bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conditional Obligation and Detachment*
Authors: Vorobej Mark I.
Published: June 2016

Suppose that John has a moral obligation to stop smoking given that smoking is dangerous to his health. Suppose further that smoking is dangerous to his health. Does it follow that John has a moral obligation to stop smoking? Although intuition inclines one to answer in the affirmative, recent developments in deontic logic apparently call this inference into question. The issue at hand is whether unconditional obligations aredetachablefrom conditional obligations on the basis of purelyfactualconsiderations. I believe that they are not. In the course of arguing for this position I defend a novel restricted rule of detachment which is constructed out of both factual and normative components.
Intrinsicality and the Conditional
Authors: Jennings R.E.
Published: June 2016

In [3] I argued for a particular kind of semantics for subjunctive conditionals. The arguments were based upon some linguistic considerations of the general character of what we mean when we say such and such. I urged that a semantics for subjunctive conditionals ought to provide a distinct representation of the subjunctive mood of a sentence, and should take seriously the fact that subjunctive conditionals admit distinctions of tense. The envisaged semantics took the subjunctive conditional to be about occasions, and the central problem discussed was, accordingly, how to represent what must count as the same occasion in spite of whatever changes were required to make the antecedent of the conditional true.
Are Singular Causal Explanations Implicit Covering-Law Explanations?
Authors: Woodward James
Published: June 2016

My focus in this essay is on those singular causal explanations which purport to explain the occurrence of some particular event by means of a claim of the following general sort

(1) The occurrence of event (a) caused the occurrence of event (b).

Examples include sentences like (Ex. 1) The short circuit caused the fire’ and (Ex. 2) The impact of the hammer caused the shattering of the glass,’ Many philosophers hold that there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between singular causal explanations and those sentences (call them singular causal sentences) which simply report causal connections. While singular causal sentences are said to typically relate events, and to be extensional, singular causal explanations are held to relate items which are sentential or fact-like in structure and to be non-extensional.1 Singular causal explanations are held on this view to always be explanations of why events or other objects belong to certain kinds or possess certain properties.
Letting Sleeping Truths Lie
Authors: Henberg Marvin
Published: June 2016

Half-truths lie notoriously at the heart of publicly indulged instances of rationalization and excuse-making. Politicians and administrators, for example, explain away failed policies or even overt malfeasance by snatching at some particle of truth, some ostensibly saving grace. A halftruth articulated – the nominal truth – covers what I shall henceforth refer to as a sleeping truth – a truth that can lie in both senses of the word. We let a sleeping truth lie undisturbed, without proper examination or scrutiny, and sometimes we let it lie (prevaricate) in the matter of helping underwrite a deception: the policy or malfeasance was not, after all, that bad. Even when we discern the sleeping truth, we let the halftruth stand, because the one proffering it is like us – fallibly human, pressed for time perhaps or an unfortunate victim of circumstance. Sometimes the effort of calling a spade a spade may be forgone simply because there is not enough morally at stake.
Aristotle's Investigation of a Basic Logical Principle: Which Science Investigates The Principle of Non-Contradiction?
Authors: Code Alan
Published: June 2016

Aristotle shares with Plato the attitude that the world, ‘the all,’ is a kosmos, a well-ordered and beautiful whole which, as such, can be rendered intelligible, or understood, by the intellect. One understands things, generally speaking, by tracing them back to their sources, origins or principles (ἀρχαί) and causes or explanatory factors (αἰτίαι), and seeing in what manner they are related to these principles. We know, or understand, a thing when we grasp ‘the why’ or cause. Consequently, understanding is systematic. Some things we understand through themselves - these are the first principles and as such are not understood by tracing them back to causes. (The first causes have no causes.) We understand other things by systematically relating them in appropriate ways to what is known through itself. These other things are known through, or by means of, their causes and principles.
Humes Academic Scepticism: A Reappraisal of His Philosophy of Human Understanding
Authors: Wright John P.
Published: June 2016

A philosopher once wrote the following words:

If I examine the PTOLOMAIC and COPERNICAN systems, I endeavour only, by my enquiries, to know the real situation of the planets; that is, in other words, I endeavour to give them, in my conception, the same relations, that they bear towards each other in the heavens. To this operation of the mind, therefore, there seems to be always a real, though often an unknown standard, in the nature of things; nor is truth or falsehood variable by the various apprehensions of mankind. Though all human race should for ever conclude, that the sun moves, and the earth remains at rest, the sun stirs not an inch from his place for all these reasonings; and such conclusions are eternally false and erroneous.
Pascalian Wagering
Authors: Morris Thomas V.
Published: June 2016

‘Either God is or he is not.’ But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance, a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong.

