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Articles 61 - 90 of 181

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

The Scientist As Impartial Judge: Moral Values In Duhem’S Philosophy Of Science, David J. Stump Jan 2011

The Scientist As Impartial Judge: Moral Values In Duhem’S Philosophy Of Science, David J. Stump

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Review "Anthropocentrism And The Continental Tradition: Calarco's Zoographies", Gerard Kuperus Jan 2011

Review "Anthropocentrism And The Continental Tradition: Calarco's Zoographies", Gerard Kuperus

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Some Forms Of Trust, Willem A. Devries Jan 2011

Some Forms Of Trust, Willem A. Devries

Philosophy

Three forms of trust: topic-focused trust, general trust, and personal trust are distinguished. Personal trust is argued to be the most fundamental form of trust, deeply connected with the construction of one’s self. Information technology has posed new problems for us in assessing and developing appropriate forms of the trust that is central to our personhood.


Fevered Desires And Interracial Intimacies In Jungle Fever, Ronald Sundstrom Jan 2011

Fevered Desires And Interracial Intimacies In Jungle Fever, Ronald Sundstrom

Philosophy

Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever centers on a sexual affair between a black man, Flipper, and a white, Italian American woman, Angela. This pairing centers on the type of interracial relationship and pairing (black man plus white woman) typically obsessed about in discussions of interracial romances. It is also the pairing offered by Left radicals, such as Frantz Fanon in Black Skins, White Masks (1952), as the prototype of racial revolution. The title of Julius Lester’s black nationalist classic Look Out, Whitey! Black Power’s Gonna Get Your Mama! (1969), dramatically illustrates this view. Lee’s Jungle Fever upsets this radical stance by …


Suffering, Pity And Friendship: An Aristotelian Reading Of Book 24 Of Homer’S Iliad, Marjolein Oele Nov 2010

Suffering, Pity And Friendship: An Aristotelian Reading Of Book 24 Of Homer’S Iliad, Marjolein Oele

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Mentalist Evidentialism Vindicated (And A Super-Blooper Epistemic Design Problem For Proper Function Justification), Todd R. Long Oct 2010

Mentalist Evidentialism Vindicated (And A Super-Blooper Epistemic Design Problem For Proper Function Justification), Todd R. Long

Philosophy

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to …


Peg Birmingham: Hannah Arendt And Human Rights: The Predicament Of Common Responsibility, Dianna Taylor Mar 2010

Peg Birmingham: Hannah Arendt And Human Rights: The Predicament Of Common Responsibility, Dianna Taylor

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Temporal Indiscriminateness: The Case Of Cluster Bombs, Thomas A. Cavanaugh Jan 2010

Temporal Indiscriminateness: The Case Of Cluster Bombs, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

This paper argues that the current stock of anti-personnel cluster bombs are temporally indiscriminate, and, therefore, unjust weapons. The paper introduces and explains the idea of temporal indiscriminateness. It argues that to honor non-combatant immunity—in addition to not targeting civilians—one must adequately target combatants. Due to their high dud rate, cluster submunitions fail to target combatants with sufficient temporal accuracy, and, thereby, result in avoidable serious harm to non-combatants. The paper concludes that non-combatant immunity and the principle of discrimination require a moratorium on the use of current cluster munitions.


On The Appropriateness Of A Christian Bioethics, Thomas A. Cavanaugh Jan 2010

On The Appropriateness Of A Christian Bioethics, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Professional Conscientious Objection In Medicine With Attention To Referral, Thomas A. Cavanaugh Jan 2010

Professional Conscientious Objection In Medicine With Attention To Referral, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


The Development Of The Role Of The Spectator In Kant’S Thinking: The Evolution Of The Copernican Revolution, Gerard Kuperus Jan 2010

The Development Of The Role Of The Spectator In Kant’S Thinking: The Evolution Of The Copernican Revolution, Gerard Kuperus

Philosophy

In this paper I discuss the development of Kant’s Critical project in the pre-critical writings. I am particularly focusing upon the problems that Kant encounters in developing the idea of a transcendental subject. This helps us to understand the radical nature of Kant’s project in which he not merely turns around the relationship between subject and object, but also has to redefine the nature of the subject. The development of the subject starts with Kant’s idea of an observer who actively determines qualities in the object (instead of passively taking it in). Ultimately the spectator becomes a subject that is …


Proper Function Justification And Epistemic Rationality, Todd R. Long Jan 2010

Proper Function Justification And Epistemic Rationality, Todd R. Long

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


A Proper De Jure Objection To The Epistemic Rationality Of Religious Belief, Todd R. Long Jan 2010

A Proper De Jure Objection To The Epistemic Rationality Of Religious Belief, Todd R. Long

