Discriminating Against “Organ Takers”

This paper offers an exposition of what the question of method in ethics consultation involves under two conditions: when ethics consultation is regarded as a practice and when the question of method is treated systematically. It discusses the concept of the practice and the importance of rules in constituting the actions, cognition, and perceptions of practitioners. The main body of the paper focuses on three elements of the question of method: canon, discipline, and history, which are treated heuristically to outline what the question of method in ethics consultation fully involves.     

Against the “system” module

Modularity is a fundamental doctrine in the cognitive sciences. It holds a preeminent position in cognitive psychology and generative linguistics, as well as a long history in neurophysiology, with roots going all the way back to the early nineteenth century. But a mature field of neuroscience is a comparatively recent phenomenon and has challenged orthodox conceptions of the modular mind. One way of accommodating modularity within the new framework suggested by these developments is to go for increasingly soft versions of modularity. One such version, which I call the “system” view, is so soft that it promises to meet practically any challenge neuroscience can throw at it. In this paper, I reconsider afresh what we ought to regard as the sine qua non of modularity and offer a few arguments against the view that an insipid “system” module could be the legitimate successor of the traditional notion.     

Against a “Combined Liability-Lesser-Evil Justification”

Philosophia - Jeff McMahan has recently proposed what he calls a “combined liability-lesser-evil justification.” Its core idea is that the fact that someone has no right against the...     

On Field’s Epistemological Argument Against Platonism

Hartry Field’s formulation of an epistemological argument against platonism requires knowledge to be causally constrained. Contrary to recent claims (e.g. in [6], [7]), it thus fails the very same criterion usually taken to discredit Benacerraf’s earlier version.     

Against Levinas’ messianic politics: a polemic

Blamelessly, most commentators attempt to deduce the political theory of Levinas from his interhuman philosophy. In contrast to the perceived state of ethical life in contemporary politics, the attractiveness of the asymmetric obligations owed by the ego to the Other make the deductive project seem urgent. But an inductive analysis of Levinas’ philosophy yields troubling prerequisites, including rigorous theocracy and a form of sociability in which no epistemological clarity is permitted that could determine in situ interpersonal duties. Such unfamiliar politics enable the celebrated ethical relation of self for the Other. Designed as a polemic with the presumption that politics not ethics is first philosophy, the insights of the inductive analysis of Levinas’ thought will come as no surprise to observers who worry that power and sovereignty cannot be summarily excluded from social or even ethical relations.     

On Sinnott-Armstrong’s Case Against Moral Intuitionism

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has argued against moral intuitionism, according to which some of our moral beliefs are justified without needing to be inferred from any other beliefs. He claims that any prima facie justification some non-inferred moral beliefs might have enjoyed is removed because many of our moral beliefs are formed in circumstances where either (1) we are partial, (2) others disagree with us and there is no reason to prefer our moral judgement to theirs, (3) we are emotional in a way that clouds our judgement, (4) the circumstances are conducive to illusion, or (5) the source of our moral beliefs is unreliable or disreputable. I take issue with the elements of Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument that centre on (1) to (3) and (5), concluding that his case against moral intuitionism is unpersuasive.     

Against No-Ātman Theories of Anattā

Suppose we were to randomly pick out a book on Buddhism or Eastern Philosophy and turn to the section on 'no-self' (anattā). On this central teaching, we would most likely learn that the Buddha rejected the Upanisadic notion of Self (ātman), maintaining that a person is no more than a bundle of impermanent, conditioned psycho-physical aggregates (khandhas). The rejection of ātman is seen by many to separate the metaphysically 'extravagant' claims of Hinduism from the austere tenets of Buddhism. The status quo has not, however, gone unchallenged. I shall join forces against this pernicious view, integrating some recent contributions into a sustained, two-pronged argument against no-ātman theories of anattā. At the end it shall be suggested, in line with Thanissaro Bhikkhu, that anattā is best understood as a practical strategy rather than as a metaphysical doctrine.     

Philosophy versus Literature? Against the Discontinuity Thesis

According to what I call the ‘Discontinuity Thesis,’ literature can never count as genuine philosophizing: there is an impermeable barrier separating it from philosophy. While philosophy presents logically valid arguments in favor of or against precisely formulated statements, literature gives neither precisely formulated theses nor arguments in favor of or against them. Hence, philosophers do not lose out on anything if they do not read literature. There are two obvious ways of questioning the Discontinuity Thesis: first, arguing that literature can indeed do what philosophy is generally taken to do, and, second, arguing that philosophy is not, in fact, the presentation of logically valid arguments in favor of or against precisely formulated statements—what it does is closer to what literature is generally taken to do. I use a combination of these two strategies to argue that philosophy is not as intellectually straightforward as it is advertised to be, and literature is not as intellectually impoverished as it is generally taken to be.     

Who’s Winning the War Against Science?

