AQUINAS AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF MERCY

Contemporary philosophers often construe mercy as a supererogatory notion or a matter of punitive leniency. Yet it is false that no merciful actions are obligatory. Further, it is questionable whether mercy is really about punitive leniency, either exclusively or primarily. As an alternative to these accounts, I consider the view offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. He rejects the claim that we are never obligated to be merciful. Also, his view of mercy is not restricted to legal contexts. For him, mercy's scope is considerably broader, as it concerns a wide range of needs and hardships to which human beings are vulnerable. Such a view, I submit, affords a kind of normative depth lacking in many contemporary accounts. Unlike those views that construe mercy as either a supererogatory or legal concept, Aquinas's account illuminates mercy's obligatory nature and encourages us to make mercy a more salient fixture of our moral lives.     

Intersecting Dimensions of Cognitive and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms: Embarking on a New Era of Clinical Neuropsychological Research

Neuropsychology Review -     

Deadly Force and Deadly Outcome: Examining the Officer,Suspect, and Situational Characteristics of Officer-Involved Shootings

ABSTRACT

Police use-of-force in general, and police use of deadly force in particular, has been at the forefront of national media attention in recent years. Despite this visibility, scholarly attention to the complexities and nuances of the dynamics at play that lead to fatal and non-fatal outcomes for suspects involved in these encounters has been limited. As such, the current study draws from data collected from 2015 to 2018 in the state of Texas to examine the officer-, suspect-, and situational-level correlates and predictors of suspect death resulting from being involved in an officer-involved shooting. Bivariate results suggest that officer race, suspect race, the suspect being armed with a deadly weapon, and the officer responding to a suspicious activity call are significantly associated with suspect death versus being injured in an officer-involved shooting. More rigorous multivariate results reveal that the situational context (i.e., the suspect being armed with a deadly weapon and the incident resulting from a suspicious activity call) is particularly relevant for predicting the lethality of an officer-involved shooting for the suspect. Study limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Interactive constructionism: A more preferable anti-realist approach to the metaphysics of race

There is a school of thought that holds the view that the concept of race has a biological referent. In other words, they are of the view that race is biologically real. However, there is a general consensus among the academic and scientific community that race being biologically real is false. The main aim of this article is to argue that interactive constructionism is a more preferable anti-realist position than racial eliminativism. In other words, I will present interactive constructionism as a panacea for what ails racial eliminativism. Firstly, I will begin by giving an analysis and then a critique of racial eliminativism, which is a theory that advocates for the entire elimination of all references to race. Particular attention will be paid to Anthony Appiah’s version of racial eliminativism. I will argue that Appiah’s version lacks cogency and is ultimately controversial because he endorses racial identities, the building block for the formation of race that he wants eliminated. Secondly, I will argue that interactive constructionism – a theory that posits that the groups that we call “races” are really racialised groups – is preferable because it not only allows us to talk about and write policies about the groups that we have been calling “races”, but also does not make the mistake of legitimising or laying the foundation for the concept of race.     

What is a Relevant Connective?

Journal of Philosophical Logic - There appears to be few, if any, limits on what sorts of logical connectives can be added to a given logic. One source of potential limitations is the motivating...