In this vivid and memorable passage, Blaise Pascal began to develop the famous argument which has come to be known as ‘Pascal's Wager.’ The Wager is widely regarded as an argument for the rationality of belief in God which completely circumvents all considerations of proof or evidence that there is a God.
The Function of Epistemic Justification
Authors: Adams Frederick
Published: June 2016

There is a venerable and thoroughly entrenched tradition of regarding epistemic justification as playing an essential cognitive role in the acquisition, maintenance, or even loss of knowledge. Hold fixed that p is true and that S believes that p. Given this, whether S comes to know that p, still knows that p, or no longer knows that p essentially depends upon whether S has acquired, sustained, or lost justification for believing that p. I shall call any theory which regards epistemic justification as playing this essential epistemological function in cognition a Jn-theory. To simplify, we will say that a Jn-theorist is one who holds that - when the truth of p is held constant and S's belief that p is held constant - S's knowledge that p varies directly with the victory of S's justification and indirectly with its defeat.
Justified Belief and Internal Acceptability
Authors: Walker Arthur F.
Published: June 2016

Certain examples involving negatively relevant evidence (hereafter, nre) are trouble for reliabilists, since they show that reliability is not sufficient for justification. Two approaches for dealing with these examples within the reliabilist framework have been taken. Neither approach, however, can account for all cases involving nre. This I will argue. I will explain the two approaches briefly, then describe a counter example which calls for a difference approach. To handle the case I describe, one needs torequire that the agent's belief be ‘internally acceptable’ as well as reliable.

Many examples show that reliability is insufficient. Consider a modification of an example by Goldman, which he used to make a different point. Driving through the country, Andy looks to the right, sees a barn, and comes to believe that the object he sees is a barn. His belief, however, is not justified because he possesses nre, viz., his false, but justified, belief that the majority of bam-like objects in the area are barn facsimiles which, under the present visual circumstances, are almost indistinguishable from real barns.
Relatively Speaking: The Coherence of Anti-Realist Relativism
Authors: Young James O.
Published: June 2016

The current debate between realists and anti-realists has brought to the fore some ancient questions about the coherence of relativism. Realism is the doctrine according to which the truth of sentences is determined by the way things really are. Truth is thus the result of a relation between sentences and reality. One species of anti-realism holds, on the contrary, the truth results from a relation between sentences within a theory: a sentence is true if warranted by a correct theory.
‘The Divine Sign Did Not Oppose Me’: A Problem in Plato's Apology
Authors: Brickhouse Thomas C. , Smith Nicholas D.
Published: June 2016

After he has been condemned to death, Socrates spends a few minutes talking to the jurors before he is taken away. First, he rebukes those who voted against him for resorting to using the court to kill him when they could have waited and let nature do the same job very soon anyhow, for Socrates is an old man (38C). He next contrasts the evils to which his accusers have resorted to his own unbending resolve never to resort to shameful actions, even though in this case such things might have saved his life (38D-39B; cf. 348-350). Then he prophesies to those jurors that younger men will make their lives far more difficult than ever Socrates did, and thus strips from them any notion they may have had that they gained anything by condemning him.
Possible Worlds and Annstrong's Combinatorialism
Authors: Kim Jaegwon
Published: June 2016

At the outset of his instructive and thought-provoking paper, ‘The Nature of Possibility,’ Professor David Armstrong gives a succinct description, in itself almost complete, of his ‘combinatorial theory’ of possibility. He says: ‘Such a view traces the very idea of possibility to the idea of the combinations - allthe combinations which respect certain simple form- of given, actual elements’ (575). We can perhaps start a bit further back than this. In explaining the idea of a ‘possible world,’ some philosophers begin with the idea of ‘things being a certain way’ or ‘the way things are.’ From this idea a leap is made to ‘things might have been a certain other way’ or ‘ways things could have been.’ And here we already have possible worlds, or so some philosophers assure us: David Lewis, for example, says his talk of possible worlds is nothing but a ‘permissible paraphrase’ of this familiar and innocent-sounding locution, ‘ways things could have been.'
Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?
Authors: Carlson Allen
Published: June 2016

In this discussion I consider one aesthetic issue which arises from certain intimate relationships between art and nature. The background to these relationships can be traced to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It includes factors of considerable importance in the history of the aesthetic appreciation of nature such as the eighteenth century infatuation with landscape gardening and the continuingly influential role of landscape painting. Here, however, I concentrate on these relationships only as exemplified in a contemporary phenomenon – environmental art. By environmental art I mean both the earthworks and earthmarks of artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, and Dennis Oppenheim and certain structures on the land such as those of Robert Morris, Michael Singer, and Christo. Some paradigm cases are Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970), Heizer's Double Negative (1969-70), Singer's Lily Pond Ritual Series (1975), and Christo's Running Fence (1972-76).
Davidson's Theory of Propositional Attitudes
Authors: Feldman Richard
Published: June 2016

