Animal capabilities and freedom in the city.NicolasDelon -2021 -Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 22 (1):131-153.detailsAnimals who live in cities must coexist with us. They are, as a result, entitled to the conditions of their flourishing. This article argues that, as the boundaries of cities and urban areas expand, the boundaries of our conception of captivity should expand too. Urbanization can undermine animals’ freedoms, hence their ability to live good lives. I draw the implications of an account of “pervasive captivity” against the background of the Capabilities Approach. I construe captivity, including that of urban animals, (...) as affecting a range of animal capabilities, understood as freedoms, and I address some tensions within Nussbaum’s treatment of human-animal conflicts. Using the Capabilities Approach as a guide, I will attempt to motivate a convergence between habitat preservation in urbanized environments, urban design guided by justice, and the individual freedoms of animals. (shrink)
The Replaceability Argument in the Ethics of Animal Husbandry.NicolasDelon -2016 -Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics.detailsMost people agree that inflicting unnecessary suffering upon animals is wrong. Many fewer people, including among ethicists, agree that painlessly killing animals is necessarily wrong. The most commonly cited reason is that death (without pain, fear, distress) is not bad for them in a way that matters morally, or not as significantly as it does for persons, who are self-conscious, make long-term plans and have preferences about their own future. Animals, at least those that are not persons, lack a morally (...) significant interest in continuing to live. At the same time, some argue that existence itself can be good, insofar as one’s life is worth living. For animals, a good life can offset a quick, if early, death. So, it seems to follow that breeding happy animals that will be (prematurely) killed can be a good thing overall. Insofar as slaughter and sale makes it economically sustainable to raise new ones, who would otherwise not exist, raising and killing animals for food who will have lives worth living is good overall. It benefits them as well as consumers, and makes the world better by adding to the sum of happiness. The process of raising and killing animals with positive welfare produces a sequence of replacement that maintains or increases overall welfare, all else being equal (assuming in particular no overall negative impact on the welfare of other parties). Call this the Replaceability Argument (RA) and the ensuing controversy the Replaceability Problem (RP). This is a problem at the crossroads of the ethics of killing, agricultural ethics, procreation ethics, and population ethics. (shrink)
Against moral intrinsicalism.NicolasDelon -2014 - In Elisa Aaltola & John Hadley,Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 31-45.detailsThis paper challenges a widespread, if tacit, assumption of animal ethics, namely, that the only properties of entities that matter to their moral status are intrinsic, cross‐specific properties—typically psychological capacities. According to moral individualism (Rachels 1990; McMahan 2002; 2005), the moral status of an individual, and how to treat him or her, should only be a function of his or her individual properties. I focus on the fundamental assumption of moral individualism, which I call intrinsicalism. On the challenged view, pigs, (...) puppies and babies, insofar as they are intrinsically similar in morally relevant respects are equally deserving of having their interests satisfied (Norcross 2004). Moreover, relationships—merely agent-relative—are assumed to be irrelevant to moral status. I argue that, while some intrinsic properties are indeed fundamentally relevant, the principled exclusion of extrinsic properties (in virtue of extrinsicness) is unwarranted. From uncontroversial assumptions about supervenience, final value, and moral status, I argue for the relevance of extrinsic properties to moral status based on vulnerability and “reasonable partiality”, as illustrated by pet-keeping. (shrink)
Conflicts of interest in science and medicine: the physician’s perspective.Delon Human -2002 -Science and Engineering Ethics 8 (3):273-276.detailsThe various statements and declarations of the World Medical Association that address conflicts of interest on the part of physicians as (1) researchers, and (2) practitioners, are examined, with particular reference to the October 2000 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki. Recent contributions to the literature, notably on conflicts of interest in medical research, are noted. Finally, key provisions of the American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics (2000–2001 Edition) that address the various forms of conflict of interest that can (...) arise in the practice of medicine are outlined. (shrink)
Meaning in the lives of humans and other animals.Duncan Purves &NicolasDelon -2018 -Philosophical Studies 175 (2):317-338.detailsThis paper argues that contemporary philosophical literature on meaning in life has important implications for the debate about our obligations to non-human animals. If animal lives can be meaningful, then practices including factory farming and animal research might be morally worse than ethicists have thought. We argue for two theses about meaning in life: that the best account of meaningful lives must take intentional action to be necessary for meaning—an individual’s life has meaning if and only if the individual acts (...) intentionally in ways that contribute to finally valuable states of affairs; and that this first thesis does not entail that only human lives are meaningful. Because non-human animals can be intentional agents of a certain sort, our account yields the verdict that many animals’ lives can be meaningful. We conclude by considering the moral implications of these theses for common practices involving animals. (shrink)
