bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Tentative Adjustments
Authors: Eichengreen Barry
Published: October 2003

This chapter traces the consequences of the disintegration of the gold standard system, contrasting economic recovery in countries that jettisoned gold with continued depression in countries that retained it. An attempt is made to account for their respective policy decisions. The case of the USA emerges as something of an anomaly, and is addressed further in the next chapter. The first section of the chapter looks at the new international economic environment following sterling depreciation and the abandonment of the gold standard by many other countries from 1932 onward. The remaining sections look at the pressure on the dollar, the spread of devaluation, the initial responses to abandonment of the gold standard in the countries concerned, and the responses of the remaining ‘gold bloc’ countries.
Toward the Tripartite Agreement
Authors: Eichengreen Barry
Published: October 2003

By 1934, it was impossible to ignore the contrast between the persistence of depression in gold standard countries and the acceleration of recovery in the rest of the world; the continued allegiance to gold by several European countries, led by France, has consequently been regarded as an enigma. This chapter shows how domestic politics combined with collective memory of inflationary chaos in the 1920s to sustain resistance to currency depreciation. Indeed, inflation anxiety in the gold bloc was not entirely unfounded, and sometimes it proved self‐fulfilling. When currency depreciation finally came to France in 1936, it was accompanied by inflation and social turmoil, but not by the beneficial effects evident in other countries. Here, as in the rest of the book, historical and political factors, not just economics, bear the burden of explanation.
Perfectionism
Authors: Hurka Thomas
Published: October 2003

Perfectionism is one of the leading moral views of the Western tradition, defended by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Green. Defined broadly, it holds that what is right is whatever most promotes certain objective human goods such as knowledge, achievement, and deep personal relations. Defined more narrowly, it identifies these goods by reference to human nature, so the human good consistsin developing the properties fundamental to human beings. If it is fundamental to humans to be rational (Aristotle), to labor (Marx), or to exercise power (Nietzsche), developing these traits is best. This book tries to formulate the most defensible version of perfectionism using contemporary analytic techniques. It first examines narrow perfectionism, asking what kind of properties human nature consists in (distinctive? essential?); how these properties are identified; and what they are. It then explores issues relevant to both broad and narrow perfectionism, including whether each person should pursue just his own perfection or everyone's; how perfectionist goods are compared and aggregated; and in what particular times they are. On the last topic it develops an “Aristotelian” theory of the value of theoretical and practical rationality, as embodied in beliefs and ends with specified formal properties. The book closes by examining perfectionism's implications for political questions about liberty and equality.
Introduction
Authors: Hurka Thomas
Published: October 2003

Introduces the general idea of perfectionism, especially in the narrow sense, connects it to the history of perfectionist writing, and gives the overall plan of the book.
The Basic Structure
Authors: Hurka Thomas
Published: October 2003

Given some perfectionist values, whether derived from human nature or not, what is the structure of a moral view centered on them? This chapter argues that the most plausible perfectionism is consequentialist, identifying right actions by the quantity of good they result in; tells us to maximize the good rather than satisfice; and is time‐ and agent‐neutral, so we should care equally about perfections at all times and in all lives. That we should pursue others’ perfections as much as our own goes against a common view of narrow perfectionism as egoistic, but is necessary if the view does not make each person's perfection involve acting virtuously toward others. It can also be obscured if people can promote others’ perfection less well than their own and if their perfections often cooperate, so one's achieving them encourages rather than retards others’ doing so.
The Well‐Rounded Life
Authors: Hurka Thomas
Published: October 2003

Discusses how different perfections are compared within a single life. After arguing that physical perfection has less value than theoretical or practical rationality while those are roughly equal in value, it defends a “balancing” view that prefers a well‐rounded achievement of different perfections and, beyond that, of different instances of the same perfection. Its key is the idea, represented on indifference graphs, that the relative value of an extra unit of perfection A as against B depends on the relative extent to which A and B have already been achieved. To the objection that this idea promotes dilettantish mediocrity, the chapter replies that two plausible empirical factors imply that the best practically available lives will usually specialize moderately on one perfection or perfectionist activity. Nonetheless, well‐roundedness remains in principle a perfectionist ideal.
Conclusion
Authors: Hurka Thomas
Published: October 2003

This concluding chapter summarizes the book and wonders whether what is most plausible is a pure perfectionism of the kind the book has described or a pluralist view that gives independent value to pleasure, virtue, and other goods, which the Aristotelian theory does not accommodate.
Crime and Politics
Authors: Gest Ted
Published: October 2003