One commonly stated reason for thinking that there are abstract entities such as propositions is that they are needed to account for undeniable facts about propositional attitudes and the sentences reporting such attitudes. According to the propositional theory, belief, doubt, assertion and other attitudes are relations between individuals and propositions. In sentences reporting these relations the words in the content-sentence (e.g., ‘p’ in sentences of the form ‘S said that p’) refer to concepts or other abstract things and the entire ‘that-clause’ refers to a proposition. According to a common rival account, propositional attitudes are complex relations between individuals and sentences and each that-clause refers to the content-sentence it contains. The words in the content-sentence either fail to refer or refer to themselves. A striking implication of both the propositional theory and the sentential theory is that the words and phrases in the content-sentence of a sentence expressing a propositional attitude fail to refer to the familiar things to which they ordinarily refer.
From Logic to Liberty: Theories of Knowledge in Two Works of John Stuart Mill
Authors: Jacobs Struan
Published: June 2016

This paper is designed to reinterpret and clarify John Stuart Mill's ideas on science. Past discussions of these ideas strike me as unsatisfactory in two crucial respects. In the first place they have encouraged us to regard Mill's principal work on epistemology, A System of Logic, as fundamentally inductivist This is the received interpretation of Mill's Logic and one finds it summarized and affirmed in the remark of Laurens Laudan that 'by and large' Mill was 'a rather orthodox inductivist who saw science as the generalisation of observation and who argued that all scientific ideas (including those of mathematics) come directly from experience.
Marx's Realms of 'Freedom' and 'Necessity'
Authors: Klagge James C.
Published: June 2016

In 1844 Marx held that labor alienation was wholly eliminable, primarily through the abolition of private property . Work in the context of private property was alienating because it was performed for wages and the production of exchange-value. With such purposes, work was experienced as selfish and forced. With the abolition of private property, work would be performed for the production of use-¥alue, to satisfy human needs. With this human purpose, work would be experienced as a free and fulfilling expression of life.
On Philips and Racism
Authors: Richter Reed
Published: June 2016

Michael Philips’ ‘Racist Acts and Racist Humor’ attempts to analyze the ethics of racism. At the heart of his discussion is the view that

… “racist” is used in its logically primary sense when it is attributed to actions. All other uses of “racist” … must be understood directly or indirectly in relation to this one. Accordingly, racist beliefs are (roughly) beliefs about an ethnic group used to “justify” racist acts, racist feelings are feelings about an ethnic group that typically give rise to such acts, and racist epithets are the stings and arrows by means of which certain such acts are carried out. Books and films are said to be racist … if they perpetuate and stimulate racist beliefs or feelings (which are in tum understood in relation to racist acts). (77)
Linguistic Choice and Moral Choice: A Reply to Richter
Authors: Philips Michael
Published: June 2016

Richter begins with a set of counter examples to a position that he acknowledges is not important to me. He goes on to produce counter examples to a position I do not hold. And he concludes by imputing a project to me that I nowhere endorse and by ridiculing that project. Part of his confusion is my fault since what I have done is not entirely consistent with what I claimed to have done. So let me try to clarify and to develop what I take to be valuable in my paper.

To begin with, it was not my main intent to offer an account of the ordinary use of the term ‘racist’ (although Richter admits this, he goes on for several pages as if he were ignorant of it). Indeed, for reasons that will be dear presently, I now think that the attempt to provide such an account is misguided. Whether I have offered an account of what Richter calls a ‘central use’ depends on what he means by ‘central use.’ Judging from his proposed counter examples, he seems to hold (roughly) that whatever satisfies the definition of a central use of some expression ‘e’ will be acknowledged by all competent speakers as a case of e.In this sense of ‘central use’ I have not offered an account of a central use of ‘racist’ either. What, then, have I done?
Who Can Endeavour Peace?
Authors: O'Neill Onora
Published: June 2016

It is even possible to write philosophically on ethics and nuclear issues? In spite of the growing literature which seeks to apply ethical reasoning to nuclear issues doubts run deep here. They reflect more than hesitation between consequentialist and action-based conceptions of ethical reasoning, or over paradoxes of deterrence that can be generated by mixing these. We may even doubt whether nuclear arms and dangers either can or should be treated as ‘problems’ for ethical analysis. Won't methods that pass muster for diagnosing and discussing lesser, more local crises fail here, distract from other (perhaps more ‘realistic’) responses, and even risk further dangers? Perhaps philosophical inquiry is not only irrelevant, because it cannot help solve nuclear ‘problems,’ but also impossible because we cannot convincingly identify the deepest ethical difficulties, the real constraints on their solution, or the most promising agents of change.
The Morality of Deterrence
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: June 2016

