bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Expedient, the Right and the Just in Mill's Utilitarianism
Authors: Harrison Jonathan 
Published: June 2016

John Stuart Mill is generally considered to be a utilitarian; indeed, he himself supposed that he was one. On one principle of division, there are sometimes said to be two kinds of utilitarian, hedonistic utilitarians and agathistic utilitarians. Both of these agree that what makes an act right is whether or not the consequences of performing it are good, or are supposed by the agent to be good, but the hedonistic utilitarian thinks that only pleasure is good, whereas the agathistic utilitarian thinks that other things ate good as well. Commentators frequently complain that john Stuart Mill regarded himself as a hedonistic utilitarian, whereas in fact he was an agathistic one.On another principle of division, there are also two kinds of utilitarian, act utilitarians and rule utilitarians. An act utilitarian thinks that the rightness of an action depends upon the goodness of its consequences; a rule utilitarian thinks that the rightness of an act depends upon the consequence of the rule to which it conforms or fails to conform.
Emotions and Motives
Authors: Lyons William 
Published: June 2016

In this article I want to investigate what sort of explanation is being given when someone says “He did x out of such and such emotion” or “Such and such emotion was his motive tor doing x”. In order to do this I will try and argue for the following:(1)The term ‘motive’ should not be limited to contexts where we expect that the motivation does not fall within the standard range.(2)The motive which is said to be behind an actual action is to be construed as a cause.(3)The motive which is said to be behind an actual action is to be construed as entailing a want which is a cause.(4)However not all actions which can be said to be done out of some motive can be said to be actions which the agent wanted to do.
Mannison's Impossible Dream
Authors: Preuss Peter 
Published: June 2016

Alastair Hannay wrote that there is a campaign against the mental image and a look at the philosophical literature on that topic bears him out. But there is also a campaign against dreams. Given the first campaign this is not surprising. What is surprising is that they are separate campaigns. Intuitively mental images and dreams seem to be as alike as kittens and cats, the one being merely the developed form of the other, made possible by the fading of consciousness of the real world. One would think that an attack on the one is also an attack on the other, at least in the sense that an analysis of the one will, with modest modifications, also be an analysis of the other.But this seems not to be so. To say that a man who pictured his nursery was not a spectator of a resemblance of his nursery, but rather resembled a. spectator of his nursery, may have some initial plausibility because some people behave in curious ways at such times. But to say this of a person who dreamt of his nursery is simply nonsense.
Coherence and Causal Inference in Hume's Treatise
Authors: Gomberg Paul 
Published: June 2016

Discussing the influence of the coherence of our perceptions on our belief in the continued existence of objects when unperceived (in Part IV of Book I of the Treatise), Hume says:…tho’ this conclusion [that objects continue to exist unperceived] from the coherence of appearances may seem to be of the same nature with our reasonings concerning causes and effects … they are at the bottom considerably different from each other …. Since nothing is ever really present to the mind, besides its own perceptions, ‘tis not only impossible, that any habit shou'd ever be acquir'd otherwise than by the regular succession of these perceptions, but also that any habit shou'd ever exceed that degree of regularity. Any degree, therefore, of regularity in our perceptions, can never be a foundation for us to infer a greater degree of regularity in some objects, which are not perceiv’ d; since this supposes a contradiction, viz. a habit acquir'd by what was never present to the mind. But ‘tis evident, that whenever we infer the continu'd existence of the objects of sense from their coherence, and the frequency of their union, ‘tis in order to bestow on the objects a greater regularity than what is observ'd in our mere perceptions .... as all [causal] reasoning concerning matter of fact arises only from custom, and custom can only be the effect of repeated perceptions, the extending of custom and reasoning beyond the perceptions can never be the direct and natural effect of the constant repetition and connexion, but must arise from the co-operation of some other principles. (pp. 197–8)
Criteria of Personal Identity
Authors: Ameriks Karl 
Published: June 2016

The primary objective of this paper is to improve the defense of the thesis that(1) bodily continuity is the primary criterion of personal identity.This is to be done by establishing (in Parts Ill and IV) that there is a unique sense in which(2) bodily continuity is a necessary condition of personal identity.A secondary objective of the paper is to illustrate (in Part I) the way in which the value and validity of (2) has been obscured in recent defenses and criticisms of (1), which inappropriately interpret it in terms of the claim that(3) bodily continuity is a sufficient condition of personal identity.Since the truth of (3) will be denied, the defense of (1) will also involve arguing (in Part II) that the traditional alternative to the bodily criterion, namely the criterion of memory and psychological characteristics, not only is not a necessary condition of personal identity but also is not a sufficient condition.
Davidson on the Identity Theory
Authors: Katz Bernard D. 
Published: June 2016

