Browsing Philosophic Exchange by Title
Now showing items 75-94 of 273
-
Foot-NotesThe major disagreement here is that Foot, contra Kant, denies that moral ends are ends that the agent has a duty to adopt. Though I, in part, agree with Foot, it is difficult to see what is paradoxical about the view that she denies. Foot’s position is the one that appears paradoxical. Her position is that I may have duties within morality, but I cannot have a duty to adopt the ends of morality. On the contrary, morality is inescapable.
-
Free Will and NeuroscienceHas modern neuroscience shown that free will is an illusion? Those who give an affirmative answer often argue as follows. The overt actions that have been studied in some recent experiments do not have corresponding consciously made decisions or conscious intentions among their causes. Therefore no overt actions have corresponding consciously made decisions or conscious intentions among their causes. This paper challenges this inference, arguing that it is unwarranted.
-
From the Platitudinous to the AbsurdHenry Aiken has misrepresented the history of the university, and the historical context of this debate. The university should be depoliticized in order to protect academic freedom.
-
Future Genders? Future Races?Gender is the social meaning of a person’s sex, and race is the social meaning of a person’s color. This paper reviews some accounts of these social meanings. It is argued that there are important differences between race and gender that count against treating them as parallel.
-
Gandhi, Newton and the EnlightenmentGandhi expressed opposition to the Enlightenment and even to science. His view is best understood in the context of a radical critique of a certain orthodoxy that emerged after the Enlightenment. That orthodoxy insists that we take a detached, impersonal standpoint in relation to nature. By contrast, Gandhi and his forebears in the radical enlightenment see nature as suffused with value, and allow us to approach nature from the first-person point of view.
-
God and EvilIf God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good, then why is there so much horrendous evil in the world? This paper discusses this perennial problem.
-
God and Science in the Public SchoolsOn March 11, 2000, the New York Times reported that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that creationism should be taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in the public schools. This controversy raises important questions in the philosophy of science, as well as questions about public education in a democracy. This paper considers some of the arguments on both sides of this debate.
-
God, Evil, and the Contemplation of Infinitely Many OptionsThis essay examines the problem of evil, and then develops a free will theodicy. Then the paper considers some themes in distinctively Christian theodicy building, in more detail.
-
How Can My Mind Move My Limbs? Mental Causation from Descartes to Contemporary PhysicalismMental events enter into causal relations with bodily events. The philosophical task is to explain how this is possible. Descartes’ dualism of mental and material substances ultimately founders on the impossibility of pairing mental events with physical events as causes and effects. This is what I have called “the pairing problem.” Many contemporary views also fail to explain mental causation. In the end, we are left with a dilemma. If mental phenomena are irreducible to physical phenomena, then mental phenomena lose their causal efficacy. However, if mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena, then casts doubt on the very existence of mental phenomena.
-
In Defense of IntrospectionThe author defends the conviction that we have direct knowledge or awareness of our own states of mind, that we do not have to observe our own speech and behavior in order to find out whether we are angry or elated or what we believe or hope or fear, and that, furthermore, we do often come to know, or at least reasonably to believe, such things about ourselves.
-
In Defense of the Hypothetical ImperativeKant insisted that moral precepts must be categorical imperatives, telling the agent what he should do, no matter what his desires or interests. Kant contrasted these categorical imperatives with hypothetical imperatives, which operate only on the condition of certain desires or interests. I believe it is a mistake to think that Kant has disposed of the hypothetical imperative in morals. In this paper, I will consider the arguments that he has brought against it, and respond to them.