Une fonction de Kolchin pour les corps imparfaits de degré d'imperfection fini.FrançoiseDelon -2005 -Journal of Symbolic Logic 70 (2):664 - 680.detailsNon-perfect separably closed fields are stable, and not superstable. As a result, not all types can be ranked. We develop here a new tool, a "semi-rank", which takes values in the non-negative reals, and gives a sufficient condition for forking of types. This semi-rank is built up from a transcendence function, analogous to the one considered by Kolchin in the context of differentially closed fields. It yields some orthogonality and stratification results. /// Un corps séparablement clos non algébriquement clos est (...) stable sans être superstable. Cela signifie que seuls certains de ses types sont rangés. Nous développons un autre outil, un "semi-rang" à valeurs réelles, qui donne un critère de déviation des types. Ce semi-rang est construit à partir d'un analogue de la fonction de Kolchin associée à un type au-dessus d'un corps différentiel. Il produit des résultats de stratification des modèles et des résultats d'orthogonalité. (shrink)
How Do We Understand the Meaning of a Sentence Under the Yogācāra Model of the Mind? On Disputes Among East Asian Yogācāra Thinkers of the Seventh Century.Ching Keng -2018 -Journal of Indian Philosophy 46 (3):475-504.detailsUnderstanding the meaning of a sentence is crucial for Buddhists because they put so much emphasis on understanding the verbal expressions of the Buddha. But this can be problematic under their metaphysical framework of momentariness, and their epistemological framework of multiple consciousnesses. This paper starts by reviewing the theory of five states of mind in the Yogācārabhūmi, and then investigates debates among medieval East Asian Yogācāra thinkers about how various consciousnesses work together to understand the meaning of a sentence. The (...) major differences between the various explanations proffered lie in the minimum number of types of consciousnesses involved, and the minimum linguistic marks cognized, in order for one to understand a sentence consisting of four Chinese characters. I show that in these disputes, two points are key: First, the role played by the mental consciousness that arises simultaneously with a sensory consciousness: that is to say, whether a sensory consciousness should still be regarded as essential for understanding, if the simultaneous mental consciousness also cognizes the same mark. Second, whether the syntactic structure of a sentence is taken into consideration: that is to say, whether there is a separate determination of understanding regarding each character, or there is no determination until one has heard two or more characters and takes them as a syntactically meaningful unit. (shrink)
The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi.JuliaChing -2000 - Oup Usa.detailsRecognized as one of the greatest philosophers in classical China, Chu Hsi is especially known in the West through translations of one of his many works, theChin-su Lu. JuliaChing, a noted scholar of Neo-Confucian thought, provides the first book-length examination of Chu-Hsi's religious thought, based on extensive reading in both primary and secondary sources.
L’animal d’élevage compagnon de travail. L’éthique des fables alimentaires.NicolasDelon -2017 -Revue Française d'Éthique Appliquée 2 (4).detailsJocelyne Porcher sets out to “reinvent” our relationship to animals in order to better “live with” them. This article provides a critical examination of her thesis that farm animals can be seen as proper workers, in a sense that precludes the sort of unjust exploitation that she ascribes to factory farming. Contrary to Porcher, the article considers relationships between humans and domesticated species which do not entail killing or even work for food production purposes. The present critique focuses on the (...) distinction between the (industrial) “animal productions” and the (traditional) “husbandry” practices ; the notion of animal worker and its implications ; finally, the assumptions leading Porcher to overlook possible alternative relationships. (shrink)
Strangers to ourselves: a Nietzschean challenge to the badness of suffering.NicolasDelon -2024 -Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (9):3600-3629.detailsIs suffering really bad? The late Derek Parfit argued that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and that suffering is in itself bad both for the one who suffers and impersonally. Nietzsche denied that suffering was intrinsically bad and that its value could even be impersonal. This paper has two aims. It argues against what I call ‘Realism about the Value of Suffering’ by drawing from a broadly Nietzschean debunking of our evaluative attitudes, showing that a (...) recently influential response to the debunking challenge (the appeal to phenomenal introspection) fails. It also argues that a Nietzschean approach is well suited to support the challenge and is bolstered by the empirical literature. As strangers to ourselves, we cannot know whether suffering is really intrinsically bad for us. (shrink)
Logic Colloquium 2007.FrançoiseDelon,Ulrich Kohlenbach,Penelope Maddy &Frank Stephan (eds.) -2010 - New York: Cambridge University Press.detailsThe 2007 proceedings from the Annual European Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic.
Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom.JuliaChing -1997 - Cambridge University Press.detailsIn this book, JuliaChing offers a survey of over 4,000 years of Chinese civilization through an examination of the relationship between kingship and mysticism. She investigates the sage-king myth and ideal, arguing that institutions of kingship were bound up with cultivation of trance states and communication with spirits. Over time, the sage-king myth became a model for the actual ruler. As a paradigm, it was also appropriated by private individuals who strove for wisdom without becoming kings. As the (...) Confucian tradition interacted with the Taoist and the Buddhist, the religious character of spiritual and mystical cultivation became more pronounced. But the sage-king idea continued, promoting expectations of benevolent despotism rather than democratization in Chinese civilization. (shrink)
Contes Et Romans.MichelDelon (ed.) -2004 - Gallimard.detailsL'ouvre de Diderot échappe aux catégories habituelles. Elle se développe dans un temps où les genres littéraires sont en crise. Dans ses romans et ses contes, les dialogues se chevauchent, les narrateurs se multiplient, les êtres de fiction côtoient des personnages historiques (oui, Rameau avait bien un neveu)... Du vivant de leur auteur, peu de textes parurent autrement que dans la clandestinité ou la confidentialité. Liberté d'invention, diffusion restreinte : sans doute tient-on là les raisons pour lesquelles Diderot n'a pas (...) été considéré comme un écrivain majeur aussi rapidement que le furent Voltaire ou Rousseau. Mais le temps a fait son ouvre. Aujourd'hui, c'est le génie et le visionnaire que l'on invoque en lisant ses récits presque entièrement composés de dialogues et où le narrateur, ironique, fantaisiste, ne se fait jamais oublier. Avec les célèbres échanges de Lui et de Moi dans Le Neveu de Rameau, avec ceux de Jacques le fataliste, de son maître et de leurs comparses, et avec ceux, moins connus, de l'Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants ou encore de Mystification : Diderot, auteur, narrateur et personnage, joue de l'illusion romanesque et de ses ficelles. Mais on est bien au-delà du simple jeu de société. Avec ses récits, Diderot parvient à transmettre les questions des Lumières à l'échelle des sentiments humains - amitié, désir, amour - et des individus. (shrink)
Consider the agent in the arthropod.NicolasDelon,Peter Cook,Gordon Bauer &Heidi Harley -2020 -Animal Sentience 29 (32).details—Commentary on Mikhalevich and Powell on invertebrate minds.— Whether or not arthropods are sentient, they can have moral standing. Appeals to sentience are not necessary and retard progress in human treatment of other species, including invertebrates. Other increasingly well-documented aspects of invertebrate minds are pertinent to their welfare. Even if arthropods are not sentient, they can be agents whose goals—and therefore interests—can be frustrated. This kind of agency is sufficient for moral status and requires that we consider their welfare.
