Geographies of Meaningful Living

Because it is significantly unclear what ‘meaningful’ does or should pick out when applied to a life, any account of meaningful living will be constructive and not merely clarificatory. Where in our conceptual geography is ‘meaningful’ best located? What conceptual work do we want the concept to do? What I call agent‐independent and agent‐independent‐plus conceptions of meaningfulness locate ‘meaningful’ within the conceptual geography of agent‐independent evaluative standards and assign ‘meaningful’ the work of commending lives. I argue that the not wholly welcome implications of these more dominant approaches to meaningfulness make it plausible to locate ‘meaningful’ on an alternative conceptual geography — that of agents as end‐setters and of agent‐dependent value assessments — and to assign it the work of picking out lives whose time‐expenditures are intelligible to the agent. I respond to the challenge confronting any subjectivist conception of meaningfulness that it is overly permissive.     

Neither ‘Good’ in Terms of ‘Better’ nor ‘Better’ in Terms of ‘Good’

In this paper, I argue against defining either of ‘good’ and ‘better’ in terms of the other. According to definitions of ‘good’ in terms of ‘better’, something is good if and only if it is better than some indifference point. Against this approach, I argue that the indifference point cannot be defined in terms of ‘better’ without ruling out some reasonable axiologies. Against defining ‘better’ in terms of ‘good’, I argue that this approach either cannot allow for the incorruptibility of intrinsic goodness or it breaks down in cases where both of the relata of ‘better’ are bad.     

The Manifolds of Violences

In this essay, Houle focuses in on the ways in which a Foucauldian‐framed account of violence, such as the one Gail Mason offers in Spectacles of Violence, rattles liberal (theoretical and ‘common‐sensual’) understandings of culpability and lawfulness. Mason's analysis dares to suggest that violence is constitutive, not simply destructive of selves, of lives. Asking after the ways in which that constitution is asymmetrical in events of violence, Houle reintroduce some cautions and concerns about drawing from a poststructuralist perspective. This, in turn, raises the question as to which ontology of the self such a rebalancing requires. The essays ends by making use of Mason's own distinction between our selves as ‘who’ and ‘what,’ to give a modified reading of the ways these aspects of selfhood are constituted or made possible in events of violence, which does not fall back upon the liberal conception of the self.     

Special Divine Action and How to Do Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

One popular line of argument put forward in support of the principle that the right is prior to the good is to show that teleological theories, which put the good prior to the right, lead to implausible normative results. There are situations, it is argued, in which putting the good prior to the right entails that we ought to do things that cannot be right for us to do. Consequently, goodness cannot (always) explain an action’s rightness. This indicates that what is right must be determined independently of the good.

In this paper, I argue that these purported counterexamples to teleology fail to establish that the right must be prior to the good. In fact, putting the right prior to the good can lead to sets of ought statements which potentially conflict with the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. I argue that no plausible ethical theory can determine what is right independently of a notion of value or goodness. Every plausible ethical theory needs a mapping from goodness to rightness, which implies that right cannot be prior to the good.     

II. Virtues,Human Good,and the Unity of a Life

Maclntyre's ‘disquieting suggestion’ concerning the apparently irretrievably anarchic state of contemporary moral discourse begs the crucial questions in any argument over the notion of ‘incoherence’ in moral thought and practice. Thus his attempt to establish the canonical authority of Aristotelianism fails. Nonetheless, the attempt to reconstruct a plausible Aristotelianism is of independent interest. Maclntyre introduces the quasi‐technical notion of a ‘practice’ to locate a non‐reductive teleology of the virtues. Though certain teleological expressions come naturally in a deepened understanding of the place of the virtues in a human life, they will not, at crucial points, bear the philosophically motivated teleological emphasis that Maclntyre places on them. This emphasis is a mistaken reaction to the inadequacies of expressions like ‘intrinsic’ and ‘for its own sake’, as often used by philosophers who argue against teleological construals of morality. It is also prompted by the mistaken belief that it is required to reveal the connection between morality and a person's good. For a non‐reductive construal of that connection we must focus on the meaning of action and of a life. This is in accord with some things Aristotle said. It is not in easy accord with the claim that moral judgments are factual or truth‐valued, nor with the claim that such a concern with meaning can be discursively underwritten by showing it to be a requirement of any sound philosophy of action and of personal identity. This does not lead to what Maclntyre calls ‘emotivism’, nor to ‘non‐cognitivism’.     

Why Is a Valid Inference a Good Inference?