One of the most outstanding characteristics of human beings is their adaptability. As we readily learn to take new conditions of life for granted, so we have learned to live with the bomb. For nearly forty years we have lived in the shadow of possible cataclysmic disaster brought about by human action; and we treat this unprecedented danger simply as a background, on which we focus only occasionally, to the common business of living. What else is possible, save persistent hysteria? But, as part of a mechanism for avoiding hysteria, we are in danger of rendering the topic unreal to ourselves even when we are explicitly considering it, by treating it as an abstract question. We use the concepts of first strike, retaliation, megadeaths, and so forth, which we apply in just the spirit of those discussing strategy for a board game, while averting our minds from what it is that we are actually talking about. Indeed, if our concern is purely strategic, this does no harm, since the question then involves something isomorphic to a problem in a conceivable board game.
Weapons Research and the Form of Scientific Knowledge
Authors: Hacking Ian
Published: June 2016

From time immemorial all weapons have been a product of human knowledge. Today the relationship is reciprocal. A great deal of the new knowledge being created at this moment is a product of weaponry. The transition occurred in World War ll, and, in the West, was institutionalized by the new ways of funding research and development put in place in 1945-47 in the U.S.A.

Presumably this makes some difference to what we find out. Brains and equipment are dedicated to the production of knowledge and technologies useful in time of war. Our Physical Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, Biological Abstracts, Indexus Medicus — our repositories of references to new knowledge — would look very different if we had different research priorities. That means that the content of our new knowledge is much influenced by the choice of where to deploy the best minds of our generation.
Kripke’s Puzzle and Belief ‘Under’ a Name
Authors: McMichael Alan
Published: June 2016

Recently Saul Kripke has drawn attention to a puzzle about belief and proper names, a puzzle of which philosophers have been aware for a long time, but which has never been completely resolved. Kripke gives a new, bilingual illustration of the puzzle:1 Pierre, while living in his native France, learns much about the city of London, which he calls ‘Londres,’ and comes to believe something which he would express in French with the words, ‘Londres est jolie.’ Using standard principle of translation, it seems correct for us to say, ‘Pierre believes that London is pretty.’ Suppose however that Pierre learns English, travels to London, learns that the name of the city he is in is ‘London,’ and sincerely and comprehendingly asserts, ‘London is not pretty.’ On the basis of his assertion, it seems correct for us to say, ‘Pierre believes that London is not pretty.’ But suppose he does not realize that ‘Londres’ is also a name for the city he is in, so he retains the belief which he would express with the French words, ‘Londres est jolie.’ Then, by the same principles of translation as before, it seems that we are still justified in saying, ‘Pierre believes that London is pretty.’ But now we have attributed to Pierre contradictory beliefs, and that does not seem acceptable, since Pierre has committed no logical oversight.

Kripke believes that this is the same puzzle as one that arises in older, monolingual examples, such as that used by Quine: suppose Tom believes that Cicero denounced Cataline. Since ‘Tully’ is another name for Cicero, it seems acceptable to paraphrase his belief and say, ‘Tom believes that Tully denounced Cataline.’ But suppose Tom does not realize that Cicero and Tully are the same person, and suppose, in fact, that he sincerely and comprehendingly asserts, ‘Tully did not denounce Cataline.’ Then it also seems acceptable to say, on the basis of Tom’s assertion, ‘Tom believes that Tully did not denounce Cataline.’ But now we have attributed to Tom contradictory beliefs, and, as in the Pierre example, that does not seem acceptable.
A Non-test for Ambiguity
Authors: Zwicky Arnold M. , Sadock Jerrold M.
Published: June 2016

In a recent article in this journal, Roberts (1984) suggests a semantic method for distinguishing ambiguity and generality, a method which is intended to avoid the problems that others such as Zwicky and Sadock (1975), Hintikka (1973), and McCawley (1980) have found in making such a decision. Roberts claims that his test derives its validity from the observation that an ambiguous expression has a disjunction of meanings, whereas a general expression has but one meaning (which might be disjunctive).
Intuitions and Ambiguity Tests
Authors: Roberts Lawrence D.
Published: June 2016

Arnold Zwicky and Jerrold Sadock (1987) object to my test for distinguishing ambiguity from generality (unspecifiedness) by offering a counterexample and general criticisms about the use of intuitions in the test. Though I disagree with their criticisms, their paper has helped me to become aware of the unclarity of my earlier paper in regard to generality.
Death, and Life
Authors: Grover Dorothy L.
Published: June 2016

Most of us, were we faced with a life threatening situation, would try to avoid it; we do not want to die. Yet Lucretius has argued that death can be ‘nothing to us,’ for when death has occurred we don't exist: we can't suffer something if we don't exist.

