philosophische Pessimismus in unserer Zeit wenige Vertreter aufweist, begegnen wir dem praktischen Pessimismus leider nur zu häufig. Die Stellung Nietzsche's zu dieser Frage eingehender zu untersuchen, ist die Aufgabe der vorliegenden Schrift. Der Zweck ist, den Leser zum Studium Nietzsches selbst anzuregen, insbesondere der Schriften, die sich mit dem Pessimismus auseinandersetzen. Sehr zu bedauern wäre es dagegen, wenn Jemand glaubte, durch die Lektüre von Schriften uber Nietzsche sich das (...) Studium von Nietzsche's Werken selbst ersparen zu können. Herrn Professor Vaihinger in Halle möchte ich auch hier meinen Dank aussprechen fur die Ratschläge, die er mir bei der Ausführung dieser Arbeit zuteil werden liess, zu der ich die erste Anregung ebenfalls von ihm empfing. Der Verfasser.2. Der innere Gegensatz Nietzsche's gegen Schopenhauer trotz der äusseren Bejahung des Schopenhauer'schen Pessimismus 20 - 28. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Our ability to understand others is one of the most central parts of human life, but explaining how this ability develops remains a controversial issue, exercising psychologists and philosophers alike. Within this literature the Paradox of False Belief Understanding remains one of the main open challenges. Based on an up to date overview of the empirical and theoretical literature, this book highlights the significance of this paradox for our understanding of the development of social cognition and provides a new explanation (...) of it in the form of the Situational Mental File Account. Central features of the account are, firstly, identitfying three distinct stages in the development of belief understanding and, secondly, elaborating the role of both cognitive and situational factors as well as their interaction in the development of belief understanding. This account is also applied to the related phenomenon of pretend play, demonstrating the potential for a wider application of the account. This account generates both new empirical predications and a framework for further theoretical work, thereby providing a fruitful ground for further interdisciplinary research in this area. (shrink)

Vor dem Hintergrund fanatischer religiöser Konflikte und in Kenntnis der im 17. Jahrhundert aufblühenden exakten Wissenschaften entwickelte Spinoza einen der anspruchsvollsten Entwürfe der Philosophiegeschichte: seine in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellte Ethik. Sie handelt von der Ontologie, Erkenntnislehre, den menschlichen Gefühlen und der Freiheit und Unfreiheit Einzelner wie auch der sozialer Gemeinschaften in einem einzigen durchgehenden Argumentationsgang. Das Werk verbindet auf diese Weise die höchsten Ansprüche begrifflicher und begründender Durchsichtigkeit mit von Lebenserfahrung gesättigter Weisheit. Es versteht sich selbst als eine Anleitung zum (...) Glück für die, die bereit sind, sich nur auf ihre Vernunft und nicht auf Autoritäten zu verlassen. Bis heute ist das Buch Maßstab aufgeklärter theoretischer und praktischer Vernunft geblieben. Seine fünf Teile werden in diesem kollektiven Kommentar durch jeweils drei Aufsätze erläutert. Eine Einleitung schildert die Ambitionen und historischen Folgen der "Ethik". Mit Beiträgen von: Francis Aman, Wolfgang Bartuschat, Thomas Cook, Herman De Djin, Christof Ellsiepen, Stephen Gaukroger, Michael Hampe, Thomas Kisser, Alexandre Matheron, Pierre-François Moreau, Michael Pauen, Dominik Perler, Ursula Renz, Michael Della Rocca, Robert Schnepf, Manfred Walther und Jean-Claude Wolf. (shrink)

Industrial agriculture has extensive environmental and social costs, and efforts to create alternative farming systems are widespread if not yet widely successful. This study explored how a set of grain farmers and rotational graziers in Iowa transitioned to agroecological management practices. Our focus on the resources and strategies that farmers mobilized to develop opportunities for, and overcome barriers to, transitioning to alternative practices allows us to go beyond the existing literature focused on why farmers transition. We attend to both the (...) ecological and socioeconomic context of innovation by comparing processes of technical change in two contrasting regions of Iowa. Farmers cultivated farm-level biodiversity and enterprise diversity, developed new cognitive and psychological competencies, and overcame barriers to innovation by developing external network linkages with peers, knowledge organizations, and federal policies. Our research provides insights into how biophysical, cognitive, structural and market considerations can be integrated into research efforts that aim to make sense of innovation toward sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

To many who develop and use free software, the GNU General Public License represents an embodiment of the meaning of free software. In this paper we examine the definition and meaning of free software in the context of three events surrounding the GNU General Public License. We use a case involving the GPU software project to establish the importance of Freedom 0 in the meaning of free software. We analyze version 3 of the GNU General Public License and conclude that (...) although a credible case can be made that the added restrictions are consistent with the definition of free software, the case requires subtle arguments. Strong arguments against the added restrictions are less subtle, and may therefore be more convincing to many users and developers. We also analyze the Affero General Public License and conclude that it is inconsistent with the definition of free software. (shrink)

Using testimonies from immigrants and examples of immigrant policies, this book proposes an interdisciplinary, feminist approach to immigration justice.

