A Letter From The Editor,
2017
Old Dominion University
A Letter From The Editor, Dale E. Miller
Philosophy Faculty Publications
I began to transition into the role of editor-in-chief of Utilitas in the spring of 2016 and fully assumed the position late in the summer. Since volume 29 will be the first for which I am entirely responsible, this seems like an appropriate juncture for me to say a few words about my plans for the journal.
A Transcendental Argument For Liberalism,
2017
University of San Diego
A Transcendental Argument For Liberalism, Samuel C. Rickless
San Diego Law Review
Liberalism is the view that the state should not, except on mutually justifiable grounds, coerce a society’s citizens to adopt, support, or follow some particular comprehensive conception of the good. So understood, a liberal state, by definition, permits each citizen a zone of freedom delimited by her own understanding of the ingredients of a happy life. Liberalism, as a normative theory governing state–citizen (and, indirectly, citizen–citizen) relations, is opposed by various forms of totalitarianism, including theocracy and communism. A theocratic state is one that imposes a particular religious form of life on its citizens, and thereby restricts their freedom to …
Alexander On Koppelman On Alexander,
2017
University of San Diego
Alexander On Koppelman On Alexander, Larry Alexander
San Diego Law Review
In my book Is There a Right of Freedom of Expression?, I argued that liberalism, to the extent it is defined by a commitment to freedom of illiberal speech, illiberal religions, and illiberal associations, is at its core paradoxical. For, I argued, if liberalism is the correct political philosophy, it must regard illiberal thought and its manifestations in action and policy as fundamentally mistaken. And these mistaken illiberal views cannot be deemed by the liberal to have value as views, except perhaps for whatever instructive value they might have in getting people to see the truth of liberalism. When such …
The Porn Myth: Exposing The Myth Behind The Fantasy Of Pornography By Matt Fradd,
2017
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, USA
The Porn Myth: Exposing The Myth Behind The Fantasy Of Pornography By Matt Fradd, Donald L. Hilton Jr.
Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence
No abstract provided.
Dignity, Rights, And The Role Of Consent In German Criminal Law,
2017
University of San Diego
Dignity, Rights, And The Role Of Consent In German Criminal Law, Kapsaski Ifigeneia
San Diego Law Review
This Article addresses the issue of protecting human dignity as a ground and a threshold for criminalization. Human dignity can be either a limit to the scope of criminal law or a reason that justifies criminalization. This inquiry will be conducted through the referral to two German cases regarding consensual conduct. The first concerns consensual maiming and killing of a person and the second concerns consensual incest between two adult siblings. This Article does not further examine questions on the ontology of consent; neither does it examine questions regarding validity of consent as rational and voluntary. The issue discussed here …
Why Liberal Tolerance, Rightly Understood, Is Coherent And Defensible,
2017
University of San Diego
Why Liberal Tolerance, Rightly Understood, Is Coherent And Defensible, William A. Galston
San Diego Law Review
One of the most familiar criticisms of liberal democracy is that it cannot defend itself against its enemies while remaining true to its principles. This criticism is odd as well as unjust because theorists regarded as arch-liberals offer compelling reasons to reject it. . .
An Unjust Dogma: Why A Special Right To Religion Wrongly Discriminates Against Non-Religious Worldviews,
2017
University of San Diego
An Unjust Dogma: Why A Special Right To Religion Wrongly Discriminates Against Non-Religious Worldviews, Kenneth Einar Himma
San Diego Law Review
In this Article, I will argue that a special right to religious freedom is not morally warranted, and that hence such a right illicitly discriminates against non-religious worldviews. The principal argument here is that there is no adequate reason to think that religious worldviews implicate any interests distinct from those implicated by non-religious worldviews. While it is certainly true that religious worldviews warrant, as a matter of political morality, all the protections that non-religious worldviews receive, there is good reason to question what seems to have become a dogma among Western nations—namely, that religious worldviews deserve special protection....