The crime rate in the US has exploded since 1960. Despite decreases in recent years, reported violence in 2001 exceeded the levels of the late 1970s. Government at all levels has tried to address the crime problem, with mixed success. Police forces that formerly focused on patrol cars’ responding to citizen calls embraced the proactive approach of community policing; courts set up specialized branches, hearing cases relating to narcotics, guns, and domestic violence; criminal sentences sharply increased, filling prisons and jails with more than 2 million people. Yet, crime rates continue to rise and fall, seemingly without regard to government programs. Strikingly, little evidence has been collected about which anticrime activities are truly effective and which are not. Instead, members of Congress and state legislators, who set the tone for the fight against crime, tend to base their actions on what sounds good in political advertisements rather than what has proved to work through scientific experiment. Still, there are a number of promising ideas in law enforcement, juvenile crime, corrections, and other areas that could help prevent crime if they could obtain adequate financial support.
Not Getting Them Young
Authors: Gest Ted
Published: October 2003

Violent crime is committed disproportionately by young men, but government never has conducted a coherent, aggressive campaign against serious juvenile delinquency. The fragmentation has been evident since the late 1960s, when federal authority was divided between health and justice agencies. A 1974 law created a federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to take charge. The law set progressive standards, but the administration of Ronald Reagan tried to kill the agency in the early 1980s and downgraded it after Congress refused to end funding. The Reagan Justice Department did forge an alliance with the MacArthur Foundation to start a long‐term study of juvenile crime's causes. Meanwhile, a steady increase in arrests of juveniles prompted to require that more teen suspects be tried in adult courts, even when studies showed the tactic ineffective in preventing repeat criminality. Congressional Republicans helped enact a large “juvenile accountability” program designed to provide federal aid to programs that got tough on young lawbreakers. Some measures failed on a broad scale, such as ‘boot camps’ aimed at instilling more discipline in delinquents. Despite many promising crime prevention programs, the Congress under Republicans control starting in 1995 generally refused to fund them. Juvenile crime arrests declined sharply since the mid‐1990s, but there was no solid proof of what caused the change, whether government programs, the improved economy, or a lower number of teens in the population.
Drugs: Is the War Winnable?
Authors: Gest Ted
Published: October 2003

The federal government asserted a role in fighting narcotics abuse since the early 20th century, but it was not until the Richard Nixon administration starting in 1969 that a federal “war on drugs” became high profile. Nixon stressed drives against smuggling heroin from counties like Turkey and Mexico. His administration's efforts were marred by raids on erroneous locations by a new federal Office of Drug Law Enforcement. A successor agency called the ‘Drug Enforcement Administration’ jockeyed with the FBI for supremacy in the drug enforcement field. Drug treatment generally had lower priority when it came to funding. A scourge of “crack” cocaine spread in the mid‐1980s, causing Congress to increase penalties for drug abuse in such a way that black people who primarily used crack were punished much more severely than whites who tended to use cocaine's powder form. An effort to coordinate federal antidrug resources better resulted in the establishment of a White House director of drug control policy (“drug czar”) in 1989; the first to hold the position was former education secretary William Bennett. Drug abuse declined in the 1990s, but there was disagreement over the primary cause. Advocates credited a combination of more‐intense law enforcement, better treatment, and establishment of more than 500 “drug courts” that could ride herd on offenders. The numbers of drug abusers were creeping back up by 1999.
Guns Don't Kill?
Authors: Gest Ted
Published: October 2003

Gun control has stirred intense emotions in the war on crime, even though many controls have only a marginal impact on firearms violence. Laws and their enforcement have been influenced most dramatically by assassinations and mass killings rather than by careful study. The first major modern federal gun regulations were approved by Congress in 1968 after the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinations. The National Rifle Association (NRA) worked hard to ease what it considered overly aggressive enforcement, finally succeeding with a 1986 law known as McClure‐Volkmer. The NRA offended many law enforcement leaders in the process. The combination of police support and a federal executive branch and Congress, both controlled by Democrats, helped enact two major gun control measures in 1993 and 1994: the Brady Act, which required a waiting period for handgun purchasers to enable checks of potential buyers’ records, and a ban on assault‐style weapons blamed in the deaths of police officers and others. Yet “copycat” assault weapons were manufactured, blunting the law's impact. Congress failed to enact proposed laws that would require trigger locks on handguns or to regulate gun shows, where firearms were sold with minimal regulation. The NRA argued for more enforcement of existing antigun laws, pointing to a federal program in Richmond, VA, called ‘Project Exile’.
A Cop on Every Corner?
Authors: Gest Ted
Published: October 2003

