bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Criminal Attempts
Authors: Duff R. A. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIf I deliberately damage another's property, or deliberately wound someone, or avoid paying taxes that I should pay, or defraud my insurance company by a dishonest claim, I commit a criminal offense. If I try but fail to commit such actions, I also commit a criminal offense, of attempt. The criminal law defines a wide range of complete offenses, like those mentioned here, and a general, inchoate offense of attempting to commit any of those specific offenses. (An inchoate offense is one that might not actually bring about, but is in some suitable way related to, the primary mischief that concerns the criminal law: attempted fraud is suitably related to, as an attempt to bring about, the criminal mischief of dishonestly depriving another of her money.) This feature of most modern systems of criminal law raises several theoretical and normative questions, and leads us into issues in practical philosophy and the philosophy of action.
Filial Duties
Authors: Keller Simon 
Published: January 2013

AbstractMost people show special concern for their parents. You might make significant sacrifices in order to pay for your parents' medical care, to give your parents somewhere comfortable to live in their old age, or to honor your parents' desires and values, when you would never do the same for just anybody. Not only are most of us inclined to give special treatment to our parents, we also tend to think that our giving them such treatment is a matter of duty. We show special concern for our parents not only because we want to, but also because we think it would be wrong to do otherwise. A grown child who fails to look after his parents, when his parents have been perfectly loving and have given him a perfectly good upbringing, and when they have needs he is perfectly able to meet, is a person who fails in his moral duty.
Russell, Bertrand
Authors: Pigden Charles 
Published: January 2013

AbstractBertrand Russell (1872–1970), third Earl Russell, aristocrat, activist, journalist, mathematician and philosopher, survives in philosophical memory mainly for his technical achievements. He was one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, a pioneer of logicism in the philosophy of mathematics, and one of the co‐creators of symbolic logic. Indeed, the dominant tone of analytic philosophy, with its keen interest in science and its casual use of logical notation, largely derives from Russell. But philosophy as conceived and practiced by Russell is an elite pursuit. It requires a good deal of background knowledge, both of science and of logic (though as a dedicated popularizer Russell was keen to diffuse the necessary knowledge as widely as possible). And the questions it addresses – “Can mathematics be reduced to logic?” “Is our knowledge of the external world based solely on experience?” – are of interest only to a few. “Philosophers,” says Marx, “have onlyinterpretedthe world in various ways: the point, however is to change it” (Marx and Engels 1976: 620;seeMarx, Karl). Russell disagreed, not about the need to change the world, but about the point of philosophy as an intellectual enterprise.Interpretingthe world is indeed the chief purpose of philosophy, which means that if, as a citizen, you are trying to change the world (or even to stop it getting worse), you are probablynotdoing philosophy.
Externalism, Motivational
Authors: Mason Elinor 
Published: January 2013

AbstractMotivational judgment externalism is the view that even when someone sincerely judges that they ought to do something, they will not necessarily be motivated to do it. This might seem counterintuitive – we usually expect that people will be motivated by their judgments about what they ought to do. In fact, motivational judgment internalists use this expectation as the basis of their claim that we arenecessarilymotivated by our sincere judgments about what we ought to do. The internalist argument goes something like this – suppose someone tells you that they believe that it is wrong to eat meat. We would expect them to be motivated not to eat meat. Of course, they might not always succeed in resisting the temptation to eat meat: imagine that a friend tells us that she has recently become an ethical vegetarian. We come across this friend in a steak restaurant, tucking into a rare sirloin. What do we expect? We expect that either she will tell us that she changed her mind and realized that meat eating was acceptable after all, or she will tell us that she feels awful about it, but she couldn't help herself, she found herself ordering the steak and wolfing it down, but she is disgusted with herself and plans to try harder in future. If she gaily says, “Oh yes, I shouldn't eat meat, but I don“t care about that, Iapos;m going to anyway” we would be very puzzled. Motivational internalists think that this last possibility issopuzzling that it is not what it seems to be, or that it shows that something is more generally wrong with the agent. Motivational externalists argue that perfectly functional agents can and do behave in ways that they themselves disapprove of.
Critical Theory
Authors: Baynes Kenneth 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThe tradition of critical theory (or the “Frankfurt School”) includes a variety of different positions on morality. In the initial years of the Institute for Social Research, Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) defended a form of eudaimonism (seeEudaimonism) against the rationalist morality of Kant and the neo‐Kantians; Theodor Adorno (1903–69), by contrast, especially in the postwar years, developed a distinctive critique of morality that stressed the impossibility of any correct or right living in a corrupt world; finally, beginning in the 1970s, Jürgen Habermas (1929–), together with Karl‐Otto Apel (1922–), proposed a discourse (or communicative) morality that belongs to a broadly neo‐Kantian approach (seeDiscourse Ethics). Despite these differences, critical theory shares a generally Marxist (or materialist) suspicion about the social function of morality. This heritage is significant, however, since Marxism itself has always had an extremely ambivalent relation to morality (Lukes 1985;seeMarx, Karl). On the one hand, it views morality as largely ideological and in the service of prevailing socioeconomic interests. On the other hand, it also makes use of moral values in its condemnation of capitalism as oppressive and/or unjust. Critical theorists have self‐consciously struggled with this ambivalence as much as anyone. At times, they follow the strategy of “immanent criticism” – that is, attempting to show how liberal society fails to live up to its own ideals without necessarily embracing those ideals itself; at other times, they regard immanent criticism as insufficient. This essay offers a brief sketch of the views of Horkheimer and Adorno and then turns to a fuller discussion of Habermas's discourse morality.
Political Correctness
Authors: Sparrow Robert 
Published: January 2013

