bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Kantian Egoism
Authors: Hills Alison 
Published: September 2010

AbstractKant believes that moral reasons for action are catEgorical imperatives which override all other reasons for action, including reasons based on happiness. In the first half of the chapter, some interesting variations on standard Egoism are set out, and it is explained why Kant thought that Egoism could not be a genuine rival to the moral law. The second half of the chapter takes a different approach, however, developing an entirely new, distinctively Kantian version of Egoism that is not based on happiness. Kantian Egoism parallels the moral law: it is a theory of self-regarding catEgorical imperatives. In discussing this theory, some fundamental issues in Kant's practical philosophy are addressed; in particular, a new ‘realist’ account is given of the importance of rational nature and the way in which it is the source of other kinds of value, which is an improvement on the more familiar constructivist interpretations of Kant.
Modest Vindication
Authors: Hills Alison 
Published: September 2010

AbstractA modest vindication of morality is a valid argument based on premises that an Egoist would not accept (but that a defender of common sense morality would): that Egoism is false. Initially it seems straightforward to give modest arguments defending morality, but on reflection these arguments face strong objections. This chapter sets out three such problems. Modest vindications of morality are compared to similar arguments from G. E. Moore defending common sense against idealists and sceptics about the external world. One objection pressed by Wright – that these arguments lack cogency – is discussed in detail, and it is shown that these arguments can at least in principle be cogent.
The Birth of Public Law
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractPublic law emerges as an autonomous field of knowledge in the period between the mid-16th and late 17th centuries. This was a critical period of intense religious conflict in which the character of collective human association was placed in question. The period, marked by the historicization, rationalization, and secularization of political thought, led to the severing of political order from its religious origins and a shift in focus from the sovereign towards the state. The corporate idea of the state became the ground on which an autonomous concept of public law could be built. This chapter explains this transition by reference first to a methodological shift that leads to the promotion of public law as a type of historico-political discourse; secondly to the growth of absolutist thought and the idea of sovereignty; and then to a revolution in natural law thinking leading to the emergence of modern natural right. Sovereignty and right combine to provide the rudiments of the concept of public law.
The Science of Political Right: I
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter examines the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who has done more than any other thinker to bring out both the principles and practices of political right. Rousseau's thought offers a way of highlighting the tensions and ambiguities between right and power — between potestas and potentia — and it sets a frame for an inquiry into the fundamentals of the subject. The key to this investigation lies in the observation that Rousseau offers not one but two accounts of political right, and these are based on contrasting accounts of the nature of the political pact. The chapter first examines the subject of The Social Contract and then considers its influence on Kant's legal theory. It argues that Kant provides a formal science of political right which is unable to explain the complexity of modern public law.
Political Jurisprudence
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThe relationship between theory and practice, the elements of which were examined in the previous chapters, complicates the exercise of devising a general account of political right. This chapter argues that the resulting tensions, which are clearly expressed in the character of the modern state itself, cannot be overcome but can only be negotiated. This means that rather than being treated as an explication of the science of political right, public law should be recognized as an exercise in political jurisprudence. The consequences are explained and the grammar of the practice is outlined.
The Concept of the State
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter presents an account of the juristic concept of the state. It first explains how, through a series of protracted struggles over its meaning, the idea of the state emerged and it shows how, within this historical account, the state is inextricably linked to the concept of sovereignty. The specifically juristic concept is then elaborated through an account of the 19th-century German discipline of Staatslehre and, especially through its elaboration of the three fundamental elements of territory, ruling authority, and people, its general influence in 20th-century legal thought. The chapter argues that the juristic concept of the state is best understood to form an scheme of intelligibility and it offers a key to understanding the nature of public law.
The Constitution of the State
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractSince the state is itself the source of law, there can be no concept of fundamental law that binds the state. But since the state in its juristic meaning is not simply an institutional arrangement but is a scheme of intelligibility, the question can be asked: what is the nature of this scheme? Alternatively, does the state have a constitution? This chapter examines this constitutive aspect of the state. It concerns the conditions of the public sphere and the type of political power that it generates and sustains, and this constitution of the state is distinct from the issue of the constitution of the office of government.
The Constitutional Contract
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractIn the modern world, constitutions are conceived as contracts drawn up by ‘the people’ to establish and limit the powers of governing institutions. This modern concept of the constitution, which marks a distinct break with the ancient understanding, performs an important function: it provides the foundation of legal order and lays down the basic law of law-making, establishing itself as the pivot on which the legitimacy of legality turns. But the foundational claims made of modern constitutions are riddled with ambiguities. This chapter considers many of the foundational questions relating to the status of modern constitutions in jurisprudential thinking, and examines the nature and function of the constitutional contract.
Rechtsstaat, Rule of Law,l'Etat de droit
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter examines the origins of the various articulations of the general expression of the ‘rule of law’ in English, German, and French legal thought. It shows that the role performed by this expression significantly varies across different governing regimes. Further, although a coherent formulation of the general concept can be devised, this formulation is entirely unworkable in practice and that, for this reason, the ‘rule of law’ cannot be conceived as a foundational concept in public law. Since its general and ambiguous character renders it peculiarly susceptible to being used for ideological purposes, it is suggested that the expression much be used carefully and that the extent to which its aspirational qualities can be realized in practice must remain a political achievement.
Potentia
Authors: Loughlin Martin 
Published: September 2010

