Bestowal Without Appraisal: Problems in Frankfurt’s Characterization of Love and Personal Identity

Harry Frankfurt characterizes love as “a disinterested concern for the existence of what is loved, and for what is good for it.” As such, he views romantic love as an inauthentic paradigm for love since such love desires reciprocation, sexual gratification and so on. I argue that Frankfurt’s conception of love is (a) too general—he does not distinguish between the type of love one has for one’s partner, one’s country, a moral ideal, etc., (b) it overemphasizes the role of bestowal at the expense of the part played by appraisal and (c) it is insufficiently social. Certain forms of love, romantic love and friendship for instance, are defined largely in terms of reciprocation. For Frankfurt, reciprocation is somewhat of an accidental feature of love. This deficiency in Frankfurt’s conception of love can be traced to a problem in his conception of selfhood which I argue is insufficiently social in nature.

Issues Around the Protection or Revelation of Personal Information

Privacy watchdog groups have criticized the privacy policies and practices of internet service providers and search engine companies like AOL, Google, and Microsoft. AOL’s decision to upload users’ search query records to the internet drew intense criticism when it was shown that minor sleuthing could decipher some users’ private identities. We draw upon this and similar incidents to demonstrate various personal borders that are crossed by such revelations. We maintain that policy discussions are enhanced by multidimensional conceptualizations of privacy. We agree that many analyses of technology and privacy overlook the upsides of technological change; however, we think it is not more valid to understate privacy implications.

Relativism about Reasons

Historians must be sensitive to the alienness of the past. Insofar as they are concerned with their actors’ reasoning, they must (through open-minded empirical investigation) find out how their actors thought, and not assume that they thought like us. This is familiar historiographical advice, but pushed too far it can be brought to conflict with rather weak assumptions about what historians must presuppose if they are to interpret their actors at all. The present paper sketches those assumptions, and argues that the influential ‘Strong Program’ in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) falls foul of them. We do not argue from the correctness of the assumptions to the falsity of SSK. Rather, we note the incompatibility, and then show how SSK theorists’ tendency to take interpretation for granted blinds them—and perhaps their readers—to the existence of the conflict.

Speaking to Pictures

A review of Peter Steele’s Plenty, a book in which each poem is faced by a colour plate of the painting or object which sparked it off. Hollander’s ecphrasis and Krieger’s ekphrasis are held in – possibly unresolvable – dialectic by Steele’s poems. The only resolution which one can find is one of wit rather than of philosophy.

Negative Actions

Some philosophers have argued that refraining from performing an action consists in actively keeping oneself from performing that action or preventing one’s performing it. Since activities must be held to be positive actions, this implies that negative actions are a species of positive actions which is to say that all actions are positive actions. I defend the following claims:

Public and Private Meaning in Hume: Comments on Ted Morris’ “Meaningfulness without Metaphysics: Another Look at Hume’s Meaning-Empiricism”

This paper raises questions concerning Ted Morris’ interpretation of Hume’s notion of meaning and investigates the private and public aspects of Hume’s notion of meaning.

Duties and Responsibilities Towards the Poor

Thomas Pogge has argued that we have strong negative duties to assist the global poor because we harm them through our contribution to the global economic order. I argue that Pogge’s concept of harm is indeterminate. The resources of any group will typically be affected by at least two economic schemes. Pogge suggests that the responsibility for any affected group’s shortfall from a minimum standard ought to be shared between the contributing schemes. I argue that shared responsibility can be interpreted in two different ways. Unfortunately, both interpretations are problematic. Lastly, I suggest a strategy for amending this problem.

Blair on Rodin: Rejoinder

The article is a brief response to Jacob Blair’s critique of David Rodin’s argument in War and Self-Defense that there are circumstances in which war conceivably could be justified not as self-defence, but as law enforcement or punishment. It argues that while Rodin’s position potentially is less dilemmatic than Blair suggests, Blair nevertheless usefully highlights tensions within it. Blair’s own argument in favour of ar as law-enforcement is suggestive, but in no way conclusive.

A selectionist explanation for the success and failures of science

I argue that van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science is superior to the realists’ explanation. Whereas realists argue that our current theories are successful because they accurately reflect the structure of the world, the selectionist claims that our current theories are successful because unsuccessful theories have been eliminated. I argue that, unlike the explanation proposed by the realist, the selectionist explanation can also account for the failures of once successful theories and the fact that sometimes two competing theories are both equally successful.

A Further Reply to Beyer on Omniscience

I provide a further response to Jason A. Beyer’s objections to the alleged inconsistency between God’s omniscience and His other attributes.