Unparadoxical Liberalism,
2017
University of San Diego
Unparadoxical Liberalism, Andrew Koppelman
San Diego Law Review
Larry Alexander argues that liberalism is internally incoherent because it contains a paradox: it is committed to toleration, but if it tolerates illiberal ideas and practices it betrays itself. The paradox does not exist. Liberalism aims to tolerate as much diversity as it can consistent with the preservation of the liberal project. It has distinctive reasons to tolerate illiberal ideas, since it aims to be adopted by the citizenry consciously and with a full understanding of the alternatives. How much diversity can, in practice, be tolerated is a contingent question dependent on the facts of any particular time and place. …
Liberalism And Tolerance,
2017
University of San Diego
Liberalism And Tolerance, William Voegeli
San Diego Law Review
I began by raising the possibility that tolerance is minor issue, having no bearing on whether liberalism works out or makes sense. I conclude by noting that it is a central question, for liberalism and politics in general. Tolerance is important because intolerance is important. “Anything Goes” is one of Cole Porter’s best songs, but is unlikely to become any country’s national anthem. The questions of what doesn’t go, and why, and how to prevent it from going any further, explain a great deal about the political ideologies of our era, as well as the premises on which social orders …
The Machiavellian Case Against Legal Moralism,
2017
University of San Diego
The Machiavellian Case Against Legal Moralism, Luis Pereira Coutinho
San Diego Law Review
In this paper, “legal moralism” is to be understood in a wide sense as the promotion, outright coercive, or otherwise, of conceptions of the good by the state—assuming in a Kelsenian way that any state action means legal action. Under consideration is the possibility of excluding the good from the bounds of the law under a theory of political right of Machiavellian origin. Anticipating the conclusion, this paper will seek to verify whether the Machiavellian case is the only one excluding the good from the bounds of the law in a coherent manner, regardless of its merits and the inherent …
Revisiting The Hart-Devlin Debate: At The Periphery And By The Numbers,
2017
University of San Diego
Revisiting The Hart-Devlin Debate: At The Periphery And By The Numbers, James Allan
San Diego Law Review
We are not yet at the stage when trying to say something new about the well-known Hart-Devlin debate is like attempting to give a novel take on the Old Testament, or on William Shakespeare’s plays—or life for that matter—or even on the music of The Beatles. But then again those analogies are not wholly misplaced, at least not within legal philosophical circles in the common law world. So I was tempted to try my hand at some other topic falling under the aegis of “legal moralism” and leave Professor Hart and Lord Justice Devlin well enough alone. However, for good …
Legal Moralism Revisited,
2017
University of San Diego
Legal Moralism Revisited, Michael S. Moore
San Diego Law Review
I shall use this occasion mostly to clarify what the legal moralist theory of criminal legislation proclaims to be the proper limits on the reach of criminalization of behavior. But preliminarily, here in this Introduction, I want to remind readers of how the principle is motivated. First, recall what a principle of criminal legislation is. It consists of two closely related items. First of all, it is a principle that sets forth the proper aims of a legislature when that legislature drafts the prohibitions and requirements that constitute the “special part” of the substantive criminal law. It is, second, a …
The Harm Principle, Legal Moralism, And The "Disintegration Thesis": On Lord Devlin Being Unable To Keep Playing The Smuggling Game,
2017
University of San Diego
The Harm Principle, Legal Moralism, And The "Disintegration Thesis": On Lord Devlin Being Unable To Keep Playing The Smuggling Game, Miguel Nogueira De Brito
San Diego Law Review
The topic of the legal enforcement of morals, understood as the “question of the legitimacy of ‘vice crimes’ or ‘victimless crimes,’” is a special facet of the more general issue of the limits of the law. It is the subject of the long-standing debate as to whether law—all law—can be used as a support for moral conceptions as such, or, more generally, whether there are limits on the use of law to enforce morality, as when it is claimed that the law must remain neutral as between different views of the good, be they religious or otherwise. Whether understood in …
Searching For Ethics’ Grounding: A Case For Moral Feeling And The Human Relationship To Nature,
2017
Eastern Michigan University
Searching For Ethics’ Grounding: A Case For Moral Feeling And The Human Relationship To Nature, Katie Coulter
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy
The following essay considers the question of how ethical and moral theories are possible in conjunction with the “death of God” as conceptualized by Nietzsche and other continental thinkers. I argue that ethical and moral action become possible through, and require, a deep affective experience of something as having absolute value, and that this kind of experience of absolute value can be found in human beings’ relationship with nature. Using the work of Bernard Williams and John Russon, I argue that the climate crisis facing the planet makes apparent this relationship, and makes possible a particular kind of affective response …