AbstractAlthough the origins of potentia can be traced to the exercise of the king's prerogatives, its significance in the modern era has been altered out of all recognition. This came about because of a third revolution to have shaped public law: the disciplinary revolution which flowed from the Protestant Reformation. This establishes as the main objective of public law that of establishing a well-ordered commonwealth. The disciplinary revolution supplements the bourgeois revolutionary concern for the structure of government with a concern over its infrastructure and a consequential shift in orientation takes place: from input legitimacy (focusing on right ordering) towards output legitimacy (measured by effectiveness in service provision) — that is, a shift from potestas towards potentia. This chapter examines the origins and nature of the disciplinary revolution and considers its impact on the workings of modern government.
Introduction
Authors: Watson Gary 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis volume collects most of the author's publications on free will, agency, and responsibility. They chronicle an attempt to answer two complementary questions: ‘What makes us agents?’ and ‘What makes us responsible to one another for how we live our lives? ’ The author's answers to both questions appeal to our capacity for normative competence. We are agents because we have this capacity and to the extent that we exercise it; we are responsible to each other for our lives together as reflections of our exercise of this capacity. The volume groups these 12 essays according to three prominent themes: (1) one's own motivational states as possible impediments to one's freedom; (2) causal determination and reductive mechanism as alleged threats to freedom; and (3) the nature of responsibility.
Skepticism about Weakness of Will
Authors: Watson Gary 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter considers two sorts of scepticism about the possibility of knowingly acting against one's practical judgment, or weakness of will. The Socratic view that weak behaviour is impossible overlooks the truth that human beings are subject to different sources of motivation: evaluative judgments and mere desires. A second kind of scepticism targets the common view that the difference between weakness and compulsion is that weak agents give into desires which they could resist. The chapter proposes a different understanding of the phenomena, according to which weakness exhibits a culpable failure of self-control. Culpability here does not presume that the agent was at the time able to resist, but only that she is open to criticism for her lack of self-control. This account allows for a distinction between weak and compulsive behaviour that is consistent both with scepticism about resistibility, and with important judgments of responsibility.
The Work of the Will
Authors: Watson Gary 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter investigates the relation between the will — understood as the capacity for decision, or the active formation of intention — and the kind of practical commitment involved in deliberative judgment. The first part investigates two conceptions of this relation: internalism and externalism. The former takes the will to be necessarily guided by the good, and hence in the service of deliberative judgment. The latter argues that full-blooded agency requires the capacity to decide whether or not to be guided by judgment. While internalist views have notorious difficulties about akrasia, externalist views leave us in the dark about how the will can be reasons-responsive at all. The second part of the chapter argues that we are active in the formation of our judgments as well as our intentions. It follows that the province of agency is not bounded by the will.
Free Action and Free Will
Authors: Watson Gary 
Published: September 2010

AbstractRival conceptions of free agency can be understood as competing interpretations of the notions of self-determination and alternative possibilities, and the characteristic shape of the dialectic between compatibilists and incompatibilists can be understood in these terms. Compatibilism holds that self-determining action is action proceeding from an unencumbered will, and likewise freedom to do otherwise is dependency on the agent's will. Incompatibilists object that freedom requires not just dependency on the will but self-determination of the will. It is not clear, however, that any sense can be made of this requirement. This chapter spells out this dialectic by means of a distinction between explanatory and modal incompatibilism, concluding that if there is a coherent account of free agency, then it is compatible with a deterministic or mechanistic metaphysics. The options are compatibilism or scepticism.
Soft Libertarianism and Hard Compatibilism
Authors: Watson Gary 
Published: September 2010

