bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Platonic Love
Authors: Irwin Terence 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The main goal of chapter 18 is to emphasise the importance of love in the Republic but also more generally in Plato’s ethics. To begin with, it is considered how love is able to fill the gap between the rational and the irrational part of the soul. Thus, it is shown how love can be the key element to link self-regarding and other-regarding virtues. Finally, how love allows Plato to consider justice as a non-instrumental good is investigated.
Introduction: Philosophical Skepticism and Pyrrhonism
Authors: Fogelin Robert J. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The introduction offers a brief sketch of Pyrrhonian skepticism as it is presented in the works of Sextus Empiricus, and of competing interpretations of the scope of the Pyrrhonian doubt. Using terms derived from Galen, some read Sextus as a rustic skeptic, others read him as an urbane skeptic. On the rustic interpretation adopted by Jonathan Barnes, Miles Burnyeat, and others, the goal of Pyrrhonism is to attain suspension of belief on all matters, including the beliefs of everyday life. On the urbane reading given by Michael Frede, the target of skeptical doubt is limited to dogmatic philosophizing and closely related activities. Arguments are presented for adopting the urbane interpretation – the perspective from which this work is written.
Epistemic Grace
Authors: Fogelin Robert J. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Having completed the examination of competing accounts of how knowledge claims function, this chapter returns to and elaborates the account presented of them in Ch. 1. In our everyday use of knowledge claims, we rely on justificatory procedures that we have learned. Looking things up is an obvious example. Doubts also take place within justificatory procedures. We doubt things because they fail to meet certain standards. Three sorts of doubt are distinguished: hyperbolic doubts, eliminable but impractical doubts, and eliminable legitimate doubts. In daily life, we operate at the third or lowest level of scrutiny. When engaged in doing epistemology, however, philosophers tend to operate at the two higher levels of scrutiny with the result that they encounter Gettier problems or wind up in skepticism. This sets the stage for Part 2 in which various responses to skepticism are examined.
Some Advantages of Virtue Ethics
Authors: Slote Michael 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Our commonsense thinking about the virtues has certain advantages over Kantian ethics and commonsense morality narrowly conceived. The latter two are committed to a self‐other asymmetry with respect to moral goodness and rightness: what harms the agent is not treated as morally criticizable in the way that what harms other people is. By contrast, our ordinary understanding of virtues allows for both self‐benefiting and other‐benefiting virtues, and what harms or is likely to harm the agent counts against his or her possession of the virtue of prudence as much as what is likely to harm others counts against his or her having the virtue of benevolence or kindness. But to treat what harms the agent as irrelevant to our deepest or most important ethical evaluations downgrades or devalues the agent himself or herself, and this criticism, while not applying to our ordinary thought about the virtues, does hold against both Kantianism and commonsense morality.
Two Kinds of Intrinsic Goodness
Authors: Slote Michael 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Two different kinds of intrinsic goodness are often conflated. A state of affairs can be intrinsically good (e.g. the virtuous being happy), but certain things can be intrinsically good for a person, a constitutive element in his or her welfare. These notions do not come together, as Kant's example of the prosperous but evil individual manifestly indicates: intuitively, such a state of affairs is in itself intrinsically bad but is nonetheless intrinsically good for, i.e. beneficial to, the prosperous individual. Any virtue ethics needs to keep these concepts distinct.
A Derivation of Consequentialism
Authors: Cummiskey David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter argues that consequentialism provides a natural and straightforward interpretation of the formula of the end‐in‐itself. We treat rational nature as an end, and not a mere means, by promoting, first, the conditions necessary for the flourishing of rational nature and, second, the conditions necessary for the realization of the permissible ends of others. Although it is commonplace to assume that deontological constraints treat humanity as an end‐in‐itself, in fact, Kant provides no argument at all for agent‐centered or agent‐relative constraints on the maximization of agent‐neutral value. Indeed, Kant's argument (developed in Ch. 4) for the conclusion that rational nature is an end‐in‐itself just as easily implies that we should maximize the realization of morally objective ends. We must thus look elsewhere in Kant's theory for the promised refutation of consequentialism.
Introduction
Authors: Annas Julia 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The book's methodology is set out: we must be critically aware of the theoretical assumptions we bring to the study of ancient ethics, or we risk importing anachronism. The limits of the ancient evidence should also be respected. We must also be aware of the structures of modern ethical theories and prepared to find that ancient theories differ. The ancient traditions and their major sources are listed: Aristotle, Stoics, Sceptics, Cyrenaics, Epicurus and hybrid theories.