True beliefs and truth‐preserving inferences are, in some sense, good beliefs and good inferences. When an inference is valid though, it is not merely truth‐preserving, but truth‐preserving in all cases. This motivates my question: I consider a Modus Ponens inference, and I ask what its validity in particular contributes to the explanation of why the inference is, in any sense, a good inference. I consider the question under three different definitions of ‘case’, and hence of ‘validity’: (i) the orthodox definition given in terms of interpretations or models, (ii) a metaphysical definition given in terms of possible worlds, and (iii) a substitutional definition defended by Quine. I argue that the orthodox notion is poorly suited to explain what's good about a Modus Ponens inference. I argue that there is something good that is explained by a certain kind of truth across possible worlds, but the explanation is not provided by metaphysical validity in particular; nothing of value is explained by truth across all possible worlds. Finally, I argue that the substitutional notion of validity allows us to correctly explain what is good about a valid inference.     

Better Living Through Chemistry? A Reply to Savulescu and Persson on ‘Moral Enhancement’

In ‘Moral Enhancement, Freedom, and the God Machine’, Savulescu and Persson argue that recent scientific findings suggest that there is a realistic prospect of achieving ‘moral enhancement’ and respond to Harris's criticism that this would threaten individual freedom and autonomy. I argue that although some pharmaceutical and neuro‐scientific interventions may influence behaviour and emotions in ways that we may be inclined to evaluate positively, describing this as ‘moral enhancement’ presupposes a particular, contested account, of what it is to act morally and implies that entirely familiar drugs such as alcohol, ecstasy, and marijuana are also capable of making people ‘more moral’. Moreover, while Savulescu and Persson establish the theoretical possibility of using drugs to promote autonomy, the real threat posed to freedom by ‘moral bioenhancement’ is that the ‘enhancers’ will be wielding power over the ‘enhanced’. Drawing on Pettit's notion of ‘freedom as non‐domination’, I argue that individuals may be rendered unfree even by a hypothetical technology such as Savulescu and Persson's ‘God machine’, which would only intervene if they chose to act immorally. While it is impossible to rule out the theoretical possibility that moral enhancement might be all‐things‐considered justified even where it did threaten freedom and autonomy, I argue that any technology for biomedical shaping of behaviour and dispositions is much more likely to be used for ill rather than good.     

Interpretations of Einstein’s Equation E = mc 2

Interpretations of Einstein’s equation differ primarily concerning whether E = mc² entails that mass and energy are the same property of physical systems, and hence whether there is any sense in which mass is ever ‘converted’ into energy (or vice versa). In this paper, I examine six interpretations of Einstein’s equation and argue that all but one fail to satisfy a minimal set of conditions that all interpretations of physical theories ought to satisfy. I argue that we should prefer the interpretation of Einstein’s equation that holds that mass and energy are distinct properties of physical systems. This interpretation also carries along the view that while most cases of ‘conversion’ are not genuine examples of mass being ‘converted’ into energy (or vice versa), it is possible that the there are such ‘conversions’ in the sense that a certain amount of energy ‘appears’ and an equivalent of mass ‘disappears’. Finally, I suggest that the interpretation I defend is the only one that does not blur the distinction between what Einstein called ‘principle’ and ‘constructive’ theories. This is philosophically significant because it emphasizes that explanations of Einstein’s equation and the ‘conversion’ of mass and energy must be top‐down explanations.     

An internalist view on the value of life and some tricky cases relevant to it

If we understand death as the irreversible loss of the good of life, we can give meaning to the idea that for suffering patients in the end stage of their illness, life may become an evil and death no longer a threat. Life may lose its good already in the living person. But what does the good of life consist in, then? I defend an internalist view according to which the goodness of life is intrinsically related to the attitudes, concerns, interests and experiences of the person who is leading the life. This results in the contention that the core of what we understand as the value of a person’s life is to be identified with what makes life go well for the person living the particular life. This internalist view does not presuppose (or imply) hedonism or mentalism, nor does it pose an experience requirement. Something may be good for you, because it is valuable as seen from your authentic viewpoint, even if you do not actually experience this goodness, or think otherwise because you are mistaken about your own well‐being. To test this position, and the authenticity‐requirement it includes, I discuss three cases of patients who are persistent in denying that in their life any value is left and who contend that death is no worse than further living. Internalism acknowledges that in the life of these patients there may be ’functionings’ and ’beings’ that are worthwhile, where the test of value is at least partially independent of subjective assessment. Still, internalism claims that something truly valuable can only contribute to the good of one’s life of it has positive meaning as seen from the attitudinal viewpoint that identifies oneself.     