Philosophy

I answer Alvin Plantinga’s challenge to provide a ‘proper’ de jure objection to religious belief. What I call the ‘sophisticates’ evidential objection’ (SEO) concludes that sophisticated Christians lack epistemic justification for believing central Christian propositions. The SEO utilizes a theory of epistemic justification in the spirit of the evidentialism of Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. I defend philosophical interest in the SEO (and its underlying evidentialism) against objections from Reformed epistemology, by addressing Plantinga’s criteria for a proper de jure objection, his anti-evidentialist arguments, and the relevance of ‘impulsional evidence’. I argue that no result from Plantinga-style Reformed epistemology precludes …


Quantum Mechanics And Ethical Antirealism: A Counter-Analogy To Boyd, Justin Lawson Jan 2010

Quantum Mechanics And Ethical Antirealism: A Counter-Analogy To Boyd, Justin Lawson

Philosophy

In his paper How to Be a Moral Realist Boyd attempts to show how cases of ethical indeterminacy can be accounted for from an ethical realist’s standpoint. Boyd describes cases of extensional vagueness in the life-sciences which arise from knowable and definite underlying structures and draws an analogy to ethics to argue his case. This paper argues that an equally compelling analogy can be drawn between another type of scientific indeterminacy – that in quantum mechanics – and the related ethical cases. Because quantum mechanical uncertainty (on the Copenhagen interpretation) is a real and not merely epistemic limitation on physical …


Ethics Of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers, Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, James Moor, John Weckert Jan 2010

Ethics Of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers, Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, James Moor, John Weckert

Philosophy

This paper presents the principal findings from a three-year research project funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) on ethics of human enhancement technologies. To help untangle this ongoing debate, we have organized the discussion as a list of questions and answers, starting with background issues and moving to specific concerns, including: freedom & autonomy, health & safety, fairness & equity, societal disruption, and human dignity. Each question-and answer pair is largely self-contained, allowing the reader to skip to those issues of interest without affecting continuity.


On The Value Of Philosophy: The Latin American Case, Manuel R. Vargas Jan 2010

On The Value Of Philosophy: The Latin American Case, Manuel R. Vargas

Philosophy

There is very little study of Latin American philosophy in the English-speaking philosophical world. This can sometimes lead to the impression that there is nothing of philosophical worth in Latin American philosophy or its history. The present article offers some reasons for thinking that this impression is mistaken, and indeed, that we ought to have more study of Latin American philosophy than currently exists in the English-speaking philosophical world. In particular, the article argues for three things: (1) an account of cultural resources that is useful for illuminating the fact of cultural differences and variations in cultural complexity, (2) a …


Ethics Of Human Enhancement: An Executive Summary, Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, Jesse Steinberg Dec 2009

Ethics Of Human Enhancement: An Executive Summary, Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, Jesse Steinberg

Philosophy

With multi-year funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), a team of researchers has just released a comprehensive report detailing ethical issues arising from human enhancement (Allhoff et al. 2009). While we direct the interested reader to that (much longer) report, we also thank the editors of this journal for the invitation to provide an executive summary thereof. This summary highlights key results from each section of that report and does so in a self-standing way; in other words, this summary presupposes no familiarity with the report and offers the opportunity to gain quick familiarity with its most central …


Ethics Of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers, Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, James Moor, John Weckert Aug 2009

Ethics Of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers, Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, James Moor, John Weckert

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Horror, Philip J. Kain May 2009

Horror, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Nietzsche's stature as a philosopher has risen dramatically since his death. His writings increasingly captivate philosophical readers. There are many reasons for this. One reason is the depth of his thought. Philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, or Hegel impress us with the scope and breadth of their thinking. Philosophers like Plato, Descartes, or Berkeley impress us with an original insight that they unfold and elaborate. Nietzsche is different. He thinks deeply. He digs beneath other philosophies. He forces us to look at traditional philosophical assumptions from a different angle. He undermines and subverts them. He opens up the possibility of thinking …


Revisionism About Free Will: A Statement And Defense, Manuel R. Vargas May 2009

Revisionism About Free Will: A Statement And Defense, Manuel R. Vargas

Philosophy

This article summarizes and extends the moderate revisionist position I put forth in Four Views on Free Will and responds to objections to it from Robert Kane, John Martin Fischer, Derk Pereboom, and Michael McKenna. Among the principle topics of the article are (1) motivations for revisionism, what it is, and how it is different from compatibilism and hard incompatibilism, (2) an objection to libertarianism based on the moral costs of its current epistemic status, (3) an objection to the distinctiveness of semicompatibilism against conventional forms of compatibilism and (4) whether moderate revisionism is committed to realism about moral responsibility.