If death can be a misfortune, what is the misfortune suffered, and who suffers it? The misfortune must be suffered by the person who dies, before death has occurred, otherwise – as Lucretius points out – there is no subject to suffer the misfortune. But what kind of misfortune can the misfortune of death be, that a person can suffer it before he or she dies? This question provides the focus of the paper.

Our attitudes towards death and life are determined in part by beliefs we have about a variety of things, for example, whether or not there is a life after death. As I shall assume that life ceases at death the attitudes towards death for which I seek explanations will not be universally endorsed; nor are the attitudes towards life, in terms of which the explanations will be given, universally endorsed. My project is not to defend a set of attitudes but to show that the set of attitudes towards life that I consider provide an explanation of a set of attitudes that some people have towards death.
Why Potentiality Matters
Authors: Stone Jim
Published: June 2016

Do fetuses have a right to life in virtue of the fact that they are potential adult human beings? I take the claim that the fetus is a potential adult human being to come to this: if the fetus grows normally there will be an adult human animal that was once the fetus. Does this fact ground a claim to our care and protection? A great deal hangs on the answer to this question. The actual mental and physical capacities of a human fetus are inferior to those of adult creatures generally thought to lack a serious right to life (e.g., adult chickens), and the mere fact that a fetus belongs to our species in particular seems morally irrelevant. Consequently, a strong fetal claim to protection rises or falls with the appeal to the fetus's potentiality, for nothing else can justify it.
Hobbes's Dagger in the Heart
Authors: Jolley Nicholas
Published: June 2016

Richard Cumberland, the Anglican divine, concludes his anti-Hobbesian work, Treatise of the Laws of Nature, with the following remarkable observation: ‘Hobbes, whilst he pretends with one hand to bestow gifts upon princes, does with the other treacherously strike a dagger to their hearts.’ This remark sums up a dominant theme of seventeenth-century reactions to Hobbes's political theory; a host of similar complaints could be marshalled from among the ranks of secondary figures such as Clarendon, Filmer and Pufendorf. Today, however, Cumberland's criticism has a relatively unfamiliar ring. Following the lead famously given by John Locke, we are much more likely to be impressed by the totalitarian features of Hobbes's political philosophy than by its subversive character. To preclude initial objections, there is of course a relatively uncontroversial sense in which Hobbes's thought is subversive; in metaphysics, ethics and theology Hobbes's daggers are deliberately aimed at the hearts of the Schoolmen and the Puritans. But Cumberland's concern in the quotation is with Hobbes's theory of sovereignty: the thrust of his criticism is that the theory is top-heavy, and this issue has not received much attention in recent years. One notable exception is David Gauthier who writes that ‘from unlimited individualism only anarchy follows. The theory is a failure.’ Gauthier, however, argues tht Hobbes's presentation of his theory in Leviathan marks a major advance over the earlier De Cive, and if our criterion of success is the strength of the sovereign's position, then this claim seems highly suspect. In the first part of this paper I shall argue that the sovereign of Leviathan is a more vulnerable figure than the sovereign of the earlier De Cive. In the second part of the paper I take up the problem posed by military service for a Hobbesian theory of political obligation. Employing a distinction between act- and rule-prudentialism, I shall argue that here again the position of Leviathan is in some ways less satisfactory than that of the earlier works.
Contra Buridanum
Authors: Hazen Allen
Published: June 2016

The French philosopher Jean Buridan's work on the logical paradoxes is currently attracting more attention than it has for several centuries. In part this is due to a general resurgence of interest in the paradoxes, but the immediate occasion is the recent publication of G. E. Hughes's edition, translation, and commentary on the chapter of Buridan's Sophismata most immediately concerned with the paradoxes. (This despite the fact that an English version of the whole of the Sophismata cheaper than even the paper back edition of Hughes's has been available for some years, as has an excellent account of Buridan's theory by A. N. Prior.) It is worth noting, therefore, that Buridan's theory fails, and in a way that makes it seem unlikely that it can be developed into a serious rival of more modern theories.
The Need for More than Justice
Authors: Baier Annette C.
Published: June 2016

In recent decades in North American social and moral philosophy, alongside the development and discussion of widely influential theories of justice, taken as Rawls takes it as the ‘first virtue of social institutions,’ there has been a counter-movement gathering strength, one coming from some interesting sources. For some of the most outspoken of the diverse group who have in a variety of ways been challenging the assumed supremacy of justice among the moral and social virtues are members of those sections of society whom one might have expected to be especially aware of the supreme importance of justice, namely blacks and women. Those who have only recently won recognition of their equal rights, who have only recently seen the correction or partial correction of long-standing racist and sexist injustices to their race and sex, are among the philosophers now suggesting that justice is only one virtue among many, and one that may need the presence of the others in order to deliver its own undenied value. Among these philosophers of the philosophical counterculture, as it were - but an increasingly large counterculture - I include Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Stocker, Lawrence Blum, Michael Slote, Laurence Thomas, Claudia Card, Alison Jaggar, Susan Wolf and a whole group of men and women, myself included, who have been influenced by the writings of Harvard educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, whose book In a Different Voice (Harvard 1982; hereafter D.V.) caused a considerable stir both in the popular press and, more slowly, in the philosophical journals.
Moral Sanity or ‘Who Killed Boy Staunton’
Authors: Burns Steven
Published: June 2016