Love Troubles: Human Attachment and Biomedical Enhancements

In fascinating recent work, Julian Savulescu and his various co‐authors argue that human love is one of the things we can improve upon using biomedical enhancements. Is that so? This article first notes that Savulescu and his co‐authors mainly treat love as a means to various other goods. Love, however, is widely regarded as an intrinsic good. To investigate whether enhancements can produce the distinctive intrinsic good of love, this article does three things. Drawing on Philip Pettit's recent discussion of ‘robustly demanding goods’, it asks what exactly we intrinsically desire in seeking love; it considers four possible outcomes involving attachment‐enhancements and attachments; and it considers two different pieces of news we might receive about our lovers' attachment to us (that it is, or that it is not, sustained with the help of enhancement‐technologies). Enhancement‐sustained attachment, it is concluded, is less desirable than the intrinsic good of love.     

Laws of nature and physical existents

Nominalists, denying the reality of anything over and above concreta, are committed to a reductive account of any law of nature, explaining its necessity—the fact that it not only holds for all actual instances, but would hold for any additional ones—in, for example, epistemic terms (its likelihood/certainty of holding beyond the already observed instances). Nominalists argue that the world would be no different without irreducible modalities. ‘Modal realists’ often object that this parallels a common phenomenalist argument against believing in a mind‐independent external world. However, phenomenalism without translatability into sensory language is incoherent, though any such translation is impossible. The ‘as if philosophy is untenable as well. But it is quite possible to formulate inductive methodology's imperatives in non‐modal terms. Modal realism purports to give a reason against inductive scepticism, but does not go beyond saying that there is one.     

Reconsidering the ‘heresy’ of using treatment manuals

Some argue that the medical model and the experimental design that underlies the use of treatment manuals to prove the efficacy of a psychotherapeutic treatment clashes with the theoretical basis of family therapy. From the point of view of the empirically supported treatments (ESTs) movement, treatment manuals are the operationalization of the independent variable in a clinical trial; the therapist is only part of the procedure and the therapeutic relationship is a confounding variable. Applying that logic to the practice of family therapy might be considered a heresy. This article argues that paradoxically, this heresy has a lot to offer the practice of family therapy. Research is the best way to answer questions like ‘how does family therapy work?’ ‘What makes ‘good therapy’ good?’ ‘Do therapists do what they say they do'? This article recommends an alternative framework for integrating ESTs into practice by proposing empirically informed guides to practice which, being less formulaic, encourage process‐outcome research, are coherent with the systemic model and do not constrain the therapist's creativity. Such guidelines allow therapists to use manuals flexibly so that they deepen the understanding of the process of therapy. We encourage you to listen to the JFT Editor, Mark Rivett, as he interviews the author on Manuals in the Practice and Research of Family Therapy. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467‐6427/homepage/jft_podcast_series.htm .     

Self-Respect or Self-Delusion? Tomasi and Rawls on the Basic Liberties

A central feature of John Tomasi’s ‘Free Market Fairness’ is the emphasis it places upon the good of self-respect. Like Rawls, Tomasi believes that accounts of justice ought to offer support for the self-respect of citizens. Indeed, this is a key way in which Tomasi aspires to engage with the ‘high-liberal’ tradition. Unlike Rawls however, Tomasi argues that this support is best provided by our treating a broader set of economic liberties as basic liberties. In this paper I raise two concerns about this latter claim. Firstly, I trace a number of significant ways in which Tomasi’s discussion of self-respect differs from that of Rawls. Whilst such divergences are not necessarily problematic, I argue that they serve to limit the purchase his account has on left-liberals. Further, I argue that the ideal of self-respect is more deeply ‘hard-wired’ into Rawls’s account of justice than Tomasi recognises. As such, Tomasi fails to address the full range of additional (and important) ways in which Rawls expects his principles of justice to support citizens’ self-respect. I argue that this also limits the force of Tomasi’s claims. Secondly, and more seriously, I argue that there are significant tensions between Tomasi’s discussion of self-respect and his most forceful argument (the ‘greater wealth thesis’) in favour of the market democratic model he proposes. I argue firstly that Tomasi’s account of when (and why) citizens’ self-respect is jeopardised does not allow us to readily distinguish between economic security born of systems of welfare and redistribution, and economic security born of market forces and historical contingency. And more troubling still, is Tomasi’s belief that self-respecting citizens must view themselves as a ‘central cause’ of their situation. Such self-conceptions, I argue, can only coexist alongside the greater wealth thesis if citizens engage in quite naked self-delusions about their causal power. I argue that theorists of justice have good reason to be suspicious of promulgating such delusions and, as such, that this poses a serious problem for a justification of market democracy which aspires to rest upon an appeal to self-respect.     

Should We Want God to Exist?