Donald Davidson has advanced a novel argument for the psychophysical identity theory, the view that mental events are identical with physical events. Davidson contends that the truth of this theory can be inferred from three principles: (1) at least some mental events interact causally with physical events; (2) events related as cause and effect fall under strict deterministic laws; and (3) there can be no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted or explained (pp. 80–81).Davidson's contention is striking, quite aside from the question of whether (1), (2), and (3) are correct. For it is commonly assumed that discoveries in the empirical sciences—in particular, the discovery of psycho-physical laws—would be prerequisite for establishing a version of the identity theory. Davidson's argument is successful only if there can be no such discoveries: the third principle precludes the possibility of there being (strict) laws linking the mental and physical.
Justifying Paternalism
Authors: Carter Rosemary 
Published: June 2016

1. IntroductionA paternalistic act is one in which the protection or promotion of a subject's welfare is the primary reason for attempted or successful coercive interference with an action or state of that person. My aim in this paper is to determine the conditions under which such acts are Justified. The route I take is through the concept of consent, with actual consent providing the foundation for a rather complex condition which I claim is necessary and sufficient for the Justification of paternalism.Because a paternalistic act apparently violates a subject's right to non-interference, it constitutes a problem in the general area of rights. Ideally, then, one should have a developed and convincing theory of rights — that is, a theory which contains an analysis of the concept of a right, and offers solutions to the central problems, e.g. who has rights and why, what considerations overrideprima facierights, and how the relative importance ofprima facierights is determined — from which the solutions to various problems about paternalism can be derived.
Speaking Lions
Authors: Rosenberg Jay F. 
Published: June 2016

“If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”Well, why not, for heaven's sake? A speech impediment, perhaps. Imagine a cross between a severe lisp and a roar. That would be difficult to understand. But not impossible. The claim is that we could not understand him. Very well, who are we?Perhaps we are the English speakers. Of course what we could understand would depend upon which language the lion spoke. I couldn't understand him, for example, if he spoke in Basque or Hittite or Old Icelandic. If he spoke in Spanish or German, I might be able to puzzle out a few words. But I don't understand anyone who speaks in Basque or Hittite or Old Icelandic. I have friends who do, however.Of course, he might speak in Lion, in the language of the lions. That would indeed be difficult to understand. I don't even have any friends who speak in lion. So perhaps then we could not understand him. (Perhaps then lions do speak—in the language of the lions. Would that be worth looking into?) So we should need to learn the language of the lions.
Animal Rights
Authors: Narveson Jan 
Published: June 2016

What do we owe to the lower animals, if anything? The issues raised by this question are among the most fascinating and fundamental in ethical theory. They provide a real watershed for the moral philosopher and, on perhaps the most widely professed view, a trenchant test of consistency in ethical practice. Among the virtues of these two challenging books is that they make painfully clear that there has been a paucity of clear and plausible argument in support of the nearly universal tendency of humans to eat animal flesh, and to visit varying degrees of pain, discomfort, and unfreedom on the animals in question in the process.When we are asked why it is all right to do this, given our strong belief that it is not all right for us to eat other humans, we tend to give answers that won't readily wash. We may say, for example, that animals are stupid; but we don't think it all right to eat stupid people, including people less apparently competent than many of the higher animals. Or we may say things that are patently untrue, such as that the other animals don't really feel pain anyway.
The Nature of Laws
Authors: Tooley Michael 
Published: June 2016

This paper is concerned with the question of the truth conditions of nomological statements. My fundamental thesis is that it is possible to set out an acceptable, non Circular account of the truth conditions of laws and nomological statements if and only if relations among universals — that is, among properties and relations, construed realistically — are taken as the truth-makers for such statements.My discussion will be restricted to strictly universal, nonstatistical laws. The reason for this limitation is not that I feel there is anything dubious about the concept of a statistical law, nor that I feel that basic laws cannot be statistical. The reason is methodological. The case of strictly universal, nonstatistical laws would seem to be the simplest case. If the problem of the truth conditions of laws can be solved for this simple subcase, one can then investigate whether the solution can be extended to the more complex cases. I believe that the solution I propose here does have that property, though I shall not pursue that question here.
Women and John Locke; or, Who Owns the Apples in the Garden of Eden?
Authors: Clark Lorenne M. G. 
Published: June 2016