Kathryn Morgan’s paper, ‘Women and Moral Madness,’ is a rich compound of example and analysis, which deserves to be influential in moral theory. My rejoinder can be understood as having one main point. I take her analysis of moral madness to be profoundly helpful, and I claim that it implies an understanding of the human person which can be made more precise if we also pay attention to moral sanity. My paper, then, accepts Morgan’s work as fundamental, and attempts to contribute to its further development. I begin with some preliminary observations before proposing my main idea. My subtitle identifies an example which illustrates the main point, and concludes the paper.
Rescuing Womanly Virtues: Some Dangers of Moral Reclamation
Authors: Houston Barbara
Published: June 2016

Kathryn Morgan has introduced us to a typology of ‘the ways in which women’s moral voice and her sense of moral integrity are twisted and destroyed by patriarchal ideology and lived experience.’ She claims that this experience can induce in women ‘a sense of confusion and genuine moral madness.’

I am in agreement with much of what Morgan says. However, I suspect that some others might find her case less convincing than I for the reason that she supports her claims by an appeal to classical philosophical literature and what we might loosely call ‘sociological observations.’ One can imagine the easy retort—‘Yes, well, it’s true that Aristotle, Aquinas, Rousseau and Kant did say those silly things about women, but their remarks were mere asides and no one takes them seriously in this matter any more anyway.
Feminist Ethics and In Vitro Fertilization
Authors: Sherwin Susan
Published: June 2016

New technology in human reproduction has provoked wide ranging arguments about the desirability and moral justifiability of many of these efforts. Authors of biomedical ethics have ventured into the field to offer the insight of moral theory to these complex moral problems of contemporary life. I believe, however, that the moral theories most widely endorsed today are problematic and that a new approach to ethics is necessary if we are to address the concerns and perspectives identified by feminist theorists in our considerations of such topics. Hence, I propose to look at one particular technique in the growing repertoire of new reproductive technologies, in vitro fertilization (IVF), in order to consider the insight which the mainstream approaches to moral theory have offered to this debate, and to see the difference made by a feminist approach to ethics.
Only Connect: The Place of Self-Knowledge in Ethics
Authors: Mullett Sheila
Published: June 2016

Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

(E.M.Forster)

How important is self-knowledge in moral life? What kind of self-knowledge, if any, is necessary for full moral agency? What kinds of self-knowledge are there? What is ‘full moral agency’? Despite the great proliferation of theories about the self in psychology in this century, questions like these have not been addressed very often in recent literature on ethics in the Anglo-American tradition. And, although in 1958 Anscombe recommended that we stop doing moral philosophy altogether until we have a better moral psychology, the main response to this suggestion has been a renewed interest in the virtues. Another approach to these problems can be found in feminist ethics, with its interest in caring relations. In this paper I shall describe a few of the connections between caring and self-knowledge. I shall then compare the insights generated by this approach with the views of two authors, who work from radically opposed frameworks, Richard Brandt and Charles Taylor. Both have produced interesting, but completely different descriptions of self-knowledge and its place in moral life.
A Feminist Aspect Theory of the Self
Authors: Ferguson Ann
Published: June 2016

The contemporary Women’s Movement has generated major new theories of the social construction of gender and male power. The feminist attack on the masculinist assumptions of cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and most of the other academic disciplines has raised questions about some basic assumptions of those fields. For example, feminist economists have questioned the public/private split of much of mainstream economics, that ignores the social necessity of women’s unpaid housework and childcare. Feminist psychologists have challenged cognitive and psychoanalytic categories of human moral and gender development arguing that they are biased toward the development of male children rather than female children. Feminist anthropologists have argued that sex/gender systems, based on the male exchange of women in marriage, have socially produced gender differences in sexuality and parenting skills which have perpetuated different historical and cultural forms of male dominance. Feminist philosophers and theorists have suggested that we must reject the idea of a gender-free epistemological standpoint from which to understand the world. Finally radical feminists have argued that the liberal state permits a pornography industry that sexually objectifies women, thus legitimizing male violence against women.
Decision
Authors: McCall Storrs
Published: June 2016

We all make decisions, sometimes dozens in the course of a day. This paper is about what is involved in this activity. It's my contention that the ability to deliberate, to weigh different courses of action, and then to decide on one of them, is a distinctively human activity, or at least an activity which sets man and the higher animals apart from other creatures. It is as muchdecisioasratiothat constitutes the distinguishing mark of human beings. Homo may not always berationalis, but he is always decidens.