There is an outcry among scientists that they are being attacked on multiple fronts by fake news, alternative facts, climate change denial, fossil fuel industries, shrinking government funding, postmodernism, and religion. Is this siege mentality realistic or paranoid? It’s realistic. This article encourages theologians and other religious leaders to ally themselves with scientists in defense of evidence-based judgments in public policy-making.     

Against Animal Liberation? Peter Singer and His Critics

This article explores Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation thesis and examines the arguments against his work, particularly from certain moral philosophers in the late 1970s and 1980s who seriously engaged with his ideas. This article argues that due to the straightforward, minimalist nature of Singer’s preference utilitarianism, his arguments have remained highly defensible and persuasive. By advancing sentience, above characteristics like intelligence or rationality, as a sufficient criterion for possessing interests, Singer provides a justifiable principle for morally considering animal interests equal to those of humans. Numerous moral philosophers have challenged Singer, but they have struggled to seriously counter his core principle and to resolve the argument of ‘marginal cases’—that is, why do infants and intellectually disabled humans have moral status and animals do not. Ultimately, Singer broadly challenged prevailing anthropocentric views of animals and, in some instances, persuaded some of his most intransigent opponents.     

Does Estrogen Protect Against Cognitive Aging in Women?

ABSTRACT— Although there is evidence from randomized controlled trials that estrogen therapy protects against aspects of cognitive decline that occur with normal aging in women, findings from the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study and from some cross-sectional and longitudinal studies failed to find neuroprotective effects of estrogen in older women. There is growing empirical support for the critical-period hypothesis, formulated in the attempt to resolve these discrepancies. It holds that estrogen therapy has protective effects on verbal memory and on working memory only when it is initiated closely in time to menopause, whereas starting treatment many years following menopause does not protect and may even be harmful. Supporting evidence for this hypothesis from basic neuroscience and from animal and human studies is evaluated for its ability to explain the inconsistencies and to describe the conditions under which estrogen may protect cognitive function in aging women.     

Against a “mindless” account of perceptual expertise

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - According to Hubert Dreyfus’s famous claim that expertise is fundamentally “mindless,” experts in any domain perform most effectively...     

Are there any Good Arguments Against Goal-Line Technology?

Despite frequent calls by players, managers and fans, FIFA's resistance to the implementation of goal-line technology (GLT) has been well documented in national print and online media as well as FIFA's own website. In 2010, FIFA president Sepp Blatter outlined eight reasons why GLT should not be used in football. The reasons given by FIFA can be broadly separated into three categories; those dealing with the nature and value of the game of football, those related to issues of justice, and those concerned with the practical implementation of GLT. This paper intends to evaluate these eight reasons in order to assess whether there are, indeed, any good arguments against GLT in football.     

Scope Fallacies and the “Decisive Objection” Against Endurance

From time to time, the idea that enduring things can change has been challenged. The latest challenge has come in the form of what David Lewis has called a “decisive objection”, which claims to deduce a contradiction from the idea that enduring things change with respect to their temporary intrinsics, when that idea is combined with eternalism. It is my aim in this paper to explain why I think that no argument has yet appeared that deduces a contradiction from a combination of eternalism and the idea that enduring things change with respect to their temporary intrinsics, except ones that do so by committing scope fallacies.

Against Slagle’s Reading of Eliminative Materialism on Self-Defeating

Jim Slagle claims that eliminative materialism (EM) denies some of the mind’s self-evident properties, such as intentionality, qualia and the view that beliefs are real or veridical. I, herein, will argue that what EM denies is actually the folk psychological notion of belief, not belief as such. The Churchlands construe propositional belief as merely one kind of representation in the larger representational scheme. The point here is not to deny belief, but to construe it as one of the, and possibly a very recent, sorts of representations that the brain uses, not the general or fundamental form thereof.     

Kalmár's Argument Against the Plausibility of Church's Thesis

In his famous paper, An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory, Alonzo Church (1936) identified the intuitive notion of effective calculability with the mathematically precise notion of recursiveness. This proposal, known as Church's Thesis, has been widely accepted. Only a few papers have been written against it. One of these is László Kalmár's An Argument Against the Plausibility of Church's Thesis from 1959. The aim of this paper is to present Kalmár's argument and to fill in missing details based on his general philosophical thoughts on mathematics.     

Organizational Mediators Siding With or Against the Powerful Party?1

Instead of being impartial, a mediator may side with one party as a function of the disputants' power differences, the mediator's legitimacy judgments, or the disputants' capacity to sanction the mediator. According to the power balancing theory, a mediator sides with the party that has a power disadvantage vis-à-vis the other party. The theory on siding postulates that the mediator sides with the party having more legitimate claims and/or more sanction capacity. A questionnaire study showed that organizational mediators side with the less powerful rather than the more powerful party, especially when this weaker party has equal rather than less capacity to sanction the mediator. Thus, the tendency to balance power is moderated by the mediator's self-interest. Additionally, mediators tend to favor the party they see as more legitimate.