Before the 1960s crime wave, American police officers were little trained and spent much of their time responding to citizen calls about crime. A Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP) in the 1970s began to upgrade police education. A round of studies questioned the effectiveness of police patrol tactics. Analysts advocated more sophisticated methods, called ‘problem‐oriented policing’ and later the more general ‘community policing.’ New York lawyer Adam Walinsky promoted a concept called the Police Corps that would encourage more college‐educated officers. The reform ideas coalesced in the presidency of Bill Clinton, who successfully argued for federal funding for an additional 100,000 community‐oriented local officers, an idea that Walinsky complained was a watered‐down form of his concept (which still was instituted on a smaller scale). Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno, was initially skeptical of the massive federal program called ‘Community Oriented Policing Services’ (COPS), but she eventually backed it. It was not certain how many officers were hired and permanently funded—it may have been closer to 50,000—but the program did have a significant impact on police hiring in the nation. Less clear was the effect of COPS on the crime rate. The program's supporters asserted success, but other factors like the economy, demographics and alternate policing methods might have been just as important.
Three Strikes : Baseball to Crime
Authors: Gest Ted
Published: October 2003

Much of the increase in crime that hit the US in the 1980s and 1990s was blamed on habitual offenders. For many years, prison wardens and parole boards had decided when most inmates would be released. Legislators came to believe that this system was too lenient and enacted tougher penalties. When even these extended terms behind bars did not seem to work, activists came up with a new formulation, “three strikes and you’re out,” meaning that a third serious crime would bring a life term. Commentator John Carlson started a campaign for such a scheme in Washington State in the 1980s; it was enacted in 1993, the height of modern‐day crime totals. The concept quickly spread in California after the infamous kidnapping and killing of 12‐year‐old Polly Klaas that same year. President Bill Clinton embraced the idea for federal crimes, and at least two dozen states adopted some form of it. Experts disputed how much three strikes or any other tough sentencing laws affected the crime declines of the 1990s. Still, prison building continued at a high rate during the 1990s, with the combined population in prisons and jails approaching 2 million. Critics argued that three strikes and ‘mandatory minimum’ prison term laws were incarcerating far too many low‐level offenders who would end up back on the streets committing more crimes after years of imprisonment with little vocational or educational training. As the costs of running prisons mounted, some policymakers were seriously rethinking the punitive practices of the late 20th century, but no dramatic turnaround was in sight.
Smarter Ways to Fight Crime
Authors: Gest Ted
Published: October 2003

By 2001, the federal government was spending more than $5.3 billion each year to help states and cities combat crime, on top of the many billions allocated locally. In many instances, the money was going to programs that had not been shown to have much effect on crime. Many ideas have been proved worthwhile, however, and deserve more support. They include cohesive community anticrime campaigns, targeted drug treatment, prevention aimed at young people who show crime tendencies, plugging leaks in the criminal justice system, better news media reporting of crime issues, wiser use of the private sector, and dampening the political rhetoric on crime. As crime has become such a political football, relatively little attention has been paid to serious research on the issue compared with the amount devoted to medicine, for example. The danger in the early 21st century was that as crime rates went down, government would downgrade even further its efforts to determine what worked and did not work in the past four decades. That could be a big mistake if crime rates started again to increase, a distinct possibility in view of downturns in the economy and more young people in the population.
De Re et De Dicto
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

I begin the chapter by considering the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto in the works of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, G. E. Moore, and Norman Malcolm. I then consider two similar objections to modality de re brought by William Kneale and W. V. Quine. Both of these objections fail because they depend on a de re/de dicto confusion. Moreover, I formulate a general rule for correlating propositions that express modality de re with propositions that express modality de dicto. The formulation I offer relies heavily on proper names and I conclude by suggesting further routes of inquiry into the connection between proper names and essentialism.
World and Essence
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

I begin the essay by introducing the ideas of states of affairs, possible worlds, and truth in a possible world. Making use of these concepts, I argue that each object not only has some properties essentially but also has an essence. (An essence is a property that an object x has essentially and which is such that it is not possible that there be an object distinct from x that has it.) I then respond to the objection that my account suffers from the Problem of Transworld Identification. I end the essay by giving a sound modal argument for the claim that human persons are essentially immaterial.
De Essentia
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

In this essay, I raise three topics with regards to Roderick Chisholm's account of the idea of an individual essence. First, I give an argument for the claim that objects have more than one essence. Second, I defend the view that someone can know a proposition entailing someone else's essence. Third, I argue that existentialism (a view committed to the claim that a proposition or state of affairs P directly about an object is ontologically dependent upon x in that it is not possible that P exist and x fail to exist) is false. I demonstrate this by pointing out that existentialism's central claim – that the proposition E exists and the object x does not (where E is a state of affairs or proposition which is dependent on x) is impossible – is false; this proposition turns out to be possible after all on the existentialist account of possibility.
Two Concepts of Modality
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