Abstract“Political correctness” is a phrase that came to prominence in the “culture wars” that occurred in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was subsequently taken up elsewhere. The idea that a coalition of feminists (seeFeminist Ethics), ethnic minorities, homosexuals, and left‐wing intellectuals has achieved so much social and institutional power in the United States as to be capable of censoring – or at least intimidating – anyone who holds views contrary to the supposedly “politically correct” orthodoxy was promoted by conservative and neo‐conservative writers such as Dinesh D'souza (1991), Allan Bloom (1987), Roger Kimball (1991), and Nat Hentoff (1992). These authors’ efforts led to a range of initiatives by progressives, regarding campus “hate speech,” racial vilification, affirmative action, sexual harassment, and the content of the curricula at schools and universities, to become known as “political correctness” (PC;seeHate Speech; Affirmative Action; Sexual Harassment; Academic Freedom). The subsequent “PC debate” raised important issues about the nature and extent of freedom of expression, the difference between censorship and criticism, and the role of educational institutions in a democratic society (Berman 1992; Dunant 1994; Williams 1995;seeSpeech, Freedom of).
Berlin, Isaiah
Authors: Blattberg Charles 
Published: January 2013

AbstractRegarded by many as a leading thinker of the twentieth century, Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) was an Oxford philosopher who specialized in the history of ideas, the philosophy of history, and moral and political philosophy. As a child he witnessed a scene of brutality during the Russian Revolution that had a great impact upon him, leaving him with a life‐long wariness toward the potential of ideologies such as communism to lead people to commit great cruelties; indeed, Berlin was later to become an important “Cold War liberal.” With respect to ethics, he is chiefly of interest for his doctrine of value pluralism and the related account of liberty as presented in his famous 1958 essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin 2002). How the two are related has been a matter of considerable controversy.
Bentham, Jeremy
Authors: Harrison Ross 
Published: January 2013

AbstractBentham is one of the founding fathers of the ethical doctrine known as utilitarianism in which the rightness or wrongness of actions is wholly judged in terms of their consequences. Bentham calls the consequences that count “utility” or “happiness”. But, although he is a chief originator of a value theory that has been important from his own time to the present day, his importance does not lie particularly with proposing happiness or utility as the proper end of all actions. This had been done before. His importance lies instead in the applications he made of the principle, his explanations and justifications of utility or happiness as the proper end of action, and in his development of an associated philosophy of language and psychology.
Categorical Imperative
Authors: Reath Andrews 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

The term “categorical imperative” was introduced into moral philosophy by Immanuel Kant (
see
Kant, Immanuel). The concept is central to his moral philosophy, and if he is right, to moral thought and reasoning more generally. It refers both to a certain kind of substantive rational requirement on action that we shall call “a categorical imperative” and to the fundamental principle that can be used to determine our moral requirements, a principle that we shall call “the Categorical Imperative.” This essay will begin by explaining the concept of a categorical imperative and will then turn to the fundamental principle and its application.
Perception, Moral
Authors: McGrath Sarah 
Published: January 2013

AbstractOn the face of it, we have some moral knowledge. We know some general moral truths, for example, that slavery is wrong. And we know some particular moral truths. For example, confronted with a choice about how to act, we often know which action would be right, which wrong, which dishonest, which kind, etc. A central question in moral epistemology is the question of how we acquire moral knowledge (if, indeed, we acquire it). One answer to be found both in ancient texts and in the contemporary literature is that we acquire moral knowledge in the same way that we acquire much of our nonmoral knowledge about the empirical world – namely, by perception.
Deep Ecology
Authors: Brennan Andrew 
Published: January 2013