The paper is about practical decision, although there is also another important kind of decision that I won't discuss, namelycognitivedecision. The difference is roughly that which distinguishes the function of a jury from that of a judge, at least in jury trials. The jury's job is to arrive at an answer to the question: guilty or not guilty? This is a cognitive decision, a decision that, on the basis of the evidence, such-and-such is the case. The judge, apprized of the jury's cognitive decision, makes the practical decision to sentence the guilty party to 20 years. On some other occasion, I hope to be able to say something about cognitive decision, as well as about a third kind of decision namedvaluedecision.
Necessity and Deliberation: An Argument from De Interpretatione 9
Authors: Broadie Sarah Waterlow
Published: June 2016

In De Interpretatione 9 Aristotle considers the proposition that everything that is or comes to be, is or comes to be of necessity. From the supposition that this is so, he draws the following consequence: ‘[In that case] there would be no need (ού δέοο) to deliberate or take trouble, [saying] that if we do this there will be so and so, and if we do not do this there will not be so and so’ (18b31-3). Finding this result absurd, he rejects the supposition and concludes that some events or states of affairs are contingent.
Ordinary Ability and Free Action
Authors: Benson Paul
Published: June 2016

We can understand much, perhaps most, of our thinking and speaking about persons’ powers, capabilities, capacities, skills, and competences to act as employing a particular concept of ability. This concept is so pervasive in discourse about these matters that it is appropriately called the ordinary notion of ability. However, the pervasiveness of this concept does not mean that we clearly comprehend its content or readily distinguish it from the many other senses of ability with which we can be concerned.

The ordinary notion of ability is properly distinguished by two features. First, one's performing an action intentionally at a certain time is sufficient for one's having the ordinary ability at that time to perform that action. The ordinary ability to do something is an ability to do it intentionally.
On the Use of Strict Liability in the Criminal Law
Authors: Sistare Christine T.
Published: June 2016

A highly controversial issue in criminal law theory has been the use of strict liability offenses, i.e., offenses which create liability ‘without fault.’ The collection of strict liability offenses is varied according to the element of the particular offense with respect to which liability is strict. For example, a statute prohibiting the filing of a false financial statement with the Secretary of State might impose liability despite a reasonable error as to the truth of the statement, or as to the financial nature of the statement, or as to the identity of the official in question. What all strict liability offenses have in common is the imposition of liability despite the possibility of reasonable mistake or due care regarding some important element of the offense. Generally, then, a strict liability offense is one to which a claim of no-negligence is not a defense. Indeed, such a claim will not even be heard. All that the prosecution need prove is the voluntary commission of the proscribed acts by the defendant; no other question concerning the defendant's efforts or opportunity to obey the law is relevant to liability or conviction.
Leibnizian Relationalism and the Problem of Inertia
Authors: Lariviere Barbara
Published: June 2016

I consider the contrast between Leibniz's relational concept of spacetime and Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. I suggest that there are two interpretations of Leibniz's view, which I call L1 and L2. L1 amounts to saying that there is no real inertial structure to spacetime, whereas in general relativity the inertial structure is dynamical or real in Lande's sense (see Popper, 46); i.e., it can be ‘kicked’ and ‘kicks back,’ causing gravitational effects. If there is no real inertial structure to space-time then, as Weyl points out (Weyl, 105), the concept of the relative motive of several bodies has no more foundation than the concept of absolute motion for a single body. Thus, L1 seems to be untenable. L2 is a more sophisticated view which rejects the geometrical aspect of Newtonian space-time as a container for events, but accepts the existence of a real structure which determines the inertial properties of matter.
A Liberal Theory of the Good?
Authors: Neal Patrick
Published: June 2016

One argument often made in support of liberal political morality is that liberalism, both as a theory and as a practice, is neutral in regard to the question of the good life. In this essay, I shall criticize and reject this argument. Now this conclusion is anything but novel; one would have almost as much difficulty finding a critic, of whatever perspective, granting that liberalism is indeed neutral with regard to the good as one would have finding a liberal denying it. It is this phenomenon that I find especially interesting, and which serves to set the context of my discussion. If, as I aim to show, it is a relatively straightforward path of argument which leads to the conclusion that liberalism is not neutral with regard to the question of the good life, then why do so many liberals remain convinced that it is? Why, when liberals and their critics debate the issue of neutrality, do they so often seem to talk beyond one another? It seems to me that instances of these debates ought to come off better than they do, and so I shall attempt here to describe how they might.
Predication and Ontology
Authors: Lambert Karel
Published: June 2016

It is an historical fact that one of Russell's greatest philosophical contributions was to highlight the role that premises about logical form play in ontological arguments. A pair of quotations will introduce his point that great metaphysical systems are often not only based on, but are debased by, the belief that certain statements of philosophical discourse are logically subject-predicate in form.