The idea of creating a society guaranteeing equality between the sexes has never been considered by most political theorists. They have either endorsed, or simply accepted, the assumption that there is a natural inequality of the sexes which ought to be preserved in civil society. This same presupposition has excluded the family from the theorists’ framework of what are thought to be distinctively political institutions. Despite the centrality of the family to human life, it has been consigned to the domain of purely natural phenomena. The related belief that women and children must be relegated for theoretical purposes to the family, to be safely ignored in a realm of brute nature, suffices to allow such theorists to exclude women from the ontology of politics.In looking at major theorists from this perspective, the task is not simply to show that they display sexist attitudes. The main purpose is to demonstrate that their theories rest on these assumptions and that they would be vastly different theories if these assumptions were not made.
The Role of Criteria in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy
Authors: Koethe John L. 
Published: June 2016

Although the literature on Wittgenstein's notion of criteria is extensive, it seems unsatisfactory. Most interpretations of criteria not only misrepresent Wittgenstein; more importantly, they misconstrue the relation between a mental state and the behavior characteristic of that state. If by “criteria” Wittgenstein meant what he has been taken to mean, it is unlikely that any mental states have criteria. In this paper I shall argue that a proper interpretation of Wittgenstein's notion provides an account of the relation between some mental states and the behavior characteristic of them which is at least approximately correct.According to current interpretations of criteria the relation between a form of behavior C and the mental state of which it is a criterion, S, is such that the proposition “A person displaying C is (or: very likely is) in S” is either a necessary truth, known a priori to be true, or “true in virtue of a definition, convention, or rule of language.”
Rawlsian Contractarianism: Liberal Equality or Inequality?
Authors: McDonald Virginia 
Published: June 2016

This paper will examine Rawls’ Theory of Justice as the most coherent twentieth century restatement of the liberal egalitarian paradigm. It will examine Rawls’ assertion that his theory is in the tradition of the state of nature/contractarian formulation of that paradigm, with particular reference to the parallels between Locke's formulation and his own. The paper will note that in both formulations:a) The principles of justice formulated are sub specie aeternitatis but it will be argued that in fact they are, in their more developed form under “more favourable” historical conditions, the principles acknowledged by liberal man.b) The principles developed by men in “reasonably favourable conditions” (R., 5.82,542) are principles both of equality and inequality. However, it will be argued that the inequality principle takes precedence over the equality principle and, in fact, in its theoretical and practical manifestations, makes void the fair value of the equality principle itself.
Time Travel and Some Alleged Logical Asymmetries between Past and Future
Authors: Dwyer Larry 
Published: June 2016

The subject of time travel has been receiving increasing attention in the recent philosophical literature. Most of the articles that deal with it have been concerned to defend the logical consistency of time travel against those who claim that it entails one or more contradictions. Two sorts of defences have been offered. The first sort of defence involves showing that time travel does not entail those consequences which other philosophers allege it does entail. The second sort of defence involves an admission that time travel does indeed involve that which its opponents allege it does involve, e.g., being in more than one place at a time, but arguing that such consequences in no way vitiate the logical consistency of this notion.My first aim in this paper is to provide a defence of time travel of the second sort. More specifically, I want to cut the ground from under an argument which might run thus:Time travel entails that certain effects can precede their causes.It is logically impossible for an effect to precede its cause.
The Crucial Relation in Personal Identity
Authors: Kitcher Patricia 
Published: June 2016

1. What is the Problem of Personal Identity?Locke posed the problem of personal identity in one brief question, “What makes the same person?” This formulation is deceptively simple. My aim is to offer a new interpretation of the problem and to suggest a method for finding a solution.Investigations of personal identity are usually cast in terms of finding the criterion for personal identity. Yet talk of criteria is ambiguous. In one sense of the term, the criterion of personal identity would be special evidence for personal identity. According to the second usage, the criterion of personal identity would be that state of affairs for which evidence for personal identity is evidence. We will not be concerned with the first construal. On that reading, the problem of personal identity would be an epistemological issue. But the basic question concerning personal identity, “What is one person?” does not appear to be an epistemological question.
The Refutation of Materialism
Authors: Puccetti Roland 
Published: June 2016

Supposons qu'il soit possible de transplanter les centres de Ia douleur de Jones dans le cerveau de Smith. A mi-chemin pendant !'operation, on teste ces centres de Ia douleur en les stimulant électriquement in vitro. Y aurait-il de Ia douleur? L'argument de cet article est qu'il n'y en aurait pas, parce que Ia douleur doit avoir un possesseur. Sinon, il ne peut arriver que les centres de Ia douleur se déchargeant dans un cerveau soient en eux-mêmes Ia douleur. On peut logiquement transférer le mécanisms de Ia douleur, mais non Ia douleur elle-mêmes. Ainsi le materialisme est faux.Suppose we live in a very advanced age of neurosurgical skills. We have a patient, Jones, with intractable pain. We have a second patient, Smith, with a long history of unintentional self-injury due to congenital absence of pain centres. So we decide to do double service by transplanting Jones's pain centres into Smith's brain.
On the Unifier—Multiplier Controversy
Authors: MacDonald C. A. 
Published: June 2016

