Michael Voytinsky finds another take on a classic utilitarian dilemma. A hypothetical example comes up in many discussions of utilitarianism and its implications: three people with three different failing organs lie dying in a hospital when a healthy person arrives with a minor injury. If utilitarians are serious about wanting the greatest happiness for the …
Three Guys with Failing Organs vs One Guy with Good Organs Read More »
This book is a collection of interesting papers edited by Walter Ott and Lydia Patton. It fills an oft-noted gap in the laws literature: namely, connecting familiar contemporary accounts to their early modern predecessors. Chapters one through six describe and evaluate several different notions of laws that appear in early modern history and explore how …
Kidney specialist Mahendra Govani recommends a particular variety of evolved ethical behaviour. During the recorded and unrecorded evolutionary march towards happiness, the ultimate goal, humanity has mastered many mountains, walked through a variety of valleys, and tumbled into dozens of dreadful ditches. However, one can argue that in the arena of social and ethical development …
Stephen S. Bush takes on the difficult task of building an account of William James’s democratic political thought. As Bush notes, a number of scholars have dismissed the idea that James had anything to say politically, with the exception of a few condemnations of lynching. Bush clearly succeeds in rebutting those dismissive of James as …
Tony Simpson tells us how the Russell-Einstein manifesto led to Pugwash. “He was not only a great scientist but a great man, a man whom it is good to have known and consoling to contemplate.” With these words Bertrand Russell concluded his Preface to Einstein on Peace (1960). Down the years, Russell and Albert Einstein …
This book gives a comprehensive account of morality, both its deontic part, about what we ought or have reason to do, and its evaluative part, about what’s desirable or good, and it does so in the general style of W.D. Ross. Garrett Cullity doesn’t give verdicts on particular acts or outcomes, nor state principles that …
Much human behavior is stimulus-free. While plants and many non-human animals respond reflexively to their present environment, our own actions are mediated by our ability to represent how the world has been and how it could be, and how we might alter it to achieve our goals. Philosophers who have explored the evolutionary pressures giving …
Efficient Cognition: The Evolution of Representational Decision Making Read More »
John R. Lenz tells us why Russell thought philosophy worthwhile. Bertrand Russell did a disservice to philosophy by defining the word. Early in his career he defined philosophy as the logical-analytic method. This definition was so restricting that although he spent the next fifty years writing one book after another on topics such as war, …
Bertrand Russell on The Value of Philosophy for Life Read More »
“Imagine that you are an environmentalist who passionately believes that it is wrong to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. How do you convince someone that a decision to drill is wrong?” This quote from the blurb accurately sums up the motivation, content and approach of Newman, Varner and Linquist’s book. The …
Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics Read More »
Carol Nicholson looks at philosophical themes in The Name Of The Rose. (WARNING: CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS.) Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1980) was an international bestseller that sold fifty million copies “which puts it in the league of Harry Potter, and ahead of Gone with the Wind, Roget’s Thesaurus, and To Kill …