The Virtues
Authors: Annas Julia 
Published: October 2003

AbstractVirtue in ancient ethics is discussed from several perspectives. Virtues are dispositions with an affective aspect, involving the emotions, and an intellectual aspect, involving the development of practical reasoning and raising the issue of the unity of the virtues. The development of virtue may involve imitation of role models, or following rules and principles. The relation of virtue to right action and to supererogation is explored, as is the book's claim that virtue can be taken as the focus of what modern theories take to be morality.
Problems of Structure
Authors: Nagel Thomas 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe main influence of the personal standpoint in determining acceptability concerns the character of individual life within the framework of the basic structure – how personal aims, interests, and commitments are left free to influence the conduct of life. If the personal standpoint could be satisfactorily accommodated for each individual in this domain, it might be possible to neutralize any further claims made by those with advantages in favor of a basic structure under which they would fare better than they could under a strongly egalitarian system. However, the problem of individual motivation remains a pressing obstacle for the impersonal desire for equality.
Rights
Authors: Nagel Thomas 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
In contrast to the difficulties faced by the pursuit of equality, the protection for each individual of a sphere of personal autonomy is the object of a well‐developed and effective tradition of ethical and institutional design. Its main resource is the definition and protection of individual rights. The recognition of a system of rights is a moral and social practice that permits some of the relations between persons to be governed by pure procedural justice (i.e., whatever outcomes result from the interaction of people who do not violate those rights are regarded as morally acceptable). Other values besides autonomy or individuality itself influence the design of such practices, and some rights are, to an important extent, instrumental in their justification.
Limits: The World
Authors: Nagel Thomas 
Published: October 2003

AbstractIt is a consequence of this account of political legitimacy that legitimate government will not always be possible. If fundamental interests or values are too radically opposed, it may be impossible to find enough common impartial motivation to support a framework within which all reasonable parties must agree they should be resolved. The license individuals have to concentrate on their own lives and those they specially care about is morally unproblematic, only if they can exercise it in the context of a just social order, which gives expression to their moral impersonal motives without encroaching unacceptably on the personal domain.
Value
Authors: Richardson John 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter examines Nietzsche's values and weighs the extent to which these do and do not break radically from the values of his philosophical predecessors. I try to specify how his stance “beyond good and evil” involves critiques both of the content of earlier values, and of their force. His disagreements over content raise troubling questions about his politics (in his promotion of inequality and rank order) and his ethics (in his stress on “having enemies,” and in his infamous views about women). His disagreements over the force of earlier values raise metaethical questions about how he can propose any values, given e.g., his denials of free will and of the efficacy of reflective consciousness. The chapter offers answers to these problems about his values.
Postwar Instability
Authors: Eichengreen Barry 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe chapter covers the postwar boom and slump, which provided a first indication of how radically the environment had changed since before World War I, although contemporaries did not appreciate its lessons adequately. The different sections of the chapter look at the transition to generalized floating of exchange rates, the postwar boom and the postwar slump (1919–1921), and the aftermath of these.
Crisis and Opportunity
Authors: Eichengreen Barry 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis is the third of three chapters that consider the operation of the reconstructed gold standard system following World War I. It describes the desperate attempts of policy makers to defend the gold standard and analyzes their role in aggravating the Great Depression. At the same time, it suggests that the collapse of the system provided new opportunities for constructive action. The Chinese character for ‘crisis’ combines the symbols for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’, and the point made in this chapter (Crisis and Opportunity) is much the same. The different sections of the chapter look at the links between domestic and international financial systems, the Austrian crisis of 1931 (which led, in effect, to it no longer being part of the gold standard system), the spread of the crisis to other countries, the abandonment of the gold standard by Britain, and the implications – which were that the stage had now been set for the collapse of the gold standard system.
Equality: Abilities and Marginal Utility
Authors: Hurka Thomas 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Some versions of perfectionism, e.g., Plato's and Nietzsche's, are antiegalitarian, but this is often because of claims about desert or maximax aggregation, which the best perfectionism rejects. And this perfectionism can give at least qualified support to distributive equality by arguing that people's natural abilities are fairly close to equal and that there is diminishing marginal utility of resources, in that these are more important for enabling moderate perfection than for allowing improvements from there to the highest heights. Both these empirical claims are made more plausible by the Aristotelian values defended earlier in the book, especially those involving formal measures of theoretical and practical perfection.