In the first part of this chapter, I sketch out three grades of modal realism. After developing modal realism, I examine David Lewis's modal theory. I argue that Lewis's theory satisfies none of the grades of modal realism, and that it is really a case of modal reductionism. In particular, I demonstrate that Counterpart Theory is a rejection of the view that objects have properties accidentally or essentially. Moreover, I claim that Lewis merely models things such as propositions, possible worlds or state of affairs, and that he, in fact, is an antirealist with regard to such entities.
The Threatened Downfall of Privacy: Judith Jarvis Thomson's “The Right to Privacy” and Skepticism About Privacy
Authors: Inness Julie C.
Published: October 2003

Do we have any reason to believe that the claims assembled under the heading “privacy” are conceptually and morally coherent, or are they simply a jumble of disparate claims and their heterogeneous values, which should be abandoned for the sake of clarity? Privacy skeptics such as Judith Jarvis Thomson hold that the meaning and value accorded to privacy claims are irreducibly heterogeneous since privacy is merely a composite of unrelated elements, such as property rights and interests in self‐ownership. I argue against such privacy skepticism.
Intimacy: The Core of Privacy
Authors: Inness Julie C.
Published: October 2003

Why do we have a privacy interest in making our own decisions about who we kiss or to whom we show our diaries? If these decisions are private because they are intimate, then our new question is clear: what constitutes an intimate decision? In this chapter, I argue that things are intimate when they draw their meaning from someone's love, liking, or care.
Living High and Letting Die
Authors: Unger Peter
Published: October 2003

That our unexamined moral intuitions often lead us to commend conduct that is seriously wrong and to condemn conduct that is not wrong indicates the extent to which these intuitions clash with our Basic Moral Values. The view known as Liberationism, which holds that moral intuitions are often unreflective of basic values, contrasts with the more common view known as Preservationism, which maintains that our moral intuitions accord with our basic moral values. This book explores the inconsistencies in the Preservationist position by highlighting disparities in the responses that our intuitions generate for relevantly similar moral cases. These misleading responses are generated by psychological tendencies, such as projective separating and protophysical thinking, that distort the features of moral problems. In distorting our responses, the Preservationist position allows us to think erroneously that it is not difficult for well‐off people to lead a morally good life in a world in which serious suffering may easily be reduced. In fact, a moral life is extremely costly for well‐off people given how much we efficiently may do to alleviate the distant serious suffering of others.
Living High and Letting Die Reconsidered: On the Costs of a Morally Decent Life
Authors: Unger Peter
Published: October 2003

It is very costly, far more than is usually supposed, for well‐off people to lead a morally decent life in a world in which suffering may easily be prevented. The amount a person must contribute is determined not only by moral truths but also by nonmoral truths about her particular circumstances, financial situation and prospects, and number of dependants as well as truths about the things that a person easily can do in modern society efficiently to lessen serious suffering. These considerations complement a certain kind of reasoning that endorses highly demanding moral dictates. According to one principle of ethical integrity that grounds this reasoning, other things being nearly equal, if it is acceptable to impose some losses on others with the result that it will significantly lessen the serious losses suffered by others overall, then one cannot fail either to impose upon oneself or to accept lesser or equal losses when they have this result. For this reason, from a Liberationist perspective, the conduct of most well‐off Westerners falls far short of what morality requires.
Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Science
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Clarifies these two concepts that figure so prominently not only in discussions of free will but also in theories of scientific explanation. The question of the status of scientific explanation in an indeterministic world arises repeatedly in subsequent chapters of this book. Even if we do not yet have the final word on the truth or falsity of indeterminism, we need to take account of its possibility in framing philosophical theories of scientific explanations. This essay presents the “received philosophical opinion” on determinism, criticized by John Earman as confused and mistaken, and suggests ways to correct the most egregious errors of the received view.
A Third Dogma of Empiricism
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Challenges the widely held thesis that scientific explanations are arguments (the “third dogma”) by posing three questions that seem to raise difficulties for it: (1) Why are irrelevancies harmless to arguments but fatal to explanations? (2) Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? Or, to reformulate essentially the same question, is genuine scientific explanation possible if indeterminism is true? (3) Why should requirements of temporal asymmetry be imposed upon explanations but not upon arguments?