The Confucian View of the Relationship between Knowledge and Action and Its Relevance to Action Research.Ching-Tien Tsai -2014 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 46 (13):1474-1486.detailsThere are marked similarities between Confucian ideas about the relationship between action, knowledge and learning, and contemporary educational thinking about action research. Examples can be seen in the relationship between action and research. First, Confucius emphasized the importance of ‘action’ which was different from ‘research’. The Confucian view of action implies that one should engage in a research process of deliberation in advance and then decide whether to take action or not. This kind of researched action is refined by the (...) process of deliberation which could be called ‘research pre action’—the first stage of action research. Second, Confucius emphasized the importance of knowledge, and this reveals that Confucius emphasized the importance of knowledgeable action. This view of the relationship between knowledge and action inspires an insight into the relationship between knowledge, action, and action research. This competence to research and acquire new understanding in action could be called ‘research in action’—the second stage of action research. Third, Confucius emphasized the importance of learning to connect the relationship between knowledge and action. According to Confucius, learning is an important medium to accumulate knowledge, enable action, and improve the relationship between knowledge and action. And it might enable the possibility of a set of relations in which ‘action’ and ‘research’ might no longer be segregated in their traditional dichotomy. This relationship could be called ‘research on action’ in the third stage of action research. These observations of the Confucian view show a new direction in action research. (shrink)
Social norms and farm animal protection.NicolasDelon -2018 -Palgrave Communications 4:1-6.detailsSocial change is slow and difficult. Social change for animals is formidably slow and difficult. Advocates and scholars alike have long tried to change attitudes and convince the public that eating animals is wrong. The topic of norms and social change for animals has been neglected, which explains in part the relative failure of the animal protection movement to secure robust support reflected in social and legal norms. Moreover, animal ethics has suffered from a disproportionate focus on individual attitudes and (...) behavior at the expense of collective behavior, social change, and empirical psychology. If what we want to change is behavior on a large scale, norms are important tools. This article reviews an account of social norms that provides insights into the possibility and limitations of social change for animals, approaching animal protection as a problem of reverse social engineering. It highlights avenues for future work from this neglected perspective. (shrink)
Wild Animal Suffering is Intractable.NicolasDelon &Duncan Purves -2018 -Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (2):239-260.detailsMost people believe that suffering is intrinsically bad. In conjunction with facts about our world and plausible moral principles, this yields a pro tanto obligation to reduce suffering. This is the intuitive starting point for the moral argument in favor of interventions to prevent wild animal suffering. If we accept the moral principle that we ought, pro tanto, to reduce the suffering of all sentient creatures, and we recognize the prevalence of suffering in the wild, then we seem committed to (...) the existence of such a pro tanto obligation. Of course, competing values such as the aesthetic, scientific or moral values of species, biodiversity, naturalness or wildness, might be relevant to the all-things-considered case for or against intervention. Still, many argue that, even if we were to give some weight to such values, no plausible theory could resist the conclusion that WAS is overridingly important. This article is concerned with large-scale interventions to prevent WAS and their tractability and the deep epistemic problem they raise. We concede that suffering gives us a reason to prevent it where it occurs, but we argue that the nature of ecosystems leaves us with no reason to predict that interventions would reduce, rather than exacerbate, suffering. We consider two interventions, based on gene editing technology, proposed as holding promise to prevent WAS; raise epistemic concerns about them; discuss their potential moral costs; and conclude by proposing a way forward: to justify interventions to prevent WAS, we need to develop models that predict the effects of interventions on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and animals’ well-being. (shrink)
Dependent Nature as Cognitive Objects Directed toward Purification in The Saṃdhinirmocana-Sūtra.Ching Keng -forthcoming -Philosophy East and West.detailsThis paper first shows the ambiguous nature of the dependent nature ( paratantra-svabhāva ) as being both negative and positive, and then examines the two conflicting readings of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra regarding whether the dependent nature is cognitive objects directed toward purification (* viśuddhy-ālambana ). I argue that the original intent of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra is indeed that the dependent nature is cognitive objects directed toward purification and that, for this reason, it is a part of the lack of self-nature with respect (...) to the ultimate reality ( paramārtha-niḥsvabhāvatā ). However, this interpretation creates tension with the text’s comparison of the dependent nature to an illusion ( māyā ). Drawing on the pivotal model proposed by Sponberg, I suggest that the dependent nature is regarded as illusory because it arises from prior permeation ( vāsanā ) by the imagined nature ( parikalpita-svabhāva ). However, when the dependent nature is perceived as devoid of the imagined nature, it becomes cognitive objects directed toward purification. (shrink)