Reasons And Real Selves, Manuel R. Vargas Jan 2009

Reasons And Real Selves, Manuel R. Vargas

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Aesthetic Sensibility And Political Praxis: Foucault, Lyotard And The Darfur Crisis, Anne Bartlett, Gerard Kuperus, Marjolein Oele Jan 2009

Aesthetic Sensibility And Political Praxis: Foucault, Lyotard And The Darfur Crisis, Anne Bartlett, Gerard Kuperus, Marjolein Oele

Philosophy

This paper develops insights from Foucault and Lyotard to examine the Darfur crisis and the transformative potential of spaces of alterity. We show that Foucault’s quest for an aesthetics of existence is an attempt to found an alternative form of ethics based on wakefulness, sensibility, and suspicion on the part of the subject. In the final part of the paper we link this idea to Lyotard’s sensibility of the sublime. We show how aesthetic sensibility can be transformed in a political sensibility which bears witness to political injustices that result from the incommensurability of different genres of discourse. We illustrate …


Robots In War: Issues Of Risk And Ethics, Patrick Lin, George A. Bekey, Keith Abney Jan 2009

Robots In War: Issues Of Risk And Ethics, Patrick Lin, George A. Bekey, Keith Abney

Philosophy

War robots clearly hold tremendous advantages-from saving the lives of our own soldiers, to safely defusing roadside bombs, to operating in inaccessible and dangerous environments such as mountainside caves and underwater. Without emotions and other liabilities on the battlefield, they could conduct warfare more ethically and effectively than human soldiers who are susceptible to overreactions, anger, vengeance, fatigue, low morale, and so on. But the use of robots, especially autonomous ones, raises a a host of ethical and risk issues. This paper offers a a survey of such emerging issues in this new but rapidly advancing area of technology.


Review Of Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, And Normalized Bodies And The Body Problematic: Political Imagination In Kant And Foucault, Dianna Taylor Jan 2009

Review Of Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, And Normalized Bodies And The Body Problematic: Political Imagination In Kant And Foucault, Dianna Taylor

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Nietzsche, Virtue, And The Horror Of Existence, Philip J. Kain Jan 2009

Nietzsche, Virtue, And The Horror Of Existence, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Robert Solomon argues that Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic like Aristotle's. Solomon’s approach seems unaware of Nietzsche’s belief in the horror of existence. A life that contains as much suffering as Nietzsche expects a life to contain, could not be considered a good life by Aristotle. To go further, as Nietzsche does in his doctrines of eternal recurrence and amor fati, to advocate loving such a fate, to refuse to change the slightest detail, Aristotle would find debased. Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic, but not an Aristotelian one.


Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, And Design, Patrick Lin, George Bekey, Keith Abney Dec 2008

Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, And Design, Patrick Lin, George Bekey, Keith Abney

Philosophy

No abstract provided.


Untangling The Debate: The Ethics Of Human Enhancement, Patrick Lin, Fritz Allhoff Dec 2008

Untangling The Debate: The Ethics Of Human Enhancement, Patrick Lin, Fritz Allhoff

Philosophy

Human enhancement, in which nanotechnology is expected to play a major role, continues to be a highly contentious ethical debate, with experts on both sides calling it the single most important issue facing science and society in this brave, new century. This paper is a broad introduction to the symposium herein that explores a range of perspectives related to that debate. We will discuss what human enhancement is and its apparent contrast to therapy; and we will begin to tease apart the myriad intertwined issues that arise in the debate: (1) freedom & autonomy, (2) health & safety, (3) fairness …


Against Unrestricted Human Enhancement, Patrick Lin, Fritz Allhoff May 2008

Against Unrestricted Human Enhancement, Patrick Lin, Fritz Allhoff

Philosophy

The defining debate in this new century will be about technology and human enhancement, according to many across the political spectrum. Our ability to use science to enhance our bodies and minds – as opposed to its application for therapeutic purposes – is one of the most personal and therefore passionate issues in an era where emerging technologies seduce us with new and fantastic possibilities for our future. But in the process, we are forced to rethink what it means to be human or, essentially, our own identity. For some, technology holds the promise of making us superhuman; for others, …


Language And Responsibility: The Possibilities And Problems Of Poetic Thinking For Environmental Philosophy, Eleanor D. Helms Apr 2008

Language And Responsibility: The Possibilities And Problems Of Poetic Thinking For Environmental Philosophy, Eleanor D. Helms

Philosophy

There is a sense in which poetry can re-inscribe humans in their natural surroundings, but language—even poetic language—is also always problematic. In conversation with and in response to recent works by David Abram, I will delineate at least two ways in which poetic language separates and distinguishes humans from nature. I also argue for the importance of what is implicit or invisible (as opposed to tangible and sensuous). Language is a mode of human responsibility for the world, not just a sign or result of being part of it.


Introduction: Nanotechnology, Society, And Ethics, Patrick Lin, Fritz Allhoff Apr 2008

Introduction: Nanotechnology, Society, And Ethics, Patrick Lin, Fritz Allhoff

Philosophy

No abstract provided.