In addition to showing the untenability of the “third dogma,” this chapter signals the development of a causal theory of explanation that will supplement the simple statistical‐relevance (S‐R) model of explanation advocated in earlier works by the author.
Deductivism Visited and Revisited
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Attacks explanatory deductivism, the view that all genuine explanations have the form of a correct deductive argument. The view has strong intuitive appeal to many philosophers. The author offers a defense against the claim that there are no statistical explanations of particular facts. In other words, he shows that statistical explanations of statistical generalizations – in the form that Hempel designated as the deductive–statistical (D‐S) variety – are not the only correct forms of statistical explanation. He exposes a glaring conflict between the deductive–nomological (D‐N) model of explanation and basic causal considerations relevant to explanation.
Causal Propensities
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Argues that indeterministic causality cannot be explicated adequately by means of statistical‐relevance relations alone. Physical considerations are also required. The same point applies to deterministic causality. This essay sets the author's view of causality apart from standard treatments in terms of abstract relations such as necessary condition, sufficient condition, and statistical relevance. These relationships, in and of themselves, do not provide physical – or causal – connections.
Intuitions—Good and Not‐So‐Good
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Confronts conflicting intuitions about the character of probabilistic causality. These intuitions were exposed with the publication of the preceding essay, and the critics’ responses to it. Using several important additional examples, this essay addresses the responses of I.J. Good to the criticisms raised in the preceding chapter. It exhibits complexities that arise when we try to accommodate sophisticated intuitions about probabilistic causality in an explicitly articulated theory.
Causality
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

The original version of this chapter was published long before the author's conversion to a conserved or invariant theory of causality as presented in “Causality and Counterfactuals” (Chapter 16); nevertheless, its fundamental approach is still sound. The basic facts about causal processes and causal forks, about their interrelationships, and about the various types of forks are presented here in some detail. The only difference is that a new criterion for causal processes and interactive forks has subsequently been adopted. The same processes and intersections will be classified as causal under either criterion. This chapter presents a concise but comprehensive picture of the causal structure of the world along the same lines as the author's account in his Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984).
Scientific Explanation
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Contains a brief history of the developments in the philosophy of scientific explanation in the 40 years following the publication in 1948 of Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim's seminal article, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” (reprinted in Aspects of Scientific Explanation, (Hempel , 1965)). Their article, which presents the Deductive–Nomological Model, is the fountainhead from which almost all philosophical work on scientific explanation in the second half of the twentieth century flowed. This essay provides historical insight into philosophical controversies about scientific explanation at the end of the century. These same historical themes are treated more thoroughly in the author's Four Decades of Scientific Explanation (1990).
Scientific Explanation
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

The ontic conception sees a scientific explanation as an exhibition of the ways in which what is to be explained fits into natural patterns or regularities in the world. The classic form of the epistemic conception takes scientific explanations to be arguments; and the modal conception says that a good explanation shows that what did happen had to happen. This chapter originally appeared just prior to the publication of Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World . It contains a highly condensed summary of some of the main discussions, including that of criteria of adequacy, in that book. Whereas Ch. 18 focuses on causal considerations, this chapter focuses on the concept of explanation.
Explanation in Archaeology
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Originally published 15 years after the initial publication of Ch. 21, deals with subsequent developments in the philosophical discussions of scientific explanation that have special relevance to archaeology. In particular, fruitful discussions among philosophers who embrace the unification approach to explanation and those who favor the causal approach, offer useful insights into how to handle functional explanations. Many archaeologists try to avoid functional explanations, although they seem to be crucial to archaeological theory, because of a fear that such explanations are not scientific. The author endorses archaeologists’ search for scientific explanations, and tries to show how they can better pursue that goal if they are not hampered by rigid adherence to older philosophical models of explanation.
Dreams of a Famous Physicist
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: October 2003

Explores in some depth the relationship between physics and philosophy of science. Here the author exposes misconceptions regarding philosophy of science that seem to pervade the attitudes of many physicists. He tries to show that philosophy of science is not the pointless enterprise that one famous physicist, Steven Weinberg, takes it to be. He discusses the anthropic principle, explanations of generalizations, explanatory asymmetry, and the possibility of a final theory. Because his argument depends crucially on explanation in physics, this essay is a fitting conclusion for the entire set of essays in this book.
Heaven and Its Inhabitants
Authors: Walls Jerry L.
Published: October 2003

The basic question addressed here is that of who will be in heaven; this is discussed mainly with respect to the issue of whether the adherents of other (world) religions will be saved. The three main positions that Christian theologians have formulated on the salvation of adherents of other religions are described and assessed from the standpoint of some basic theological claims that an adequate Christian account of other religions must meet; these positions are particularism (also called restrictivism and exclusivism), pluralism, and inclusivism. Before this is done, the author briefly discusses the views of J. A. DiNoia, who has proposed an ingenious way to maintain the unique claims of Christianity while eliminating the element of offence to other religions by stressing their distinct conceptions of salvation. The position is then considered of the salvation of Mohandas (called Mahatma) Gandhi, one of the best‐known saints outside the Christian tradition, who rejected Christianity and remained committed to Hinduism. The chapter ends with a discussion of the salvation of infants and others who die at an age before they have had a chance to exercise faith in Christ or develop good character, and of the salvation of subhuman creatures (animals).
Heaven, Trinity, and Personal Identity
Authors: Walls Jerry L.
Published: October 2003