Analysis of Mutual Influence Relationships of Purchase Intention Factors of Electric Bicycles: Application of DEMATEL Taking into Account Information Uncertainty and Expert Confidence.Ching-Te Lin,Jen-Jen Yang,Wen-Jen Chiang,Jen-Jung Yang &Chin-Cheng Yang -2022 -Complexity 2022:1-13.detailsAs the negative environmental impacts of transportation systems become more severe, governments and environmental groups are seeking more sustainable transportation options, such as replacing fuel-powered vehicles with electric vehicles and expanding public transportation systems to reduce the number of people driving on their own, in order to reduce the environmental impacts of transportation systems. At present, the rapid expansion of public transportation systems is not an easy task and requires a long period of time to plan for expansion and construction, (...) so people are increasingly looking to find means of transportation that meet sustainable conditions as solutions. In this context, electric bicycles are one of the solutions that people can choose, with benefits such as energy saving, carbon reduction, effective air pollution reduction, and simple and labor-saving riding. However, in Taiwan, despite the many benefits of electric bicycles, their popularity is not high. Therefore, this study focuses on the factors that affect the purchase of electric bicycles in Taiwan. The Influential Network Relation Map generated by the Z-based Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory technique is used to describe the influence relationships among the factors and to establish the key evaluation criteria of electric bicycle purchase intention. The results indicate that vehicle price, safety, motor performance, battery life, and battery durability are the most important factors in purchasing electric bicycles. Furthermore, the power of motor is considered as the factor that most significantly affects other criteria, while safety and price are most likely to be affected by other criteria. This study has contributed to academia and industry, for the dependency weights of these factors are set to provide a scientific and systematic way to show how consumers think in the decision-making process and to provide more reliable information and management implications for the electric bicycle industry. (shrink)
Measuring Conceptual Associations via the Development of the Chinese Visual Remote Associates Test.Ching-Lin Wu,Pei-Zhen Chen &Hsueh-Chih Chen -2022 -Frontiers in Psychology 13.detailsMultiple versions of the Chinese Remote Associates Test have been developed. Thus far, all CRATs have employed verbal stimuli; other forms of stimuli have not yet been used. In this context, the present study compiled a Chinese Visual Remote Associates Test that conforms to the Chinese language and culture based on a picture naming database. The developed CVRAT has two versions, CVRAT-A and CVRAT-B, each comprising 20 test questions. A typical CVRAT question consists of three stimuli pictures, requiring respondents to (...) propose a target word that is semantically associated with all the pictures. When compiling the CVRAT, this study first selected target words, sifted through stimuli words and corresponding pictures, and analyzed pilot test questions. After compilation, their reliability and validity were examined. The results showed that the CVRAT had moderate internal consistency reliability, good criterion-related validity for the Chinese Word Remote Associates Test, Chinese Radical Remote Associates Test, Chinese Compound Remote Associates Test, insight problem-solving, as well as acceptable discriminant validity for fluency, flexibility, and originality of a divergent thinking test. In other words, CVRAT can effectively measure remote associative capability and provides a figural creativity test that facilitates the understanding of different kinds of remote associations. (shrink)
Letting Animals Off the Hook.NicolasDelon -2024 -Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 28 (1).detailsA growing literature argues that animals can act for moral reasons without being responsible. I argue that the literature often fails to maintain a clear distinction between moral behavior and moral agency, and I formulate a dilemma: either animals are less moral or they are more responsible than the literature suggests. If animals can respond to moral reasons, they are responsible according to an influential view of moral responsibility—Quality of Will. But if they are responsible, as some argue, costly implications (...) must be acknowledged. If, however, they should not be considered responsible, then we may have to reassess the meaning of animal morality. I discuss ways to eschew responsibility or to tailor it to animals and argue that each requires a revised conception of animal morality. (shrink)
Le problème de la souffrance chez Nietzsche et Parfit.NicolasDelon -2019 -Klesis 43:156-186.detailsDans On What Matters Parfit défénd un objectivisme moral sur lequel il espère que les philosophes finiront par converger. Au cœur de cet espoir sont des vérités normatives irréductibles telles que l’affirmation que la souffrance est intrinsèquement mauvaise. Parfit se demande si Nietzsche menace son édifice et lui consacre un chapitre entier chapeautant la discussion du désaccord moral et de la convergence, et conclut que Nietzsche soit n’est pas en vrai désaccord, soit ne raisonne pas dans des conditions satisfaisantes. Je (...) mets ici à l’épreuve la prédiction de convergence de Parfit et montre que Nietzsche pose une menace encore plus sérieuse que ne le prétend Parfit. Je montre que l’idée que la souffrance peut être bonne est intelligible, cohérente et plus complexe que la lecture de Parfit ne le révèle. (shrink)
Minimal groups in separably closed fields.E. Bouscaren &F.Delon -2002 -Journal of Symbolic Logic 67 (1):239-259.detailsWe give a complete description of minimal groups infinitely definable in separably closed fields of finite degree of imperfection. In particular we answer positively the question of the existence of such a group with infinite transcendence degree (i.e., a minimal group with non thin generic).