AbstractBoth libertarians and compatibilists have tended to explain away the harder edges of their respective views. Libertarianism, we are assured by some of its advocates, requires no radical adjustment of our conception of agency and its place in nature. On the contrary, it looks as though libertarian agency requires nothing less than the capacity to be prime movers. In the same way, compatibilists have tended to downplay the difficulties of reconciling that doctrine to our self-conceptions. In particular, if compatibilism is true, then the exercise of our free agency across a lifetime might be completely the product of super agent authors of the life in which we are supposed to be authors. This chapter argues that this is a disturbing conclusion we should nonetheless accept. The main point, however, is that philosophical alternatives for those who would accommodate freedom are hard.
1 Moral Pyrrhonism and Noncognitivism
Authors: Kalderon Mark Eli 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter argues that moral acceptance is noncognitive. Specifically, moral acceptance centrally involves a certain kind of affect, what Scanlon (1998) describes as a desire in the directed attention sense. In accepting a moral sentence that he understands, a competent speaker reconfigures his affective sensibility so as to render salient, in a phenomenologically vivid manner, the moral reasons apparentlyavailable in the circumstance, as he understands it. In accepting a moral sentence that he understands, a competent speaker quite literally decides how he feels about things. It is the structure of a person's moral consciousness, and not some further fact, that constitutes the relevant kind of affect. The relevant affect is nothing over and above the tendency for certain features of the circumstance to become salient in perception, thought, and imagination, and for these to present a certain complex normative appearance.
4 Attitude, Affect, and Authority
Authors: Kalderon Mark Eli 
Published: September 2010

Abstract
This chapter argues that renewed moral inquiry might have a number of outcomes. At one end of the spectrum, a revision of moral practice is both theoretically and practically required. At the other end of the spectrum, no such revision is required. But there are interim possibilities. Perhaps moral practice would remain fictionalist even after a renewed moral inquiry but the character of the fiction would change. Perhaps, while benign moral fictionalism is a legitimate possibility, the moral fiction that competent speakers actually accept is not itself benign. Or perhaps the actual moral fiction is in many ways benign but renewed moral inquiry suggests ways in which that fiction could be improved. There is no telling, in advance, what such an inquiry would reveal.
Suffering, Theodicy, and Defense
Authors: Stump Eleonore 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter introduces the project of the book, which is an examination of the problem of evil and an attempt to give a defence with respect to the argument from evil. It examines the nature of suffering and considers what would be an appropriate response to the argument from evil based on suffering. It distinguishes theodicy from defence and presents the nature of the defence at issue in this book. It also begins the examination of the methodology to be used in the construction of a defence. In the process, the chapter discusses the views of Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen on the nature of a defence. It also considers the claims of sceptical theism that no defence is needed with regard to the problem of evil, and it supports the possibility of defence even if sceptical theism is correct, on the grounds that the religions under attack by the argument from evil accept the notion of divine revelation.
Union, Presence, and Omnipresence
Authors: Stump Eleonore 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter develops an account of union between persons. It begins by considering the relationship obtaining between personal presence and closeness between persons. It argues that many conditions are necessary for closeness between persons, and that closeness between persons is required for the most significant personal presence. The chapter shows that on Aquinas's moral psychology internal integration around the good is also necessary for closeness and thus for the most significant personal presence. Recent research in developmental psychology is also used in order to illuminate the nature of joint attention, and joint attention is shown to be necessary for significant personal presence as well.
The Story of Abraham: The Desires of the Heart
Authors: Stump Eleonore 
Published: September 2010

