The Troublesome Concept of the Person

In today'sbioethical debates, the concept of the person plays a major role. However, it does not hold this role justly. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the concept of the person is unsuited to be a central concept in bioethical debates, because its use is connected with serious problems. First, the concept is superfluous. Secondly, it is a confusing concept and it lacks pragmatic use. Thirdly, its use leads to simplifications. Finally, the concept can easily be used as a cover-up concept. Therefore, it is argued that relinquishing the concept of the person could enhance the clarity and quality of bioethical debate. Moreover, the historic origin of much of the present confusion surrounding the concept of the person is clarified. It is demonstrated that three influences resulting from Locke'sideas on the person and personal identity can be determined as contributing factors to the confusion and controversy within the present bioethical debates centering around the person.     

INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM ON SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND THE RISE OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM

This is an introduction to the Symposium on “Science, Religion, and the Rise of Biblical Criticism,” which has been designed as a thematic section for Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. The Symposium demonstrates the importance of and need for greater interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, theologians, scholars of religion, and historians in tracing the origins and development of the “conflict thesis” between science and religion. Often neglected is the role biblical criticism played in guiding and constructing narratives of conflict. This series of articles thus attempts to redress this gap in the scholarship by explicitly focusing on the advent of historical‐critical scholarship of the Bible and how it changed perceptions about “science” and “religion.”     

On grounding superadded properties in Locke

ABSTRACT

Scholars have employed three interpretive strategies to explain how Locke understands the metaphysical relationship between a superadded property and the material body to which it is affixed. The first is the mechanist strategy advanced by Michael Ayers and Edwin McCann. It argues that the mechanical affections of a given body are causally responsible for the operation of superadded powers. The second is the extrinsic strategy found in Mathew Stuart. It argues that Locke, who rejects mechanism, does not intend to ground superadded properties in the mechanical affections of material bodies. The third is the essentialist strategy developed by Lisa Downing. It argues that Locke, who does not adhere to mechanism, nevertheless intends to ground superadded properties in the real constitutions of their bearers. However, according to Downing, what grounds superadded properties are the nonmechanical affections of material bodies. My aim in this paper is to expand and strengthen the case for the extrinsic reading. I argue that what is recommended by Locke's writings on this topic is a thoroughly extrinsic interpretation according to which superaddition pertains exclusively to those properties for which no possible arrangement of mechanical or nonmechanical affections is causally sufficient.     

Signification,Intention, Projection

Locke is what present-day aestheticians, critics, and historians call an intentionalist. He believes that when we interpret speech and writing, we aim—in large part and perhaps even for the most part—to recover the intentions, or intended meanings, of the speaker or writer. Berkeley and Hume shared Locke’s commitment to intentionalism, but it is a theme that recent philosophical interpreters of all three writers have left largely unexplored. In this paper I discuss the bearing of intentionalism on more familiar themes in empiricist reflections on language, among them the signification of things (as opposed to ideas); the signifying role of whole propositions; and the possibility of reference to an “external” world.

Locke’s arguments against the freedom to will

In sections 2.21.23–25 of An Essay concerning Human Understanding, John Locke considers and rejects two ways in which we might be ‘free to will’, which correspond to the Thomistic distinction between freedom of exercise and freedom of specification. In this paper, I examine Locke’s arguments in detail. In the first part, I argue for a non-developmental reading of Locke’s argument against freedom of exercise. Locke’s view throughout all five editions of the Essay is that we do not possess freedom of exercise (at least in most cases). In the second part, I argue that, when Locke asks whether we possess freedom of specification, his question is intentionally ambiguous between two readings, a first-order reading and a higher-order reading. Locke’s view is that, on either reading, we do not possess freedom of specification (at least in any interesting sense).     

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS:

Abstract: This article argues that teachers of environmental ethics must more aggressively entertain questions of private property in their work and in their teaching. To make this case, it first introduces the three primary positions on property: occupation arguments, labor theory of value arguments, and efficiency arguments. It then contextualizes these arguments in light of the contemporary U.S. wise‐use movement, in an attempt to make sense of the concerns that motivate wise‐use activists, and also to demonstrate how intrinsic value arguments miss the mark. Finally, it offers some suggestions about further directions for environmental ethics, reasoning that there is a good deal of headway to be gained for environmental ethics by accepting that nature can be owned as property, but nevertheless engaging the idea of private property critically.     

Makers' Rights

This paper examines the thesis that human labor creates property rights in or from previously unowned objects by virtue of labor's power to make new things. This thesis is considered for two possible roles: first, as a thesis to which John Locke might have been committed in his writings on property; and second, as a thesis of independent plausibility that could serve as part of a defensible contemporary theory of property rights. Understanding Locke as committed to the thesis of makers' rights has seemed to many of the best known recent Locke scholars to explain and unify Locke's various claims about property in a way that more traditional labor-mixing interpretations cannot. This paper argues that there is in fact no convincing evidence in Locke's texts to suggest any commitment to the thesis of makers' rights for humans. Further, not only does a version of the traditional labor-mixing argument yield a much superior interpretation of Locke's writings, it is an argument that is far more convincing than makers' rights arguments, quite independent of its usefulness in the interpretation of Locke's theory.     

Locke and Whately on the Argumentum ad Hominem

This is an exploration of what Locke and Whately said about the Argumentatum ad Hominem, especially in the context of what they said about the other ad arguments, and with a view to ascertaining whether what they said lends support to the understanding of this argument implicit in Johnstone's thesis that all valid philosophical arguments are ad hominem. It is concluded that this support is forthcoming insofar as Locke and Whately had in mind an argument concerned with principles.The essay ends with a brief reformulation of Johnstone's generalization regarding philosophical arguments.     

Influence and development: Two basic paradigms of education

The article discusses two basic paradigms of western educational theory, namely the concept of influence and the concept of development. Two historical contextes are analyzed, John Locke's theory of human learning and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of natural development. Both theories are rejected in favour of a position beyond influence and development. This position of a theory of education (Erziehung) is marked with the term moral communication.An earlier and slightly different version of this article was presented to the International Symposion The Crisis of Schools (Corsendonck/Belgium, March 1992). It was translated from the german original by Annette Roeder. The final draft is my own.     

John Locke, ‘Hobbist’: of sleeping souls and thinking matter

In this paper, I consider Isaac Newton’s fevered accusation that John Locke is a ‘Hobbist.’ I suggest a number of ways in which Locke’s account of the mind–body relation could plausibly be construed as Hobbesian. Whereas Newton conceives of the human mind as an immaterial substance and venerates it as a finite image of the Divine Mind, I argue that Locke utterly deflates the religious, ethical, and metaphysical significance of an immaterial soul. Even stronger, I contend that there is good reason to suspect that Locke is a crypto-materialist, at least with respect to human beings, and in this respect, could reasonably be labeled a ‘Hobbist.’