The discussion in this chapter centers on the particular problems posed for personal identity by the concept of heaven. Particular aspects addressed are the Trinity, the doctrine of resurrection (since the orthodox Christian account of eternal life is in a resurrected body), dualism and monism, duplication (multiple replicas of a given person in the afterlife), personal uniqueness, and continuity of memory.
Truth, Existence, and Ideas
Authors: Vinci Thomas C.
Published: October 2003

There are two main objectives in this chapter: (1) to give a preliminary formal statement of the inference from my ideas to the existence of things outside my ideas in Descartes's epistemology, and (2) to develop the main outlines of Cartesian ontology and the theory of ideas. Key notions discussed are those of truth, possibility, existence, and related notions; representation (the objective reality) of ideas, and formally and eminently contained properties in substances; the ontological status of immutable essences and eternal truths. Among contentions made in this chapter about Cartesian ontology is that (1) essences are contained in the mind not as modes but as quasi‐platonic entities, that (2) there is in Descartes's theory of ideas, a general difference between the objects of ideas and the mode of presentation of the objects that holds even when the objects are essences; and (3) that this difference leads to an epistemic rather than a causal account of the distinction between formal and eminent containment.
Causes, Existence, and Ideas
Authors: Vinci Thomas C.
Published: October 2003

There are two main formulations of a key causal principle in the Cartesian a priori philosophical system: one, present in Meditation III, says that the cause of the representational content (”objective reality”) of an idea must be situated at the same or higher level in ontology than the level at which the object represented is situated (the ”levels formulation”), the other, present in the axioms section of the Second Replies, says that the cause must contain ( formally or eminently) the same property (”reality”) as is represented by the idea (the ”same‐property” formulation). This central chapter defends four main contentions. (1) The same‐property formulation is basic in Descartes's system. (2) The notion of causality in the basic causal principle does not represent a spatio temporally extended natural process but a form of intentional explanation. (3) When point (2) is combined with the interpretation of the rule of truth offered in Ch. 2, the rule of truth and the basic causal principle prove to be equivalent. Finally, (4) in light of (3), there is one main pattern of inference in Cartesian epistemology taking the rule of truth/causal principle as its major premise and underlying all of Descartes arguments from my ideas to the existence of things outside my ideas, including the proof of my own existence (the cogito), the proof of the existence of God in Meditations III and V and the proof of the existence of the external world in Meditation VI and the Principles of Philosophy II,1.
The Sense Experience of Primary Qualities
Authors: Vinci Thomas C.
Published: October 2003

It seems undeniable that we have both sense experience of primary qualities and sense experience of secondary qualities, and yet, based on a text in the Sixth Replies among others, many commentators have thought that Descartes denied precisely this for primary qualities. One of the main burdens of this chapter is to show that Descartes does have an account of the sense experience of primary qualities and that it is to be found in Descartes's account of the faculty of imagination. The chapter argues that a version of the proof of the external world depends on a special class of ideas of this faculty. There are two sides to Descartes's account: (1) the philosophical theory of ideas, including the taxonomy of perceptual responses developed in the Sixth Replies of the Meditations, and (2) the empirical theory in the Optics and the Treatise on Man, and they are both treated in depth here. Finally, the chapter argues that Descartes has an empirical and philosophical account of the phenomenological fusion of primary and secondary qualities, the former accomplished by means of images in the corporeal imagination and the mechanism of referred sensations in The Passions of the Soul.
The Perceptual Representation of Ordinary Objects
Authors: Vinci Thomas C.
Published: October 2003

How can a Cartesian idea represent ordinary physical objects? One possibility is that Descartes holds a theory of natural signs according to which ideas, including sensations (ideas of secondary qualities), represent states of the external world that are correlated with them. I deny that Descartes has a theory of natural signs in this sense, arguing, instead, that our perception of ordinary physical objects is achieved not through ideas, properly speaking, but through a special act of the mind (discussed in The Passions of the Soul I as ”referred sensations”) which projects (”refers”) its sensations onto objects in the external world, objects truly represented by ideas of primary qualities alone. This ”projection” comprises referral judgments that account for the characteristic phenomenology of experience of the physical world but in a way that misleads us (provides ”material for error”) to think that our ideas bear a resemblance to the underlying metaphysical reality of the physical world. Other issues discussed include Descartes's taxonomy of ideas (classification).
The Janus‐Faced Theory of Ideas of the Senses
Authors: Vinci Thomas C.
Published: October 2003

