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Articles 121 - 150 of 159

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy Of Value, Brian G. Henning Jun 2005

Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy Of Value, Brian G. Henning

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Peirce: Underdetermination, Agnosticism, And Related Mistakes, P.D. Magnus Feb 2005

Peirce: Underdetermination, Agnosticism, And Related Mistakes, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

There are two ways that we might respond to the underdetermination of theory by data. One response, which we can call the agnostic response, is to suspend judgment: “Where scientific standards cannot guide us, we should believe nothing”. Another response, which we can call the fideist response, is to believe whatever we would like to believe: “If science cannot speak to the question, then we may believe anything without science ever contradicting us”. C.S. Peirce recognized these options and suggested evading the dilemma. It is a Logical Maxim, he suggests, that there could be no genuine underdetermination. This is no …


Did The Ancient Greeks Have A Concept Of Human Rights?, Anthony Preus Jan 2005

Did The Ancient Greeks Have A Concept Of Human Rights?, Anthony Preus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

"Although there is no single word in the classical Greek that captures the sense that modern political thinkers give to the word "rights" as it is used in the phrase "human rights," classical Greek and Roman texts have a good deal to contribute to 21st-century discussions of human rights."


Payment For Egg Donation And Surrogacy, Bonnie Steinbock Sep 2004

Payment For Egg Donation And Surrogacy, Bonnie Steinbock

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the ethics of egg donation. It begins by looking at objections to noncommercial gamete donation, and then takes up criticism of commercial egg donation. After discussing arguments based on concern for offspring, inequality, commodification, exploitation of donors, and threats to the family, I conclude that some payment to donors is ethically acceptable. Donors should not be paid for their eggs, but rather they should be compensated for the burdens of egg retrieval. Making the distinction between compensation for burdens and payment for a product has the advantages of limiting payment, not distinguishing between donors on the basis …


Realist Ennui And The Base Rate Fallacy, P.D. Magnus, Craig Callender Jul 2004

Realist Ennui And The Base Rate Fallacy, P.D. Magnus, Craig Callender

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The no‐miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much‐discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent ‘wholesale’ arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists and anti‐realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer …


The Price Of Insisting That Quantum Mechanics Is Complete, P.D. Magnus Jun 2004

The Price Of Insisting That Quantum Mechanics Is Complete, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The Bare Theory was offered by David Albert as a way of standing by the completeness of quantum mechanics in the face of the measurement problem. This paper surveys objections to the Bare Theory that recur in the literature: what will here be called the oddity objection, the coherence objection, and the context-of-the-universe objection. Critics usually take the Bare Theory to have unacceptably bizarre consequences, but to be free from internal contradiction. Bizarre consequences need not be decisive against the Bare Theory, but a further objection—dubbed here the calibration objection—has been underestimated. This paper argues that the Bare Theory is …


Reid’S Dilemma And The Uses Of Pragmatism, P.D. Magnus Mar 2004

Reid’S Dilemma And The Uses Of Pragmatism, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Peter Baumann offers the tantalizing suggestion that Thomas Reid is almost, but not quite, a pragmatist. He motivates this claim by posing a dilemma for common sense philosophy: Will it be dogmatism or scepticism? Baumann claims that Reid points to but does not embrace a pragmatist third way between these unsavory options. If we understand ‘pragmatism’ differently than Baumann does, however, we need not be so equivocal in attributing it to Reid. Reid makes what we could call an argument from practical commitment, and this is plausibly an instance of what William James calls the pragmatic method.


Stoic Emotion, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 2004

Stoic Emotion, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Underdetermination And The Problem Of Identical Rivals, P.D. Magnus Dec 2003

Underdetermination And The Problem Of Identical Rivals, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

If two theory formulations are merely different expressions of the same theory, then any problem of choosing between them cannot be due to the underdetermination of theories by data. So one might suspect that we need to be able to tell distinct theories from mere alternate formulations before we can say anything substantive about underdetermination, that we need to solve the problem of identical rivals before addressing the problem of underdetermination. Here I consider two possible solutions: Quine proposes that we call two theories identical if they are equivalent under a reconstrual of predicates, but this would mishandle important cases. …


Williamson On Knowledge And Psychological Explanation, P.D. Magnus, Jonathan Cohen Oct 2003

Williamson On Knowledge And Psychological Explanation, P.D. Magnus, Jonathan Cohen