The Nature of Necessity, Chapter VIII
Authors: Plantinga Alvin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The Classical Argument for possible nonexistent objects depends on both the possibility of singular negative existentials and the Ontological Principle. The Ontological Principle is the principle that any world in which a singular proposition is true, is one in which there is such a thing as its subject, or in which its subject has being if not existence. In this chapter, I show that the Ontological Principle is false and that whatever plausibility it enjoys is explained by the truth of a similar principle, namely, the Restricted Ontological Principle (which is the Ontological Principle applied only to predicative singular propositions). Thus, the Classical Argument fails. Moreover, I give an account of how fictional names function in order to show that statements about fictional subjects, for example, “Othello is a Moor”, do not express predicative singular propositions.
On Existentialism
Authors: Plantinga Alvin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Existentialism is the claim that quidditative properties and singular propositions are ontologically dependent upon the individuals they involve. In this essay, I consider two arguments for existentialism and find them both unconvincing. I then give an argument against the existential thesis that singular propositions are ontologically dependent on contingent objects. I conclude the essay by defending my argument against potential existentialist objections. In the process, I defend the claim that serious actualism – i.e., the view that no object could have had a property without existing – is true.
Why Propositions Cannot Be Concrete
Authors: Plantinga Alvin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
In this chapter, a segment from my book Warrant and Proper Function, I argue that propositions cannot be concrete objects. In particular, I examine various ways in which the concretist might explain what it is for a proposition to be possible or necessary. I then demonstrate that the concretist is forced either to count far too many propositions as necessary or hold that blatant contradictions are possible. I conclude the chapter by suggesting that abstract objects, such as propositions, can stand in causal relations. Thus, the fact that propositions are not concrete does not entail the falsity of the causal requirement – i.e., the requirement that a knower stands in a causal relation to the object of knowledge.
Living High and Letting Die: A Puzzle About Behavior Toward People in Great Need
Authors: Unger Peter 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis chapter examines both the nature of our Basic Moral Values and the disagreement between Preservationists and Liberationists on when it is wrong not to aid. Basic Moral Values divide into primary values and secondary values: whereas the former specify what our moral motivations should be when we deliberate about what we morally ought to do, the latter point to our epistemic responsibility to know certain nonmoral facts about our situation when deliberating about what we morally ought to do. When our responses to different moral cases depend upon the conspicuousness to us of another's suffering, these responses reflect little about our Basic Moral Values. Our intuitions for such cases promote a distorted conception of our primary values. When this distortion is rectified, we may appreciate the Liberationist claim that it is as wrong not to alleviate distant suffering as it is not to lessen nearby or conspicuous suffering.
Between Some Rocks and Some Hard Places: On Causing and Preventing Serious Loss
Authors: Unger Peter 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The distortional psychological tendencies that promote misleading responses to moral cases not linked to lessening distant suffering are difficult to identify given the complexities in accounting for our responses to cases of ethically serious causal conflict. This difficulty lessens when we consider several‐option moral problems with at least two ‘active’ options rather than classic two‐option cases like the trolley problem, which distinguish between initiating and allowing. The features of several‐option cases liberate us from the influence of constraining factors that inhibit us from responding positively to loss‐lessening behavior. Whereas these highly subjective constraining factors, like protophysical thinking and projective separating, generate distorted moral responses, their positive counterparts, like projective grouping, show that since each person whom an agent's conduct might affect has an equal claim on his or her conduct, by his or her conduct there must occur the least serious suffering possible.
Heaven, Morality, and the Meaning of Life
Authors: Walls Jerry L. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
It is argued that naturalistic views of reality undermine both morality and meaning – naturalism has difficulty not only in making sense of altruism but also in providing us with deeply persuasive moral motivation, motivation that is not only sustained in the face of reflective awareness but is even strengthened by it. Reflective awareness in this sense requires an understanding of morality in relation to basic ontological commitments, ranging from cosmology to what one believes about the ultimate origin and nature of moral feelings. To sustain deeply persuasive motivation in the light of reflective awareness requires a rationally convincing account of obligation, and without this sort of moral motivation, life loses much of its depth of meaning; conversely, without depth of meaning, moral motivation suffers. By contrast with naturalism, it is shown how orthodox Christian faith, particularly in its doctrine of heaven, both underwrites morality and charges our lives with depth of meaning. It provides resources that allow us to be fully, rationally reflective in our commitment to the moral life, and explains why we are genuinely obligated to do what is right, and why any rational person should be moral.