Whether God exists is a metaphysical question. But there is also a neglected evaluative question about God’s existence: Should we want God to exist? Very many, including many atheists and agnostics, appear to think we should. Theists claim that if God didn’t exist things would be far worse, and many atheists agree; they regret God’s inexistence. Some remarks by Thomas Nagel suggest an opposing view: that we should want God not to exist. I call this view anti‐theism. I explain how such view can be coherent, and why it might be correct. Anti‐theism must be distinguished from the argument from evil or the denial of God’s goodness; it is a claim about the goodness of God’s existence. Anti‐theists must claim that it’s a logical consequence of God’s existence that things are worse in certain respects. The problem is that God’s existence would also make things better in many ways. Given that God’s existence is likely to be impersonally better overall, anti‐theists face a challenge similar to that facing nonconsequentialists. I explore two ways of meeting this challenge.     

G. E. Moore on goodness and reasons

Several proponents of the ‘buck-passing’ account of value have recently attributed to G. E. Moore the implausible view that goodness is reason-providing. I argue that this attribution is unjustified. In addition to its historical significance, the discussion has an important implication for the contemporary value-theoretical debate: the plausible observation that goodness is not reason-providing does not give decisive support to the buck-passing account over its Moorean rivals. The final section of the paper is a survey of what can be said for and against the buck-passing account and Moore's views about goodness and reasons.     

Why be a good Human Being? Natural Goodness,Reason, and the Authority of Human Nature

The central claim of Aristotelian naturalism is that moral goodness is a kind of species-specific natural goodness. Aristotelian naturalism has recently enjoyed a resurgence in the work of philosophers such as Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Michael Thompson. However, any view that takes moral goodness to be a type of natural goodness faces a challenge: Granting that moral goodness is natural goodness for human beings, why should we care about being good human beings? Given that we are rational creatures who can ‘step back’ from our nature, why should we see human nature as authoritative for us? This is the authority-of-nature challenge. In this essay, I state this challenge clearly, identify its deep motivation, and distinguish it from other criticisms of Aristotelian naturalism. I also articulate what I consider the best response, which I term the practical reason response. This response, however, exposes Aristotelian naturalism to a new criticism – that it has abandoned the naturalist claim that moral goodness is species-specific natural goodness. Thus, I argue, Aristotelian naturalists appear to face a dilemma: Either they cannot answer the authority-of-nature challenge, or in meeting the challenge they must abandon naturalism. Aristotelian naturalists might overcome this dilemma, but doing so is harder than some Aristotelians have supposed. In the final sections of the paper, I examine the difficulties in overcoming the dilemma, and I suggest ways that Aristotelians might answer the authority-of-nature challenge while preserving naturalism.     

Berkeley on Inconceivability and Impossibility

Contrary to a popular reading of his modal epistemology, Berkeley does not hold that inconceivability entails impossibility, and he cannot therefore argue the impossibility of mind‐independent matter by appealing to facts about what we cannot conceive. Berkeley is explicit about this constraint on his metaphysical argumentation, and, I argue, does respect it in practice. Popular mythology about the ‘master argument’ notwithstanding, the only passages in which he might plausibly seem to employ the principle that inconceivability entails impossibility are those that argue for the inseparability of primary from secondary qualities. However, an alternative reading of these texts is available that is both consistent with Berkeley's express modal epistemology and credible in its own right.     

Why ‘believes’ is not a vague predicate

According to what I call the ‘Vagueness Thesis’ (‘VT’) about belief, ‘believes’ is a vague predicate. On this view, our concept of belief admits of borderline cases: one can ‘half-believe’ something (Price in Belief, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1969) or be ‘in-between believing’ it (Schwitzgebel in Philos Q 51:76–82, 2001, Noûs 36:249–275, 2002, Pac Philos Q 91:531–553, 2010). In this article, I argue that VT is false and present an alternative picture of belief. I begin by considering a case—held up as a central example of vague belief—in which someone sincerely claims something to be true and yet behaves in a variety of other ways as if she believes that it is not. I argue that, even from the third-person perspective prioritised by proponents of VT, the case does not motivate VT. I present an alternative understanding of the case according to which the person in question believes as they say they do yet also has a belief-discordant implicit attitude otherwise. Moreover, I argue that, independently of the interpretation of any particular case, VT fails to accommodate the first-person perspective on belief. Belief is not only an item of one’s psychology that helps explain one’s behaviour; it is what one takes to be true. This fact about belief manifests itself in the nature of deliberation concerning whether to believe something and that of introspection regarding whether one believes something. Attending to these phenomena reveals that VT is not merely unmotivated, but untenable.