The leading idea of this chapter is that, for Descartes, intellectual ideas make it obvious what metaphysical category the properties they disclose to the mind fall into but not whether they are actually (formally) exemplified; sensations (ideas of secondary qualities) make it obvious whether the properties they disclose to the mind are exemplified but not what their metaphysical category is. This idea is worked out through a discussion of three stages in the development of Descartes's doctrine of the material falsity of sensory ideas, the core concept of his error explanation of the senses. Material falsity is a set of three defects that sensations have in comparison with intellectual ideas, ideas that fully discharge the role, which Descartes assigns to ideas in his philosophical system. The first stage, reflected in Meditation III, identifies material falsity with two defects: nonrepresentation (a failure on the part of sensations to represent any real thing to the mind) and misrepresentation (a capacity of sensations to mislead us into thinking that they represent something real); the second stage, reflected in the Reply to Arnauld (Fourth Replies), identifies material falsity with obscure ideas (a kind of representational indeterminacy regarding metaphysical category); the third stage, reflected in the Principles of Philosophy I, sees the terminology of material falsity disappear and the terminology of clear but not distinct ideas appear. Other topics discussed include a special application of the rule of truth and skepticism.
Introduction
Authors: Weiss Roslyn
Published: October 2003

Socrates' first allegiance is to the dictates of his own reason. The reason he refuses to escape his unjust conviction and punishment is that he believes that to do so would violate his tried and true long‐held moral principles. Socrates is no anarchist, but he will neither obey the law nor be its victim when it conflicts with the requirements and entitlements of morality as he sees them. He will suffer injustice only when the sole alternative to suffering it is to commit it. Socrates' reasons for accepting the penalty of death are reasons of justice; they are thus distinct from those presented by the personified Laws.
Remaining at the Station
Authors: Weiss Roslyn
Published: October 2003

To determine whether the Socrates of the Crito is consistent with the Socrates of the Apology, it is necessary to become acquainted with the Socrates of the Apology. Socrates in the Apology is a man committed first and foremost to justice; in the absence of a moral expert, he does what his reason tells him is most just; his god commands only that one live philosophically and justly; his daimonion is not a supernatural force but a voice activated by Socrates' own uneasiness concerning an impending course of action; Socrates' loyalty to Athens has little to do with any superiority he detects in Athens herself. Socrates believes himself to be just and the charges against him unjust, yet he will not for the sake of survival compromise himself in any way. His proposed counterpenalty signals that he so esteems justice that he will not subject himself to anything he does not deserve, that is, to anything bad. Death, even though unjustly imposed, and even if a bad thing, is preferable to any bad thing that Socrates might impose on himself: death imposed by the city is injustice that Socrates must suffer; any self‐proposed evil is injustice that Socrates commits—against himself.
“Especially an Orator”
Authors: Weiss Roslyn
Published: October 2003

The personified Laws enter the drama when Crito has failed to respond to Socrates' principles, concerns, and arguments—indeed, at the point at which Crito confesses that he does not understand. The Laws are consummate rhetoricians who champion the law that legitimates all judgments rendered by the city. The Laws' perspective on the duties of citizens to obey stands in opposition to Socrates' view: whereas the Laws regard a citizen as obligated to submit to whatever verdict the city issues (since it is to this that a citizen agrees), Socrates' limits the citizen's obligation to obey to correct verdicts (since it is to this alone that a citizen agrees). Socrates is patriotic, brave, and submissive to authority – but only up to the point at which the city demands injustice, whether as something to be committed or as something to be endured.
Restoring the Radical Socrates
Authors: Weiss Roslyn
Published: October 2003

Once Socrates' views are dissociated from the views expressed by the Laws, his radicality is restored. The positions of both the Laws and of Socrates are radical, and they are radically opposed to one another: the Laws demand unconditional obedience; Socrates demands uncompromised justice. The only thing the Laws and Socrates share is their practical conclusion about what is to be done. Insofar as Socrates believes that in the absence of a moral expert, reasoned argument alone must be obeyed, he cannot subscribe to the Laws' insistence that citizens do “whatever we bid.” The Laws demand reverence, submission, and fawning as the proper conduct of citizen toward fatherland; Socrates, by contrast, serves his fatherland insofar as he “awakens, persuades, and reproaches” it (Ap. 30e7).
Morality, Mortality Volume I: Death and Whom to Save From It
Authors: Kamm F. M.
Published: October 2003