Cartesian Truth
Authors: Vinci Thomas C. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Written in the tradition of analytic reconstruction, Cartesian Truth provides a systematic reinterpretation of central themes in Descartes's epistemology, metaphysics and ontology, theory of perception, both philosophical and empirical, logic, and doctrine of method. For example, it shows how the intuitive and syllogistic aspects of the cogito relate to one another and that Descartes's case for substance dualism depends on the intuitive cogito. It further argues that Descartes employs a single pattern of reasoning based on the ”rule of truth” in all of his major existential proofs, including the proofs of his own existence, God, and the external world; that the rule of truth can be regarded as a conservative extension of the intuitive cogito. Grounded in a reinterpretation of the theory of ideas and Descartes's notion of cause, a case is made that the causal principle of the objective reality of our ideas can be regarded as a reformulation of the rule of truth. The book also provides a detailed reconstruction of Descartes's doctrine of sense perception, including the difficult doctrine of the material falsity of ideas of the senses (”secondary qualities”) but also arguing that Descartes countenances a phenomenological dimension to the sense experience of primary qualities that he attributes to the faculty of imagination, and that the phenomenology is influenced by reasoning and undergoes development from the experience of the child to that of the adult. A case is made that the phenomenology of experience provides material for the systematic errors of commonsense; but a case is also made that the senses and the imagination provide not only material for error but a sensory foundationalism expressed in the notion (explicitly formulated for the first time in the Principles of Philosophy) of clear but not distinct ideas of the senses. An error theory is an important tool in the inventory of revisionary philosophers, more dialectically potent than Descartes's method of doubt as traditionally understood. In the context of contemporary epistemology, the author shows how Cartesian error theory can function as part of a notion of epistemic responsibility in an effective method for dealing with claims of dogmatic opponents, in a way well illustrated by Descartes's own use of the method against his scholastic and commonsense realist opponents.
Self Knowledge and the Rule of Truth
Authors: Vinci Thomas C. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Basic Cartesian intuitions are directed at simple natures, not truths; but intuitions are also a foundation for propositional knowledge. There are two basic objectives of this chapter: (1) to show how Descartes gets from intuitions to propositional knowledge, and (2) to show how his solution to this problem structures his thinking on the main issues in Cartesian epistemology. I maintain that the solution to (1) is to be found in the principle if we perceive the presence of an attribute A, there must be an actually existing substance to which A is attributed. This principle gets its clearest expression in the Principles of Philosophy but also appears in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind and in the Meditations where, I argue, it appears in the form of the Rule of Truth. I show how this principle is derived from the cogito, understood both as inference and as intuition, how this principle plays a role in Descartes theory of consciousness and self‐knowledge, in the case for substance dualism, and in the theory of clear and distinct ideas.
Why Is Death Bad?
Authors: Kamm F. M. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Examines the question of why death is bad: is it bad for the person who dies, and, if so, why? The question of what the scientific criteria should be for the person who dies is dealt with later in the book. The discussion is based on an assumption that death is painless, not untimely, and involves no afterlife or return to life, only posthumous non‐existence; it also assumes that the concern is with why death is bad for the person who dies rather than any people who remain alive, and that even if everyone died at once, something worse has happened to each person than would have happened if that person and everyone else had lived instead. The approach taken to the question by Epicurus (How can death be bad for anyone at all?) and Thomas Nagel's response to this (his ‘Deprivation Account’) are examined, and then various criticisms of Nagel's approach are presented and discussed. Additional objections to Nagel's approach are considered in the next chapter.
Accounting for Asymmetry?
Authors: Kamm F. M. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Offers a final proposal on the two questions of the question of why death is bad, and whether it is worse than prenatal non‐existence (the asymmetry thesis); it is concerned with whether there are properties observable from a view outside life, rather from within it, that help explain why death is worse than prenatal non‐existence, and if so, whether these properties must make non‐existence‐in‐the‐future different from non‐existence‐in‐the‐past in ways other than just that it is in the future. The chapter is also concerned with what more we can say about the fact, or beliefs about the fact, that something exists in the future that will help illuminate the explanatory role of this fact. Many of the factors that may explain why death is really worse depend on asymmetries related to time: the (supposed) fact that causation has a direction (forward), so that the past affects the future, but the future does not affect the past; the (supposed) fact that there is a direction in time, from past to future; and the fact that there is a before and after in the passage of time. However, some of these features may not be objective at all, rather, they may be features of the subjective view of those who are observing another's life from the outside, and if this were so, the asymmetrical features dependent on the asymmetries related to time and causation might explain the asymmetrical attitude, but they might not justify it. The chapter comes to focus on three factors: the Insult Factor, that death happens to a person who has already existed and undoes him; the Future Deprivation Factor, that death deprives the person who dies of significant future goods (the Thomas Nagel/Derek Parfit point); and the Extinction Factor, that death means the possibility of anything significant for the person in the future is over.