Solving Frege’S Substitution Puzzle: Analyzing It In Light Of Descriptivism And Direct Reference Theory,
2017
City College of New York
Solving Frege’S Substitution Puzzle: Analyzing It In Light Of Descriptivism And Direct Reference Theory, Ayesha Rehman
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy
Although replacing one proper name with another that refers to the same person does not change the truth-value of a declarative statement, it affects the truth-value of propositional attitude reports, which are cognitive relations that people hold towards propositions. Frege’s Substitution Puzzle about propositional attitude reports essentially asks an important question: if two proper names co-refer in a certain linguistic community, then why does their intersubstitutability produce propositional attitude reports (that contain those proper names) with opposite truth-values? This paper attempts to explain how Description Theory of Names and Direct Reference Theory, two theories of proper names, solve Frege’s Substitution …
Predicting The Truth: Overcoming Problems With Poppers Verisimilitude Through Model Selection Theory,
2017
Washington State University
Predicting The Truth: Overcoming Problems With Poppers Verisimilitude Through Model Selection Theory, K. Raleigh Hanson
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy
The purpose of this research is to investigate the possibility of using aspects of model selection theory to overcome both a logical problem and an epistemic problem that prevents progress towards the truth being measured while maintaining a realist approach to science. Karl Popper began such an investigation into the problem of progress in 1963 with the idea of verisimilitude, but his attempts failed to meet his own criteria, the logical and epistemic problems, for a metric of progress. Although philosophers have attempted to fix Popper’s verisimilitude, none have seemed to overcome both criteria yet. My research analyzes the similarities …
Minds And Bodies: Early Modern Social Justice,
2017
Eastern Michigan University
Minds And Bodies: Early Modern Social Justice, Clare Áine Keefer
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy
In A Serious Proposal to the Ladies parts I and II, Mary Astell argues that social conditioning impacts women’s self-image in such a way as to prevent them from striving for scholarly achievement. Astell’s solution is to allow women to withdraw from society into dedicated schools for women and by women, as an alternative to marriage and family life. In this paper, I will explore some of the implications of that argument, how it might be expanded to other marginalized populations, and argue that despite Astell’s proposed solution being proven to create at least as many problems as it solves, …
No Soft Doctrine: Royce On The Problem Of Evil,
2017
Grand Valley State University
No Soft Doctrine: Royce On The Problem Of Evil, Brandon Wright
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy
Because of the ubiquity of evil, religious systems, which aim to influence the way we live our lives, must answer three questions: what is evil, why does evil exist, and how can we eliminate, or at least manage, evil? Call this the broad problem of evil, as opposed to the traditional narrow problem of evil. I reconstruct the answer to the broad problem of evil found in Josiah Royce’s later writings in the second section of this paper. Then, I explain why traditional theodicies are deficient answers to the narrow problem of evil. I argue that Royce’s answer to the …
The Science Of Communication: A Bayesian Account Of Communication Strategy Selection,
2017
Eastern Michigan University
The Science Of Communication: A Bayesian Account Of Communication Strategy Selection, Danielle Clevenger
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy
This paper will detail how Bayesian epistemology, traditionally a tool of philosophers of science, can be used to select a method of communication that is most likely to produce a desired communication goal from a targeted subject. Using the frame of Bayes’ Theorem in the form of Posterior Probability Ratios, it will show how a communicator, focusing on agency and awareness, can use said frame to deliberately and purposefully select an evidentially favored communication strategy, intended to elicit a certain response from the respondent. By translating the epistemic version of Bayes’ Theorem into a communication setting, this strategy presents an …
The Purpose, Praxis, And Future Of Academia: Fichtean Approaches To Education,
2017
Harper College
The Purpose, Praxis, And Future Of Academia: Fichtean Approaches To Education, Eri Svenson
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy
Following the publication of Schulze’s “Aenesidemus”, which detailed a skeptical critique of transcendental idealism, philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte found himself undergoing an “intellectual revolution”. Having agreed with many of Schulze’s arguments, he concluded that to preserve the spirit of Kantianism he would have to establish a foundationally reworked conceptualization of it. Fichte emerged from this process with a framework grounded upon the innovative claim that we should regard that there is nothing for us beyond our own consciousness, which creates both ourselves, and the world that we experience. Furthermore, because we create our own experiences, it is possible for us …
