Friday September 10, 2010
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Deflating Morality (PDF), Neil Levy Website Scientific research into the human mind and human behavior is as much feared as welcomed by laypeople. Many people see something profoundly threatening in the new knowledge this research will likely bring. Those of us who work in the broadly naturalistic stream of philosophy are often tempted to dismiss these fears contemptuously, but this is a temptation we ought to resist. After all, there is inductive evidence that scientific discoveries can cause enormous disruptions in our shared conception of ourselves – think of the Darwinian revolution, and the way it is plausibly taken to have caused us to adopt a somewhat less exalted view of ourselves and our place in the universe. The discovery of the unconscious arguably had similar kinds of effects. It is surely not inconceivable that new discoveries might have an even more far-reaching implications, and that those implications could be profoundly unwelcome. Knowledge is, of course, valuable for its own sake. But anyone who believes that it can never be on balance undesirable seems to have an over-optimistic view of the world. |
Justification and Excuse, Law and Morality, Mitchell N. Berman Website For nearly a quarter of a century, the distinction between justification and excuse has proven almost an obsession among Anglo-American theorists of the criminal law. And the attention has appeared to pay dividends, as it has become one of the rare subjects on which such scholars have reached wide agreement: Justification defenses are said to apply when the actor's conduct was not morally wrongful; excuse defenses lie when the actor did engage in wrongful conduct but is not morally blameworthy. Consensus thus achieved, theorists have turned to subordinate questions, joining issue most notably on the question of whether justifications are "subjective" - turning upon the actor's reasons for acting - or "objective" - involving only facts independent of the actor's beliefs and motives. This article seeks to demonstrate that the prevailing consensus is wrong. Drawing on the well-known distinction between conduct rules and decision rules, it argues further that the distinction between justification and excuse in the criminal law is only this: A justified action is not criminal, whereas an excused defendant has committed a criminal act but is not punishable. To readers only marginally acquainted with the relevant literature, this claim may seem far from extravagant, for occasional statements to the same effect can be found in the case law and commentary. In fact, however, theorists have not appreciated just how this formulation of the distinction differs from the orthodox one, nor what consequences follow. This article attempts to remedy that defect. One lesson of a systematic investigation of these competing views, for instance, is that the long-running debate over whether justifications, properly understood, are "subjective" or "objective" is misconceived. This is a debate over policy, I argue, not - as it so often purports to be - a matter of conceptual analysis. More generally, this exploration into justification and excuse constitutes a case study in the complex relationship between legal and moral reasoning, and highlights the importance of distinguishing arguments that advance substantive value judgments from those that purport to analyze our conceptual apparatus. It may be that the latter enterprise is no less contestable or value-laden than the former (though perhaps it is). In any event, they are not the very same enterprise and a first step to clear thinking - in the criminal law and elsewhere - is to keep them distinct. Keywords: justification, excuse, criminal theory, duress, provocation |
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James, Intentionality and Analysis (PDF), Henry Jackman Website James was always interested in the problem of how our thoughts come to be about the world. Nevertheless, if one takes James to be trying to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a thought's being about an object, counterexamples to his account will be embarrassingly easy to find. James, however, was not aiming for this sort of analysis of intentionality. Rather than trying to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for every case of a thought's being about an object, James focused his analysis on the prototypical/paradigm cases. This analysis of the core could then be supplemented with additional remarks about how the less prototypical cases could be understood in terms of their relations to (and similarities with) the paradigm. It is argued that this type of analysis is psychologically well motivated, and makes James account surprisingly plausible. |
Theory of Intentionality (PDF), Ronald McIntyre and David W. Smith Website in Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. by J. Mohanty and W. McKenna (Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press of America, 1989), pp. 147-179. |
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Three Trends in Moral and Political Philosophy (PDF), Gilbert Harman Website There have been three good trends in moral and political philosophy over the last fifty years or so. First, there has been a trend toward rejecting special foundations, a trend that is exemplified by the widespread adoption of the method John Rawls adopts, in which particular judgments and principles are adjusted to each other in an attempt to reach “reflective equilibrium.”1 Second, there have been attempts to use intuitions about particular cases in order to arrive at new and often arcane moral principles like that of double effect, as in discussions of so-called trolley problems.2 Third, and perhaps most important, there has been increased interaction between scientific and philosophical studies of morality, as for example in philosophical reactions to psychological accounts of moral development and evolutionary explanations of aspects of morality. |
Roots Resolving the Death Penalty: Wisdom from the Ancients, Robert NMI Blecker Website Lest it be "cruel and unusual," the U.S. Supreme Court has held, capital punishment must be consistent with "the evolving standards of decency of a maturing society." Although controversy swirls around our current sense of decency, this Society's changing standards are largely the product of deeply embedded traditions and an unchanging cultural core. Thus, virtually every heated death penalty debate today requires us not only to take the temperature of the people, but also to appreciate their temperament. "ROOTS: Resolving the Death Penalty: Wisdom from the Ancients" reflects the current controversy back onto the core of Western Culture - the Old Testament and Ancient Greeks. The essay extracts values and lessons from the Ancients neutrally and honestly, although, perhaps because, the author is a retributivist who feels certain that the past counts, and that death is sometimes (but very rarely) rightful punishment. Roots sets out objectively to reveal those standards of decency that do not, and will not evolve, but permanently inform our view of human dignity and what we owe the victim, the surviving family, the defendant, and ourselves as a maturing but continuing culture. Ultimately, Roots provides abolitionists, as well as advocates, much support. The first section offers a biblical reinterpretation: The condemnation of Adam and Eve as a death penalty perhaps disproportional and definitely delayed; Cain - a marked man spared the death penalty; the Command of Genesis - "by the hand of man shall his blood be shed;" Abraham's challenge to God "not to slay the righteous with the wicked;" super due process in Deuteronomy – "you shall inquire diligently . . . and only if it be true and certain;" the incommensurable value of human life -"you shall accept no ransom;" inferring non-intentional culpable mental states - "since he had not hated his neighbor in time past;" depraved indifference recklessness - "accustomed to gore . . . and its owner has been warned." The second part of "Roots" considers many fundamental values independently embraced by the Ancient Greek lawgivers and philosophers: Odysseus-at-the-mast having placed it forever out of his power to be moved by a passion of the moment; blood pollution and the rejection of the blood price; restrictions upon the victim's family deciding the killer's fate; Pythagoras' program of proportionality, imposing rational limits; the reply of Heraclitus – "you cannot step in the same river twice;" the Sophists' relativism and subjectivity – "man is the measure of all things" combined with their commitment to progress; Plato's contrary insistence on moral essences. The last section draws on the wisdom of the Ancients to counter critics - abolitionists and advocates - from Justice Marshall to Justice Scalia that the U.S. Supreme Court's modern death penalty doctrine is ultimately incoherent. It suggests a jurisprudence of informed emotion - necessary and sufficient for a moral death penalty - which embraces consistency (treating like cases alike) while also incorporating the incommensurably rich uniqueness of every human being. Keywords: death penatly, capital punishment, |
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Creatures of Fiction, Myth, and Imagination (PDF), Ben Caplan Website American Philosophical Quarterly |
Husserl and Frege (PDF), Ronald McIntyre Website Journal of Philosophy, 84 (1988), 528-535 |
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Logic and Theism: Arguments for and against Beliefs in God (PDF), J Sobel Website Cambridge University Press, 2004 (xix + 652) |
Website An overview of Atheism. It concisely addresses the most common topics of Atheism, in a manner that's friendly and engaging. |
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