Before Reproduction: The Distortion of Generation

Jean Baudrillard has posited a theory of ‘the precession of simulacra’, arguing that it is no longer possible to tell the difference between an image and the meaning it purports to represent because technology allows the image to precede its meaning. Christa Wolf, while researching Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays (1984), traveled to Greece and discovered the ways in which language in the rational, Western model of civilization has been distorted. Both Baudrillard and Wolf are disturbed by the ways in which sign systems can be manipulated and generated, and both demonstrate the effect this has in the political and cultural arenas. This analysis intends to show how Baudrillard’s theories play out in Wolf’s narrative, and how Wolf resolves the problems thus posed through the shock of the aesthetic experience, which forces communication while it defies representation.

Foot and Aristotle on Virtues and Flourishing

This article compares the views of Foot and Aristotle on virtues and flourishing. It is argued that the view put forward in Philippa Foot’s recent book, Natural Goodness, suffers from a certain sort of vagueness and it is open to other criticisms which the Aristotelian view can avoid. Foot’s views have been subjected to criticism in the recent literature by David Copp and David Sobel. These criticisms are given consideration in the article and it is argued that the more traditional Aristotelian view advocated by the author will have the means to answer some of these criticisms whereas Foot’s view will not.

Transforming Consciousness

Robert Preece’s The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra and Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche’s Everyday Consciousness and Primordial Awareness are reviewed. Both books address Tibetan Buddhism, and their common threads underscore this discussion. Even when separated from their original contexts, the Tibetan Buddhist teachings offer understandings about a common human nature and a method of transforming consciousness through awareness.

Remarks on Grandi’s Comments

This note is a reply to some of Giovanni Grandi’s comments on my paper “Berkeley’s Contingent Necessities.”

Diabetes,Chronic Illness and the Bodily Roots of Ecstatic Temporality

This article studies the phenomenology of chronic illness in light of phenomenology’s insights into ecstatic temporality and freedom. It shows how a chronic illness can, in lived experience, manifest itself as a disturbance of our usual relation to ecstatic temporality and thence as a disturbance of freedom. This suggests that ecstatic temporality is related to another sort of time—“provisional time”—that is in turn rooted in the body. The article draws on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Heidegger’s Being and Time, shedding light on the latter’s concept of ecstatic temporality. It also discusses implications for self-management of chronic illness, especially in children.

Revisiting the Censure Theory of Punishment

This paper is a rejoinder to Thaddeus Metz’s article “Censure Theory Still Best Accounts for Punishment of the Guilty: Reply to Montague.” In his article, Metz attempts to answer objections to censure theory that I had raised previously. I argue in my rejoinder that Metz’s defense of censure theory remains seriously problematic despite what he says in his reply.

Mr. Magoo’s mistake

Timothy Williamson has famously argued that the (KK) principle (roughly, that if one knows that p, then one knows that one knows that p) should be rejected. We analyze Williamson’s argument and show that its key premise is ambiguous, and that when it is properly stated this premise no longer supports the argument against (KK). After canvassing possible objections to our argument, we reflect upon some conclusions that suggest significant epistemological ramifications pertaining to the acquisition of knowledge from prior knowledge by deduction.

The Subject of Pastoral Care: A Discussion Based on the Theology of Henning Luther

In this article the author discusses the differences between pastoral care and psycho-social therapy. She clarifies the specific identity of pastoral care on the basis of Henning Luther’s theology. He distinguishes different anthropological presuppositions in pastoral care and psycho-social therapy. Consequently, she demonstrates the relevancy of Luther’s theology for today’s Practical Theology.

Reflections on the Incompatibilist’s Direct Argument

The Direct Argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility is so christened because this argument allegedly circumvents any appeal to the principle of alternate possibilities – a person is morally responsible for doing something only if he could have avoided doing it – to secure incompatibilism. In this paper, I first summarize Peter van Inwagen’s version of the Direct Argument. I then comment on David Widerker’s recent responses to the argument. Finally, I cast doubt on the argument by constructing counterexamples to a rule of inference it invokes.

Sunscreen Safety: The Precautionary Principle, The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration and Nanoparticles in Sunscreens

The ‘Precautionary Principle’ provides a somewhat ill-defined guide, often of uncertain normative status, for those exercising administrative decision-making power in circumstances where that may create potential risks to human health or the environment. This paper seeks to explore to what extent the precautionary principle should have been and was in fact utilised by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in its decision to approve the marketing of sunscreens containing titanium dioxide (TiO₂) and zinc oxide (ZnO) in nanoparticulate form. In particular, this article assesses to what extent better application of that principle might have altered the TGA’s decision that TiO₂ and ZnO ENPs in sunscreens do not require new safety testing, because they are considered to be functionally equivalent to their bulk counterparts.