Many recent discussions of the identity and individuation of actions focus on attempts to find satisfactory answers to questions like, “When, if ever, is a shooting (stabbing, poisoning, etc.) a killing?” Those who attempt to answer such questions divide themselves, on the whole, into two opposing groups. I. Thalberg has conveniently labelled the members of one group ‘unifiers’, and the members of the other group ‘multipliers’.The unifier account is commonly attributed to philosophers such as G. E. M. Anscombe and Donald Davidson. Proponents of this account characteristically believe that many non-basic actions (where ‘basic’ is defined in terms of bodily movements) such as shootings, killings, etc., are identical with those basic actions by means of which the non-basic ones are performed. This position is indicated in the following remarks:… in moving her hand, the queen was doing something that caused the death of the king. These are two descriptions of the same event — the queen moved her hand in that way; she did something that caused the death of the king. (Or to put it, as I would rather, in terms of a definite description: The moving of her hand by the queen on that occasion was identical with her doing something that caused the death of the king.) Doing something that causes a death is identical with causing a death. But there is no distinction to be made between causing the death of a person and killing him.
Can the Tale Be Told?
Authors: Woods John 
Published: June 2016

The distinctive feature of Professor Purtill's interesting, though somewhat promissory, paper, is its willingness to have the tail of pragmatics wag the dog of semantics. I myself find the pre-emption unfortunate, though I should hasten to add that Professor Purtill and I share something of a common view about the problems that should be solved by a decent account of fictionality; and some of our own solutions happen in fact to coincide. We part company, however, in respect of the following two theses.Thesis (1). Professor Purtill holds that the sentences literally constitutive of a piece of fiction are neither true nor false, that they do not make assertions, that (therefore) they do not make assertions about what they would appear to be about. Such sentences in fact tell tales, and in such nonassertive uses, they are spared the burdens of all but the limits of semantic significance. That is, they are not true and they are not false.
Evans on Quantifiers
Authors: Geach P. T. 
Published: June 2016

Gareth Evans's two articles on the syntax and semantics of pronouns unfortunately seem to have been written far more with the desire of showing Peter Geach to have been wrong all along the line than in an endeavour to formulate, clearly and coherently, a comprehensive theory of his own. Some scattered passages of constructive theorizing there are, and in the latter part of this note I shall have something to say about them; but the controversial motive prevails.It would be wearisome for me, and unrewarding for readers, if I were to work through Evans's arguments against me in detail: his misrepresentations of me are frequent and gross, and exposure of them in detail, together with restatement of the arguments misrepresented, would take up many more pages than the articles themselves. I here document just two of the more flagrant examples; with this warning before their eyes, readers may be disposed not to believe Evans's account of my works without checking for themselves.
Justice and Capitalist Production: Marx and Bourgeois Ideology
Authors: Young Gary 
Published: June 2016

Is capitalist production unjust? It is easy to think, upon first reading Marx, that he answers this question in the affirmative. And I shall argue that this naive reading is correct. This needs to be argued, however, for a more careful scrutiny of Marx's writings reveals passages in which he seems to call capitalist production just or fair. Relying upon these passages, Robert Tucker and Allen W. Wood have urged that, in Wood's words,it is simply not the case that Marx's condemnation of capitalism rests on some conception of justice (whether explicit or implicit), and those who attempt to reconstruct a “Marxian idea of justice” from Marx's manifold charges against capitalism are at best only translating Marx's critique of capitalism, or some aspect of it, into what Marx himself would have consistently regarded as a false, ideological, or “mystified” form.What Marx regarded as false and mystified, however, is not the practice of assessing social institutions as just or unjust, but rather the picture of those institutions, and especially of capitalist production, to be found in bourgeois ideology.
Weak Universal Egoism as a Non-ethical System
Authors: Carlson George R. 
Published: June 2016

In his “Two Kinds of Moral Reasoning; Ethical Egoism as a Moral Theory”, Jesse Kalin defines ethical egoism as “the position that a person ought, all things considered, to do an action if and only if that action is in his overall self-interest”, by which he means that each person is ‘rationally justified in’ or ‘has conclusive reasons for’ acting thus, and not that ‘it is good', or that ‘it is desirable', or that ‘it conduces to any intrinsically desirable state of affairs', for each to act only self-interestedly.In this way, Kalin seeks to formulate an egoism which he takes to be rational, insofar as, in the interests of consistency, the egoist holds a principle applicable to all, and yet is not committed, ex hypothesi, to valuing collective goods or states of affairs which would tend to compromise his own interests (e.g. everyone's actually acting egoistically).