bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Moral Contracts and the Morality of Abortion
Authors: Nuyen A.T. 
Published: June 2016

The question concerning the morality of abortion has been debated thoroughly over the past fifteen years, so thoroughly that it is difficult to add anything new to the debate. However, as the number of arguments has become numerous, it is still possible to formulate a new moral stance based on a new combination of old arguments. In what follows I shall develop and defend a moral stance based on the concept of moral contract and the concept of intentional pregnancy. Though these concepts are not new, the way they will be interpreted and combined here is unique.The analysis that I shall provide presupposes that the traditional arguments either for or against abortion are problematical. (In what follows, ‘for’ and ‘against’ are used in the moral sense only.) The first part of this paper is devoted to surveying briefly the principal arguments and to showing why they are problematical. In the second part I shall discuss a couple of arguments which I regard as of the right sort, although they too seem unsatisfactory. Finally, I shall attempt to indicate in my own way whether and when abortion is morally permissible.
Analyticity by Way of Presumption
Authors: Ullmann-Margalit Edna , Margalit Avishai 
Published: June 2016

Given a descriptive word, what is the nature of the relation between it and the features of the object(s) to which it is supposed to apply? What is it that entitles one to assert ‘this is a horse’?A traditional answer has been in terms of ‘Merkmal’: a (minimal) collection of features, or properties, severally necessary and Jointly sufficient for the application of the word in question. This relation - call it the Merkmal relation - between word and features is common to a variety of theories of meaning that may otherwise be in disagreement about the status of the features themselves in their relation to the object: whether they be actual or believed, perceptual or ‘essential,’ phenomenal or ‘real,’ etc.
Moral Reasons, Moral Action, and Rationality
Authors: Cohen Stephen 
Published: June 2016

I want to examine a relationship between rationality and moral behavior (morally right behavior). To do this, I shall first set out some basic intuitions. Then, within that framework I shall raise a problem about the relationship between rationality and moral behavior; in particular, I shall suggest that present in these basic intuitions is an inconsistency which can be remedied only by a radical alteration of one intuition.It is rational to perform a morally right action. The sense of this claim is fairly clear, but the claim itself needs further articulation. For example, it is rational to conclude that the sum of 37 and 22 is 59, but the conclusion has not been reached rationally if the way in which one hit on 59 as the answer was to pluck a pea - luckily enough, number 59 - from the bingo basket. In speaking about a belief or an action being rational, reference must be made to an agent, to reasons, and to the agent's reasons.
Hayek, Justice and the Market
Authors: Cragg A.W. 
Published: June 2016

It is Alistair Macleod's view that what he calls Justice Judgments are at root Judgments abput states of affair and only derivatively about actions. His interest in Fredrick Hayek's book, The Mirage of Social Justice, derives at least in part from the fact that assessing the Justice of actions is logically prior to assessing the Justice of situations or states of affairs. Thus evaluating Hayek's views offers a way in which Macleod can test his own position.In responding to Professor Macleod's interesting and provocative paper, I shall begin by criticising his own position with respect to the relation of Judgments about situations to Judgments about actions. I shall argue that contrary to what Macleod asserts Judgments about the Justice of actions and Judgments about the Justice of situations are inextricably intertwined. Second, I shall argue that Macleod's criticism of the view that Judgments about the Justice of actions are more basic than Judgments about the Justice of situations is a sound one. However, Hayek's attack on social Justice is not rooted in this position.
Formal Traces in Cartesian Functional Explanation
Authors: Rorty Amelie Oksenberg 
Published: June 2016

In the Passion of the Soul Descartes sets out to explain the origins and structure of intentional voluntary action, to give an account of physical behavior and motion that (in some sense) has psychological and intellectual causes.Actually of course this is not at all what he says. He announces an analysis of the passions of the soul. But why does he define his subject as he does? His correspondence had forced a concern with questions of virtue. How is he to introduce an account of virtue in his metaphysically, scientifically oriented philosophy of mind, a theory which must accommodate his normative epistemology on one hand and his mechanistic physiological psychology on the other? Other pressures forced closely related questions. Just what is the character of the ‘substantial’ union of mind and body? What is the psychological status of perception, and what are the relations among various types of perceptions? It is these questions that Descartes sets out to answer.
The Natural Shiftiness of Natural Kinds
Authors: De Sousa Ronald 
Published: June 2016