In 2018, at least 12 adults and 3 children died in U.S. detention facilities. In 2017, 12 people died in U.S. detention facilities and at least 10 women filed complaints against ICE for mistreatment that led them to miscarry. At the time of this writing, 26 people have died in US Custody during the Trump Administration and 74 people have died in U.S. detention facilities between 2010 and 2018, including Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos, Augustina Ramirez-Arreola, Moises Tino-Lopez, Jose Azurdia, and Roxana (...) Hernandez. I am not going to argue that these deaths are wrong – I take that as obvious. Instead, I will suggest that nonideal theory shows why bioethicists have special obligations for condemning these deaths and getting involved to make them stop. When we heed nonideal theory’s demand to consider empirical realities, we will see that the role of the bioethicist extends wherever health care does. Moreover, when bioethicists expressly embrace nonideal rather than ideal theories to ground our work, we will see that there are plenty such theories available to us. Shelly Wilcox’s nonideal theory of immigration justice is especially well suited for bioethicists to use in relation to detainee health care and enter the conversation where they are so desperately needed. (shrink)

In his book Welfare and Rational Care, Stephen Darwall proposes to give an account of human welfare. Or rather, he offers two accounts, a metaethical and a normative account. The two accounts, he suggests, are somewhat supportive of each other though they are logically independent.

Product differentiation has emerged as a central dynamic in contemporary agrofood systems. Departure from the mode of standardization emblematic of agrofood modernization raises questions about future technical trajectories and the ways in which learning will be sustained. This article examines two innovation trajectories: the rapid coupling of biotechnologies and information technologies to yield products differentiated by constituent components—a model based on a cognitive logic of decomposition/ recomposition—and the proliferation of product networks that mobilize distinctive, localized resources to create complete identities—a (...) model based on a cognitive logic of identity. The article analyzes the information structures—institutional mechanisms that support information exchange and learning—in each of these opposed development paradigms. We find that knowledge creation under each of the logics occurs through mechanisms not recognized within the respective paradigms. On this basis, we derive institutional hybridity as a fundamental resource in systems of innovation. (shrink)

We adjudicate a recent dispute concerning the desire theory of well-being. Stock counterexamples to the desire theory include “quirky” desires that seem irrelevant to well-being, such as the desire to count blades of grass. Bruckner claims that such desires are relevant to well-being, provided that the desirer can characterize the object in such a way that makes it clear to others what attracts the desirer to it. Lin claims that merely being attracted to the object of one’s desire should be (...) sufficient for it to be relevant to one’s well-being. The capacity to characterize the desire as Bruckner requires does no work in the explanation of the welfare-relevance of the desire, Lin claims, especially since Lin’s account and Bruckner’s account are extensionally equivalent. In response, we provide a conceptual analysis of desire based on conceptual role semantics. Our analysis shows the plausibility of and motivation for Bruckner’s account. As well, it shows that the extensional equivalence of the accounts is no accident, but due to what it is to have a desire. Lin has not succeeded in providing an alternative to Bruckner’s account, but merely reformulated it, though in an illuminating way that supports Bruckner’s original case. (shrink)

Many of our obligations to future generations can be understood in terms of the intergenerational benefits and debts we pass on. This article proposes that we can think of environmental debts in the same way as financial debts, and that this will help us to understand our most important obligations of intergenerational justice.

In this paper, I will outline some of the important points made by Kripke and Putnam on the meaning of natural kind terms. Their notion of the baptism of natural kinds- the process by which kind terms are initially introduced into the language — is of special concern here. I argue that their accounts leave some ambiguities that suggest a baptism of objects and kinds that is free of additional theoretical commitments. Both authors suggest that we name the stuff and (...) then let the scientists tell us what properties it really has, and hence what the real meaning is. I contend that such a barren baptism, taken at face value, cannot succeed in the semantic roles it has been assigned and that softening the stance on baptism suggests a more subtle and complex relation between reference and theoretical commitment than has emerged thus far. (shrink)

Sport provides an arena for human flourishing. For some, this pursuit of a meaningful life through sport involves the use of non-human animals, not least of all through sport hunting. This paper will take seriously that sport – including sport hunting – can provide a meaningful arena for human flourishing. Additionally, it will accept for present purposes that animals are of less moral value than humans. This paper will show that, even accepting these premises, much use of animals for sport (...) – including sport hunting – is unacceptable. Nonetheless it will show that there can be acceptable ways of using animals as part of a human’s meaningful life pursuits through sport, albeit in a more limited fashion than many sportspersons currently accept. (shrink)