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

According to many philosophers, psychological explanation canlegitimately be given in terms of belief and desire, but not in termsof knowledge. To explain why someone does what they do (so the common wisdom holds) you can appeal to what they think or what they want, but not what they know. Timothy Williamson has recently argued against this view. Knowledge, Williamson insists, plays an essential role in ordinary psychological explanation.Williamson's argument works on two fronts.First, he argues against the claim that, unlike knowledge, belief is``composite'' (representable as a conjunction of a narrow and a broadcondition). Belief's failure to be composite, Williamson thinks, …


Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction In Ethical Theory, Brian G. Henning Oct 2003

Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction In Ethical Theory, Brian G. Henning

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Success, Truth, And The Galilean Strategy, P.D. Magnus Sep 2003

Success, Truth, And The Galilean Strategy, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Philip Kitcher develops the Galilean Strategy to defend realism against its many opponents. I explore the structure of the Galilean Strategy and consider it specifically as an instrument against constructive empiricism. Kitcher claims that the Galilean Strategy underwrites an inference from success to truth. We should resist that conclusion, I argue, but the Galilean Strategy should lead us by other routes to believe in many things about which the empiricist would rather remain agnostic.


Underdetermination And The Claims Of Science, P.D. Magnus Mar 2003

Underdetermination And The Claims Of Science, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The underdetermination of theory by evidence is supposed to be a reason to rethink science. It is not. Many authors claim that underdetermination has momentous consequences for the status of scientific claims, but such claims are hidden in an umbra of obscurity and a penumbra of equivocation. So many various phenomena pass for `underdetermination' that it's tempting to think that it is no unified phenomenon at all, so I begin by providing a framework within which all these worries can be seen as species of one genus: A claim of underdetermination involves (at least implicitly) a set of rival theories, …


Reliability On The Crowded Net: Finding The Truth In A Web Of Deceit, P.D. Magnus Jan 2001

Reliability On The Crowded Net: Finding The Truth In A Web Of Deceit, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

On-line, just as off-line, there are ways of assessing the credibility of information sources. The Internet, although it arguably makes for nothing wholly new in this regard, complicates the ordinary task of assessing credibility. In the first section, I consider a specific example and argue that Internet contentproviders have no clear interest in resolving these comlications. In the second, I consider four general ways that we might assess credibility and explore how they apply to life online. Finally, I argue that even careful information gathering may pose subtle pitfalls but that some of these may be mitigated on-line.


The Good Of Agency, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 2000

The Good Of Agency, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Disability, Strategic Action, And Reciprocity, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 2000

Disability, Strategic Action, And Reciprocity, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Stoic Children, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1998

Stoic Children, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Trust As Noncognitive Security About Motives, Lawrence C. Becker Oct 1996

Trust As Noncognitive Security About Motives, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Deserving To Own Intellectual Property, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1993

Deserving To Own Intellectual Property, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Good Lives: Prolegomena, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1992

Good Lives: Prolegomena, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Community, Dominion, And Membership, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1992

Community, Dominion, And Membership, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Unity, Coincidence, And Conflict In The Virtues, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1990

Unity, Coincidence, And Conflict In The Virtues, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Ideal Taxation, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1989

Ideal Taxation, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Are External Reasons Impossible?, Rachel Cohon Apr 1986

Are External Reasons Impossible?, Rachel Cohon

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Property Rights And Social Welfare, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1985

Property Rights And Social Welfare, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Free-Rider Problem, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1983

The Free-Rider Problem, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Against The Supposed Difference Between Historical And End-State Theories, Lawrence C. Becker Mar 1982

Against The Supposed Difference Between Historical And End-State Theories, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Priority Of Human Interests, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1982

The Priority Of Human Interests, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Individual Rights, Lawrence C. Becker Jan 1982

Individual Rights, Lawrence C. Becker

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Aristotle And Michael Of Ephesus On The Movement And Progression Of Animals Translated, With Introduction And Notes [Translation Of Studien Und Materialen Zur Geschichte Der Philosophie], Anthony Preus Jan 1981

Aristotle And Michael Of Ephesus On The Movement And Progression Of Animals Translated, With Introduction And Notes [Translation Of Studien Und Materialen Zur Geschichte Der Philosophie], Anthony Preus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The translation of Michael of Ephesus, Commentaries on The Movement of Animals and the Progression of Animals, here presented, are the first into a modern language. These are the only surviving Greek commentaries on these treaties.