AbstractThe Philosophical search for Natural Kinds is motivated by the hope of finding ontological categories that are independent of our interests. Other requirements, of varying importance, are commonly made of kinds that claim to be natural. But no such categories are to be found. Virtually any kind can be termed ‘natural’ relative to some set of interests and epistemic priorities. Science determines those priorities at any particular stage of its progress, and what kinds are most ‘natural’ in that sense is always a real and lively scientific question. The general philosophical problem of scientific realism is also real; but between the scientific and the metaphysical, the ‘Problem of Natural Kinds’ sits otiose.
On Basic Knowledge and Justification
Authors: Johnsen Bredo C. 
Published: June 2016

Robert F. Almeder believes he has discovered a ‘pressing problem': ‘stating the conditions under which we determine whether a person's basic belief is true without introducing an evidence condition for knowledge’. He believes further that this is ‘a problem needing resolution before any ultimately satisfying explication of basic knowledge can be offered’.My aim is to show that Almeder has failed to discover any problem at all, but I begin by asking: how could the question how we determine the (mere) truth of another's basic belief (regardless of how we do so) have any bearing on the correct explication of the concept of basic knowledge?
Amnesia and Psychological Continuity
Authors: Brennan Andrew 
Published: June 2016

Is amnesia the mother of discontinuity? Perhaps surprisingly, amnesia is perfectly compatible with psychological continuity. Think, for example, of David Wiggins’ version of Locke. Wiggins first describes a relationCof strongco-consciousnesswhich gives continuity ‘between personPtjand personQtksuch that, for somesufficiencyof things actually done, witnessed, experienced, … at any time byPtj, Qtkshould later havesufficientreal or apparent recollection of then doing, witnessing, experiencing, … them.’ Wiggins continues:… anyone bent on grasping the nerve of Locke's conception of person would see … that the identity-condition he had to refute was one which made the persistence of personPdepend only uponP's being related at each successive phase of his biography in this C-relation toPat each previous phase
On Basic Knowledge Without Justification
Authors: Moser Paul K. 
Published: June 2016

Recently Robert Almeder has invoked Aristotle's celebrated regress argument to argue for the existence of basic knowledge that does not require the satisfaction of any justification condition. After outlining Almeder's argument, I shall show why it ultimately fails.Aristotle's regress argument in Book I of the Posterior Analytics is basically that because we have inferential knowledge, we must also have non-inferential knowledge. Aristotle plausibly assumes that to know the conclusion of an argument on the basis of its premises, one must know its premises. But he notes that if knowledge of any premise requires knowledge of some other proposition, then knowing any proposition would require knowledge of each member of an infinite regress of propositions. According to Aristotle, we cannot know each member of such a regress, but we do have some inferential knowledge; consequently there must be some basic, non-inferential knowledge, i.e., knowledge that does not depend for its justification on inferential relations to other known propositions.
E-type Pronouns and ε-terms
Authors: Slater B.H. 
Published: June 2016

Speaking of Professor Geach's belief that pronouns in natural language function like the bound variables in quantification theory, Gareth Evans, in ‘Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses - I’ (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 [1977] 467-536) says (470):I want to try to show that there are pronouns with quantifier antecedents that function in a quite different way. Such pronouns typically stand in a different grammatical relation to their antecedents, and; in contrast with bound pronouns, must be assigned a reference, so that their most immediate sentential contexts can always be assigned a truth value. The relevant grammatical relation appears to be Klima's relation of ‘in construction with’. When the pronoun is in construction with its antecedent, as in (4) [‘Some man loves his mother’] and (5) [‘No man is happy when he is in love’] the result is a bound pronoun.
Justice, Happiness, And Self-Knowledge
Authors: Thomas Laurence 
Published: June 2016

No man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one- Nathaniel HawthorneThe Platonic view that every just person is, in virtue of being such, happier than any unjust person, since all among the latter are unhappy, strikes a most responsive chord in the hearts of a great many persons. But it would seem that this idea has less of a foothold in reality than it does in our hearts. It is far too difficult to deny that there are unjust persons who are happy. Indeed, some even seem to be happier than many a just person.So I shall lower my sights. Rather than attempting to defend as sound the Platonic view, I shall argue that the just person is favored to be happier than a certain kind of unjust person whom I shall simply call a masquerader - this is, an individual who is frequently concerned to masquerade as a deeply caring person.
Arguments for Skepticism
Authors: Meiden Abraham 
Published: June 2016

A person who sincerely denies that the sun will rise tomorrow or that some trees are green is either a lunatic or a fool. And yet, skeptical arguments seem to show that such statements are doubtful. In this sense skeptical arguments seem to imply that we are not more rational than a lunatic or a fool. This is - in a nutshell - ‘the problem of skepticism.‘Much of the history of philosophy may be interpreted as a series of attempts to get rid of this problem by discovering ways of justifying statements that most people take to be true as a matter of course.
The Nature of Possibility
Authors: Armstrong D.M. 
Published: June 2016