AbstractAbraham is an exemplar of a person who suffers because of what he has set his heart on. This chapter examines the problem of suffering in connection with the loss or deprivation of the desires of the heart. It concentrates on the biblical story of Abraham and gives a detailed philosophical examination of many parts of the story, but especially the part of the story involving the binding of Isaac. It argues against Kierkegaard's well-known interpretation of the story in Fear and Trembling, and suggests an alternative that emerges when the episode of the binding of Isaac is set in the whole context of Abraham's relations with the children he fathers and their mothers. So understood, the story illuminates the nature of faith as a response to the problem of suffering, and it sets a very high standard for acceptable solutions to the problem.
Theodicy in Another World
Authors: Stump Eleonore 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter uses the narratives in the preceding chapters as well as the worldview of Aquinas outlined in earlier chapters to present Aquinas's theodicy. Taken in the context of the biblical narratives and encompassed in Aquinas's whole worldview but especially his account of love, Aquinas's theodicy is the heart of the defence promised at the outset of the book. On Aquinas's theodicy, God is justified in allowing the suffering of a mentally fully functional adult human person by one or the other or both of two possible benefits, where Aquinas's scale of value is the measure of the benefits. For a person whose suffering is entirely involuntary, suffering is defeated in virtue of its contributing to warding off a greater harm for her. For a person whose suffering is involuntary only in a certain respect, suffering is defeated in virtue of its contributing to providing a greater good for her. The chapter concludes with an argument that Aquinas's theodicy is incomplete as it stands and in need of further development.
Referee Reports on Fitch's “A Definition of Value”
Authors: Church Alonzo 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter presents the earliest version of the knowability proof by Alonzo Church which appears in a 1945 referee report for the Journal of Symbolic Logic. Church anonymously conveyed the proof to Fitch. The proof had the effect of undermining a certain definition of ‘value’ that Fitch was articulating — a definition that is trivialized if there are unknowable truths. So the proof originates in a context that is very different from the one in which we discuss the proof today. We think of the knowability paradox today either as an all-too-quick refutation of anti-realism or as a logical collapse of apparently distinct philosophical commitments. Church offers a number of potentially promising ways to block the proof. He is most sympathetic to a rejection of closure principles for knowledge and belief, and a fortiori the principle that knowledge is closed under conjunction-elimination.
The Paradox of Knowability and the Mapping Objection
Authors: Rasmussen Stig Alstrup 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter further investigates and defends Dummett's newly favoured knowability principle, p→¬¬Kp. It discusses the ‘mapping objection’, which points out that Gödel's 1933 mapping of intuitionistic logic into S4 fails to preserve the original formulation of the knowability principle, and that this fact counts against the original formulation as an expression of intuitionistic anti-realism.
Truth, Indefinite Extensibility, and Fitch's Paradox
Authors: Bermúdez José Luis 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter argues that the Dummett (2001) position is well-motivated. The position restricts the knowability principle to atomic statements, and defines intuitionistic truth inductively from there. An instructive account of Dummett's development in (1990) and (1996) is offered. There Dummett attempts to clarify the notion of indefinite extensibility of such concepts as set, natural number, and real number, and argues that only intuitionistic logic can illuminate a proper understanding of the notion. If this is correct, then the Dummett (2001) theory of truth is well-motivated, and so, we have a principled solution to the knowability paradox.
Logical Types in Some Arguments about Knowability and Belief
Authors: Linsky Bernard 
Published: September 2010

AbstractOver the years a number of arguments have been formulated in elementary modal logic purporting to show that there are limits to what can be known or believed. These include the ‘Fitch’ style arguments that will be the main interest of this chapter, versions of the paradoxes of the ‘Surprise examination’ and the ‘Preface’, and several arguments against analyses of truth in terms of verifiability under ideal conditions. A use of iteration of operators and even apparent self-reference seems to reappear in various of these arguments and so one might wonder what exactly is common to these arguments and if that common element reveals something about their validity. In recent years, it has also been claimed that verificationism is subject to logical difficulties revealed by these arguments. It would be a challenge to verificationism to have a proof that some true sentences simply cannot be known, or believed, even by an idealized agent. The understanding of these arguments is thus a pressing issue for the verificationist program. Proposals for analyses of truth in terms of verification in ideal conditions also confront difficulties when one worries about the truth conditions for statements asserting that such ideal conditions do or do not obtain. There appears to be at least self-application of the theory of truth to its own preconditions. This chapter identifies the elements of ‘self-reference’ in these various arguments, distinguish self-reference proper from the use of iteration of operators expressing epistemic conditions, and then provide a uniform account of them making use of the idea of logical types of propositions.
Restriction Strategies for Knowability: Some Lessons in False Hope
Authors: Kvanvig Jonathan L. 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThe knowability paradox derives from a proof by Frederic Fitch in 1963. The proof purportedly shows that if all truths are knowable, it follows that all truths are known. Antirealists, wed as they are to the idea that truth is epistemic, feel threatened by the proof. For what better way to express the epistemic character of truth than to insist that all truths are knowable? Yet, if that insistence logically compels similar assent to some omniscience-like claim, antirealism is in jeopardy. Response to the paradox has drifted toward a common theme — a theme that this chapter argues is a non-starter in resolving the paradox. Seeing this point will also make clear the philosophical inadequacy of simply viewing the paradox as a refutation of a wide range of antirealisms.