AbstractOne of the most influential positions in environmental philosophy (seeEnvironmental Ethics), deep ecology emerged in the 1970s as the philosophical expression of a wider cultural movement in Scandinavia. The term “deep ecology” is often used loosely to refer to any environmental ethical position that attributes intrinsic value or moral standing to some or all natural things, often combined with a relational view of human subjects (as defined by their place in larger ecological, social, and economic systems). In this essay the focus will largely be on the deep ecology movement understood in a stricter sense, based on the philosophical work of Arne Næss. That movement – associated with the termfriluftsliv(roughly, “outdoor life”) – emphasized the importance of outdoor activity both as a spontaneous way of being at home in the world, and also as an important element in human education and socialization. While the termfriluftslivwas used widely in nineteenth‐century Norway and even figured in a poem by Henrik Ibsen, the twentieth‐century explorer Fridtjof Nansen famously introduced the term as a contrast totourism, the latter implying a merely shallow encounter with nature, while life in the free open air was meant to lead us back to our “true home” in “God's free grand nature” (Breivik 1989). In 1971 three Norwegians – Nils Faarlund, Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, and Arne Næss – set out on an “anti‐expedition” to Nepal, partly with the aim of helping the local Sherpas in their campaign to protect the sacred mountain Tseringma from tourist‐mountaineers. It was during this trip that Næss experienced the “breakthrough” that enabled him to complete the sketch of a new environmental philosophy, or “ecosophy,” Kvaløy formulated an ecopolitics of a “life necessities society” (as opposed to the dominant “industrial growth society”), and Faarlund was inspired to continue his work promotingfriluftslivas a wider approach to outdoor education – one that combined training in mountaineering, skiing, and winter survival techniques with a philosophy of character‐building through long periods of exposure to wilderness activities that deliberately use low technology and nature‐friendly approaches.
Work, Nature and Value of
Authors: McCall John J. 
Published: January 2013

Abstract
Work in its most general sense is the intentional expenditure of time and effort in pursuit of some objective. For example, “She is working in her garden” and, even, “He is working on his tan” are perfectly understandable expressions. However, it is a safe bet that when most of us think about work, we are thinking about paid employment. It is this latter sense of work with which we will be concerned here.
Spencer, Herbert
Authors: Small Robin 
Published: January 2013

AbstractHerbert Spencer (1820–1903) was a vastly influential thinker during his lifetime. His primary appeal was to the educated public, leaving the academic world looking on, often with some bemusement. William James said: “He is the philosopher whom those who have no other philosopher can appreciate” – adding that the statement was “great praise” (1978: 115). By supplying a comprehensive and self‐contained system of ideas, centering on a single universal law of development, Spencer encouraged his readers to look no further for the explanations they needed in philosophy, ethics, and politics.
Nonideal Ethics
Authors: Rivera‐López Eduardo 
Published: January 2013

AbstractOur world is far from ideal: people kill, steal, and harm others; governments initiate unjust wars; material resources are sometimes scarce or unjustly distributed; and millions of people suffer extreme deprivation from social or natural causes. Any adequate moral theory should be sensitive to these unfortunate facts. It seems obvious that the best or most appropriate actions, rules, and institutions in this nonideal world are different from what they would be in an ideal one. I briefly delineate some problems that ethics and political philosophy face when dealing with imperfect moral agents and institutions.
Reproductive Technology
Authors: Asch Adrienne , Wasserman David 
Published: January 2013

AbstractReproductive technologies serve three purposes: they allow women to have sex without having children; they enable individuals and couples who could not otherwise do so to have biologically related children; and they permit individuals and couples to select the children they will have based on detectable features of gamete providers, embryos, or fetuses. We will refer to these purposes, respectively, as procreation preventing, procreation assisting, and trait selecting. A single technology can serve more than one purpose. For example, the use of a third party's sperm to inseminate a woman with no partner, or whose partner cannot impregnate her, enables her not only to have a child, but also – by choosing a sperm provider with particular attributes – to affect the traits of the child she will have. This essay will not be concerned with procreation prevention technologies (seeAbortion; Birth Control), except to the extent they are used for trait selection purposes.
Latin American Ethics
Authors: Nuccetelli Susana 
Published: January 2013

Abstract
Latin American philosophers often express doubt about whether there is a characteristically Latin American philosophy at all. Yet the question itself has already led to philosophical work that now makes up a substantial corpus of original philosophical arguments that are topically related to Latin American history and culture. These criteria, then, together with that of being a view or argument on a substantial ethical question, demarcate Latin American ethics, a discipline closely connected to social and political philosophy. The focus in this essay will be ethical issues about human rights and Hispanic identity raised within both academic and nonacademic philosophy.
Principlism
Authors: Rauprich Oliver 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