I want to defend a Combinatorialtheory of possibility. Such a view traces the very idea of possibility to the idea of the combinations – all the combinations which respect a certain simple form – of given, actual, elements. Combination is to be understood widely enough to cover the notions of expansion and contraction. (My central metaphysical hypothesis is that all there is is the world of space and time. It is this world which is to supply the actual elements for the totality of combinations. So what is proposed is a Naturalistic form of a combinatorial theory.)The combinatorial idea is not new, of course. Wittgenstein gave a classical exposition of it in the Tractatus. Perhaps its charter is 3.4: ‘A proposition determines a place in logical space. The existence of this logical place is guaranteed by the mere existence of the constituents’ (my italics). There is a small additional combinatorial literature. I myself was converted to a combinatorial view by Brian Skyrms’ brief but fascinating article ‘Tractarian Nominalism.’
The Possibility of Special Duties
Authors: Pettit Philip , Goodin Robert 
Published: June 2016

In common-sense morality, certain special obligations loom large. These are duties which are laid upon agents, be they individuals or groups, in virtue of their distinctive identities, relationships or histories: because of who they are, how they are linked to others or what they have done in the past. The particularistic basis of these obligations means that no one but the agent in question is engaged by such a duty. It is that agent's alone.These special obligations include duties towards oneself, towards one's dependants and towards those to whom one has made certain commitments. In each case they prescribe partisan treatment. The beneficiary is to enjoy a benefit which may not be especially important in the global scheme of things, and which may even be obtained at the cost of others’ being deprived of benefits that are equally or more important in some cosmic sense.
Explaining Existence
Authors: Mortensen Chris 
Published: June 2016

The problem of why something exists rather than nothing is doubtless as old as human philosophising. Of comparable antiquity is the observation that one cannot hope to explain why something exists rather than nothing by appealing to the existence of something else, on pain of vicious circularity.In this paper, I distinguish between the question of why anything exists, and the question of why particulars exist. These two questions are equivalent only if the only things that exist are particulars. Certainly many have held that universals as well as particulars exist. I take it here that there is a prima facie distinction between universals and particulars. It follows that the former question is prima facie more general than the latter. I will initially concentrate on the latter, taking a hint from some recent theorising about the physics of the Big Bang.
Deterrence and Moral Theory
Authors: Hardin Russell 
Published: June 2016

IntroductionIssues in public policy have been challenging and remaking moral theory for two centuries. Such issues force us to question fundamental principles of ethics while they cast doubt on our ability to generalize from traditional intuitions. No issue poses more remarkable difficulties for moral theory than nuclear weapons policy. Because the consequences of their deployment and therefore possible use could be grievous beyond those of any previously conceivable human action, these weapons frame the conflict between outcome-based, especially utilitarian, and action-based deontological moral theories more acutely than perhaps any other we have faced. Just because nuclear weapons may bring about the most grievous outcome imaginable, they elevate concern with outcomes over concern with actions. More generally, they wreak havoc with the focus on the morality of individual choices and actions, set limits to the notion of intention and the doctrine of double effect, call into question the so-called just-war theory, and overwhelm the intuitionist basis of much of ethical reasoning.
Cartesian Semantics
Authors: Chandler Hugh S. 
Published: June 2016

Descartes thought he could suppose he was the victim of massive deception in regard to the external world. In fact he undertakes the supposing of it.I will … suppose that … a certain evil spirit, not less clever and deceitful than powerful, has bent all his efforts to deceiving me. I will think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all other external things are nothing but illusions and dreams that he has used to trick my credulity. I will regard myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, nor any senses, but believing falsely that I have all these things.Seated comfortably by his fire, Descartes imagines a remote possibility. Perhaps he is just a mind in the clutches of a deceiving demon. If Descartes is this man lounging here in his dressing gown, he is not vastly deceived; but if he is that mind, he is deceived indeed. The two possibilities are taken to be experientially indiscernible; and Descartes is assuming that the contents of his beliefs and the senses of his claims remain the same in either case. Thus, for example, whether he is this man or that mind, he believes he has two hands. But, and this is crucial, his belief is false if he is that mind, and true if he is this man. We begin to see what is required of cartesian semantics, and cartesian theories of the content of belief.
The Principle of Alternate Possibilities
Authors: Gosselin Phillip 
Published: June 2016