Speaking of Hegel's Absolute Idealism, Russell wrote in Our Knowledge of The Extemal World:

Mr. Bradley has worked out a theory according to which, in all judgment, we are ascribing a predicate to Reality as a whole; and this theory is derived from Hegel. Now the traditional logic holds that every proposition ascribes a predicate to a subject, and from this it easily follows that there can be only one subject, the Absolute, for if there were two, the proposition that there were two would not ascribe a predicate to either. Thus Hegel's doctrine, that philosophical propositions must be of the form, “the Absolute is such and such,” depends on the traditional belief in the universality of the subject-predicate form. This belief, being traditionaL scarcely self-conscious, and not supposed to be important, operates underground, and is assumed in arguments which, like the refutation of relations, appear at first sight to e;tablish its truth.
Metaphor and Davidsonian Theories of Meaning
Authors: Farrell Frank B.
Published: June 2016

It was a bad day. First I presented my idea about a Central America protest to the faculty committee, but the committee played ping-pong with the idea until it was crushed. Then I met Robinson, who has somehow been able to present his theory of action in a serious journal. But the theory is a house of cards, and once his critics rattle the table a bit, the theory will come crashing down. And his book on the history of philosophy, just published, is a cheap TV dinner. He does not understand how to study the history of thought. It is necessary to dig into hidden layers of thought, to uncover earlier strata, to map the subterranean patterns, and then to explain why upheavals take place when they do.

The above paragraph contains a number of metaphorical sentences. Now all of the following are, I believe, facts about, or relevant to, those sentences. They can be true or false, and our behavior towards them shows that we take them as candidates for truth. I will be expected to offer evidence in support of their truth, and Robinson's supporters on the faculty, if they hear me state the sentences about him, will accuse me of having made false claims. It is generally clear, in regard to the metaphorical sentences under consideration, what would count as evidence for them and against them.
Donagan On The Sins Of Consequentialism
Authors: Kagan Shelly
Published: June 2016

Most intuitively forceful criticisms of utilitarianism, I believe, reduce to two basic objections. Both arise from the relentlessness of the utilitarian injunction to promote the overall good. On the one hand, this means that agents are permitted to perform an act of any kind whatsoever–provided only that the consequences of that act are better than those of any alternative. In particular, this means that it is permissible to impose tremendous sacrifices or injuries upon someone, if this is the only way to ensure even greater gains for others. But in allowing agents to deliberately impose harm on someone for the sake of others, utilitarianism seems to permit acts which are morally unacceptable. Intuitively, we want to say that rights, or other moral prohibitions, forbid treating people in certain ways–ways allowed by utilitarianism. This, then, is the first major objection: utilitarianism permits too much.
Supervenience and Reduction in Biological Hierarchies
Authors: Collier John
Published: June 2016

Supervenience is a relationship which has been used recently to explain the physical determination of biological phenomena despite resistance to reduction (Rosenberg, 1978, 1985; Sober, 1984a). Supervenience, however, is plagued by ambiguities which weaken its explanatory value and obscure some interesting aspects of reduction in biology. Although I suspect that similar considerations affect the use of supervenience in ethics and the philosophy of mind, I don’t intend anything I have to say here to apply outside of the physical and biological cases I consider.

The main point of this paper is that there is a property of biological systems which makes it both misleading and inappropriate to reduce central biological phenomena to the properties of underlying components. Despite this, reductive explanation has been a major source of innovation in biological theory. The apparent tension can be resolved if underlying properties are explanatorily relevant to the higher level phenomena even though the latter are not strictly reducible to the former. Supervenience, I will argue, is not robust enough to deny reduction while supporting explanatory relevance.
Technology: The Driving Engine of Current Biological Advance
Authors: Wegmann Thomas G.
Published: June 2016

One of the admirable purposes of the current anthology is to attempt a dialogue between professional philosophers of biology and biological scientists. This is indeed an ambitious undertaking, because although the former group pays a lot of attention to the latter, active scientists rarely pay heed to what the philosophers of biology, or even of science in general, have to say. The current paper is an attempt to address some reasons why this might be so from the bench-level view of a biological scientist who has only a superficial acquaintance with the philosophy of science. Any excursion out of the confines of one’s professional discipline, such as the current one, generates the healthy fear that the exercise will end up in humiliation for the fool who attempts it. I have, perhaps foolishly, overcome this fear in the spirit of this symposium, with the hope that my more glaring errors of interpretation of the philosophy of science will be forgiven by the professional philosophers reading this paper, in the interest of establishing a dialogue.