Morality, Mortality as a whole deals with certain aspects of ethical theory and with moral problems that arise primarily in contexts involving life‐and‐death decisions. The importance of the theoretical issues is not limited to their relevance to these decisions; however, they are, rather, issues at the heart of basic moral and political theory. This first volume comprises three parts. Part I, Death: From Bad to Worse, has with four chapters, and an appendix, discussing death and why it is bad for the person who dies. Part II, Saving Lives: General Issues, has six chapters, and explores a cluster of moral problems that arise in saving lives. The general question raised is whether we should always, in aiding life, act so as to save the greater number of lives or to produce the greatest amount of good. Part III, Scarce Resources: Theoretical Issues, Specific Recommendations, and Organ Transplants, has five chapters, and deals with the problem of the acquisition and distribution of organs for transplantation. It allows us to apply the theoretical discussion of saving lives and relevant/irrelevant utilities presented in the previous parts. However, the discussion can be understood independently of the first two parts, and the conceptual issues and procedures on which it focuses are relevant to dealing with any scarce resource, including money and time, which are needed to use other plentiful resources. Although the book contains much theoretical and methodological argument, it is firmly grounded in practical ethical issues, and is illustrated throughout by examples.
The Asymmetry Problem: Death and Prenatal Nonexistence
Authors: Kamm F. M.
Published: October 2003

Examines further the question of why death is bad, but also discusses whether death is worse than prenatal non‐existence: the asymmetry thesis. This is Lucretius's question: if we are not much disturbed about our non‐existence before our creation, why are we so disturbed about our non‐existence after death. The answers given to the asymmetry problem by Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Derek Parfit are discussed. Objections to Nagel's and Williams's approach are briefly mentioned, but a fuller consideration is given to Parfit's approach (that we seem to care less about what we have already suffered than what we will suffer), with discussion of both objections and defences to these. The final section of the chapter shows how Parfit's insight can be used to modify Nagel's view about why death is bad in a way that helps to explain why death at least seems worse than prenatal non‐existence; this is designated the Nagel/Parfit proposal — that death is bad because it prevents additional goods of life, and from the perspective within life, it seems worse than prenatal non‐existence because we do not care as much about past as future goods.
Appropriate Attitudes Toward Nonexistence
Authors: Kamm F. M.
Published: October 2003

Considers how one should deal with death, given what makes it bad, and worse than prenatal non‐existence. An evaluation is made of the three main types of factors discussed in Ch. 4 that play a part in our asymmetrical attitude toward death and prenatal non‐existence: the Insult Factor, that death happens to a person who has already existed and undoes him; the Extinction Factor, that death means the possibility of anything significant for the person in the future is over; and the Deprivation Factor, that death deprives the person who dies of significant future goods (the Thomas Nagel/Derek Parfit point). Part of the discussion on the Insult Factor involves looking at the shape of events at the edges of life, as well as within it: incline and decline. This matter is considered further in a brief appendix following this chapter.
Acquisition of Organs
Authors: Kamm F. M.
Published: October 2003

Deals with the problem of the acquisition and distribution of organs for transplantation and allows the application of the foregoing theoretical discussion of saving lives and relevant/irrelevant utilities. As an aid to dealing with categories that are of current concern to the medical community, Ch. 11 starts with a summary of the recommendations of the US Task Force on Organ Transplantation on acquisition and distribution of organs, and discusses and criticizes the total‐brain‐death criterion for death. The next section of the chapter discusses the role of informed consent of the original organ owner and his family in relation to the State in the task of acquiring organs, as well as the moral possibility of sale, trading, and taking of organs. The last section of the chapter considers the morality of more controversial proposals for acquiring organs: ‘donation’ from foetuses, donation from live donors where there is significant risk to the donor, and (the most radical) killing some persons for the sake of acquiring organs for others.
Distribution of Resources: Outcome, Waiting Time, and Money
Authors: Kamm F. M.
Published: October 2003

Continues the discussion of organ distribution for transplantation presented in the last four chapters of Part III of the book. Considers whether and why, when need and urgency are held constant, greater (better) outcome should be given weight in making decisions. An examination is made of various theories in more detail, including that of contractualist moral reasoning as proposed by Thomas Scanlon. Aspects addressed include the substitution of equivalents, counting numbers vs concentrated benefit, worse vs better outcomes, the weight to be given to death, equal rights, and social utility in relation to outcome, and the role of the doctor in relation to consideration of outcome and social policy. Discussions of how much weight to give to waiting time, the role of ability to pay in distribution decisions, and problems in deriving the government's duty to pay complete the chapter.