The standard argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility employs the following two premises:A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise:A person could have done otherwise only if his action was not causally determined.While premise two has been the focus of an enormous amount of controversy, premise one until recently has remained virtually unchallenged. However, since Harry Frankfurt’s provocative paper in 1969, premise one, which he dubbed the principle of alternate possibilities (henceforth referred to as PAP), has begun to attract its share of the debate. Frankfurt argued that PAP is false and that its falsity undermines the position of those who assert the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility. Two previous papers I wrote were devoted in part to showing that Frankfurt’s argument is ineffective; one of those papers also argued that, while PAP is indeed false as it stands (though for reasons entirely different from those advanced by Frankfurt), if it is appropriately supplemented, it can continue to serve its traditional role in the determinism-responsibility debate.
Rationality, Responsibility and Blame
Authors: Philips Michael 
Published: June 2016

Do persons from disadvantaged backgrounds deserve as much blame for their immoral or criminal acts as persons who have had all the advantages? Many liberals feel inclined to say ‘no.’ After all, there is a high correlation between criminal activity and a disadvantaged background; indeed, it might fairly be said that poverty breeds crime. Taken in its most obvious direction, however, this line of argument has dangerous deterministic implications. The price of diminished blame is diminished responsibility. We absolve the disadvantaged by portraying them as persons with a diminished capacity for free action. In the extreme case, we view them as victims of circumstance, utterly unable to act other than they do. Thus is born the demeaning parentalism of the worst sort of liberal social worker.Still, there is something correct in the liberal impulse to deny or diminish blame in at least many of these cases for something like the reason that the liberal offers. The task of this paper is to explain what is right about it. More generally, I want to show how we can take a person’s background into account in judging her for her acts without falling into total or partial determinism. In other words, my task is to establish that diminished blame is compatible with full freedom and responsibility. Roughly, I shall argue that we cannot blame someone for her acts if they are permitted or required by moral conclusions that are rational for someone in her position to reach.
Resemblance, Universals and Sorites: Comments on March on Sorting Out Sorites
Authors: Wilson Fred 
Published: June 2016

In a recent paper, Peter March proposes to sort out the traditional sorites paradox by distinguishing two senses of ‘resemble.’ The paradox is generated in this way: we have the inference(a) A is the same colour as B(b) B is the same colour as CHence,(c) A is the same colour as Cwhile also having(d) A is not the same colour as C
Ethics, Ideology, and Feminine Virtue
Authors: Exdell John 
Published: June 2016

‘How wonderfully the ideas of virtue set afloat by the powerful are caught and imbibed by those under their dominion.’Harriet Taylor MillInAfter VirtueAlasdair MacIntyre argues that moral argument in modern civilization is inherently ideological in character. The parties at odds present their conclusions as objective truths, but in reality each relies on premises that he or she cannot rationally justify to the other. Since moral language wraps non-rational choices in the illusion of objectivity, it is unavoidably manipulative in function. In both personal relations and political affairs we employ the. language of morality in order to have our way, to get others to serve our ends.
Tractatus 2.022–2.023
Authors: Bradley Raymond D. 
Published: June 2016

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein writes:2.022 It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something – a form – in common with it.2.023 Objects are just what constitute this unalterable form.As F.P. Ramsey pointed out, in his insightful review of the Tractatus, it is evident:[i]that Wittgenstein is here envisaging a multitude of possible worlds other than the real one;[ii]that Wittgenstein is claiming that, notwithstanding their diversity, all such worlds have a common form; and[iii]that Wittgenstein believes this form to be somehow 'constituted' by the simple objects that exist in these worlds.
Mind and Chance
Authors: Gauker Christopher 
Published: June 2016

Much discussed but still unresolved is whether a subject's internal physical structure is a sufficient condition for his beliefs and desires. The question has sometimes been expressed as a question about microstructurally identical Doppelgänger. Imagine two subjects who are identical right down to the ions traversing the synapses. Their senses are stimulated in all the same ways, their bodies execute the same motions, and identical physical events mediate between the sensory inputs and the behavioral outputs. Must they have the very same beliefs and desires? Let us call the thesis that they must, internalism. The internalist may hold that a physical similarity less complete than this will also guarantee identity in beliefs and desires, but certainly, he holds, perfect identity of internal physical histories will suffice.Internalism will be opposed by those who sense that the nature of mentality is closely tied to the nature of explanation in terms of mental states and that in explaining a subject's behavior we cannot abstract, even in principle, from the character of the environment in which the subject is embedded. This essay offers a partial articulation of this point of view and shows how it conflicts with internalism. A consequence of the view to be described is that our attributions of belief must reflect the probabilistic regularities in the subject's environment. As we shall see, this consequence conflicts with internalism in two ways. The first conflict turns on the fact that there is no limit on the possible variety of such regularities. The second conflict turns on the fact that two subjects might by chance have the same micro-structural history though different probabilistic regularities obtain in their respective environments.