“Principlism” is a technical term coined by K. Danner Clouser and Bernard Gert in 1990 to denote what is also known as the “four‐principles approach” to biomedical ethics by Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress. Originally used by Clouser, Gert, and others to criticize this approach, “principlism” is now widely used as a neutral term for referring to a type of applied ethics that is most prominently represented by Beauchamp and Childress in their seminal book
Principles of Biomedical Ethics
(1979, 6th ed. 2009). Although most proponents of principlism work in the field of biomedical ethics, the account is suitable for other areas of applied ethics as well.
Guise of the Good
Authors: Tenenbaum Sergio 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThe “guise of the good” (GG) thesis concerns the nature of human motivation and intentional action (seeAction; Intention). It is generally understood as the view that everything that an agent desires (seeDesire; Pro‐attitudes) or pursues is in some way thought to be good. In its most sweeping version, the thesis applies to any mental state capable of motivating the agent; that is, every state that can motivate the agent must involve some kind of thought of its object as good. An even more radical version of GG also accepts the converse claim: namely, that all evaluative judgments motivate.
Hellenistic Ethics
Authors: Allen James 
Published: January 2013

AbstractBy convention the Hellenistic age began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323BCand ended in 31BCwith the battle of Actium, in which Antony and Cleopatra were vanquished by Octavian, soon to be the Roman emperor Augustus. In a striking coincidence between changes in the intellectual and political realms, Alexander's death was followed one year later by that of his one‐time teacher, Aristotle (384–322BC;seeAristotle). The modern discussion of Hellenistic philosophy was long dominated by suggestive speculation about the influence on it of rapidly changing social and political conditions. Regardless of what one thinks of these ideas, which are no longer in fashion, the abruptness of the transition in philosophy at the beginning of the Hellenistic era, which seems to be marked less by continuity and development than by radical transformation, is remarkable.
Egalitarianism
Authors: McKerlie Dennis 
Published: January 2013

AbstractEgalitarianism has a shorter history than most other moral views. This is understandable given that past societies were averse to egalitarian values. However, egalitarianism has become a strong force in moral philosophy in the past 50 years. It is not an exaggeration to say that its prominence is due to the work of John Rawls and his bookA Theory of Justice(1971;seeRawls, John). Most contemporary egalitarian writers disagree with some aspects of Rawls' theory, but they have all been influenced by him. It is also striking that many distinguished moral philosophers are egalitarians, or at least have some sympathy for such a view. A short list would include Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Amartya Sen, Thomas Scanlon, Derek Parfit, Larry Temkin, and G. A. Cohen. Many other names could be added to the list.
Pornography and Obscenity
Authors: Watson Lori 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIn ancient Greek, the term “pornography” means “writes about prostitutes,” emphasizing the link between pornography and prostitution. Although both involve the selling of sex for money, the two are often treated as (legally) distinct practices. The thread of the Greek root that is preserved in most modern considerations of pornography is the part about “writing” or words, and hence, particularly in the United States legal and social context, speech and expression (seeSpeech, Freedom of).
Intentionality
Authors: Schueler G. F. 
Published: January 2013

Abstract“Intentionality” is the term given by philosophers to the feature of some mental states that allows them to be about things, that is, to have “content” that in some way refers to things outside themselves. The concept was introduced into philosophy by Brentano (seeBrentano, Franz), who famously held that it was the distinguishing mark of the mental (Huemer 2010: 1). Having an intention to do something is anexampleof an intentional state in this sense, because one must intend todo something. But hope and fear, love and hate, belief and desire, are also intentional states in the broader sense to be discussed here since such states also have “objects.” One must hope for something, fear something, love or hate something, believe or want something.
Doing and Allowing
Authors: Norcross Alastair 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIs there a morally significant distinction between doing and allowing? The most natural way to understand this question is as asking whether doing harm is worse, in itself, than allowing harm. This is how I will, for the most part, understand the question. There is, however, a different way to put it. Perhaps the claim of moral significance is not that doing harm is worse than allowing harm, but that doing harm is more difficult to justify than allowing harm. One may reasonably wonder whether the latter claim could be based in something other than the former claim, but it is, at least on its face, worth considering separately. I will briefly do this later. The question of the moral significance of the doing/allowing distinction has received much attention in recent years, in large part due to the perceived connection with the moral issues surrounding euthanasia (seeEuthanasia). Much of the debate about doing and allowing focuses on the distinction between killing and letting die (seeKilling), which appears to be a specific instance of the distinction between doing harm and allowing harm (seeHarm). But this is not quite right. Most cases of killing involve doing harm, and most cases of letting die involve allowing harm. However, there are cases in which death is not a harm, and therefore in which killing does not involve doing harm. These are precisely those cases in which the moral case for euthanasia, either active or passive, is strongest. When continued life involves overwhelming suffering, death may be a benefit to the sufferer (seeDeath). It follows that even if doing harm is morally worse, in itself, than allowing harm, active euthanasia may not differ morally from passive euthanasia. In what follows, however, I shall ignore this complication, and treat killing as a specific instance of doing harm.