Pervasive Captivity and Urban Wildlife.NicolasDelon -2020 -Ethics, Policy and Environment 23 (2):123-143.detailsUrban animals can benefit from living in cities, but this also makes them vulnerable as they increasingly depend on the advantages of urban life. This article has two aims. First, I provide a detailed analysis of the concept of captivity and explain why it matters to nonhuman animals—because and insofar as many of them have a (non-substitutable) interest in freedom. Second, I defend a surprising implication of the account—pushing the boundaries of the concept while the boundaries of cities and human (...) activities expand. I argue for the existence of the neglected problem of pervasive captivity, of which urban wildlife is an illustration. Many urban animals are confined, controlled and dependent, therefore often captive of expanding urban areas. While I argue that captivity per se is value-neutral, I draw the ethical and policy implications of harmful pervasive captivity. (shrink)
Animal Agency, Captivity, and Meaning.NicolasDelon -2018 -The Harvard Review of Philosophy 25:127-146.detailsCan animals be agents? Do they want to be free? Can they have meaningful lives? If so, should we change the way we treat them? This paper offers an account of animal agency and of two continuums: between human and nonhuman agency, and between wildness and captivity. It describes how a wide range of human activities impede on animals’ freedom and argues that, in doing so, we deprive a wide range of animals of opportunities to exercise their agency in ways (...) that can give meaning to their lives. (shrink)
What is Svabhāva-vikalpa and with Which Consciousness(es) is it Associated?Ching Keng -2019 -Journal of Indian Philosophy 47 (1):73-93.detailsThis paper begins with a contrast between two different views about whether the five sensory consciousnesses are accompanied by vikalpa. For the Abhidharmakośa, the five sensory consciousnesses are accompanied by the svabhāva-vikalpa whose nature is vitarka; but for Yogācāra, the five sensory consciousnesses are without that particular kind of svabhāva-vikalpa because vitarka is regarded as belonging merely to the mental consciousness. My hypothesis for explaining such difference is that Yogācāra assigns that particular kind of svabhāva-vikalpa to mental consciousness rather than (...) to the five sensory consciousnesses. I then look for possible functions of vitarka-vicāra that could map to svabhāva-vikalpa: (a) conceptual vitarka-vicāra in an unconcentrated state; (b) conceptual vitarka-vicāra in a concentrated state; (c) nonconceptual vitarka-vicāra in an unconcentrated state; (d) non-conceptual vitarka-vicāra in a concentrated state. I argue that the svabhāva-vikalpa in the Abhidharmakośa should map to (c) and (d), which in Yogācāra maps to mental perception (mānasapratyakṣa) stipulated by Dignāga. This refers to the discernment of the shape of a cognitive object in the foreground against the background. I end this paper with some general observations about why Yogācāra maps the svabhāvavikapla to the mental consciousness, and about the different senses covered by the Buddhist notion of vikalpa, which is broader than the sense of "conceptualization" as we now understand it. (shrink)
Context and Logical Consequence.Ching Hui Su -2017 -Journal of Philosophical Research 42:399-411.detailsIt is commonly agreed that logic studies the form of arguments and that the concept of a consequence relation is based on the idea of truth-preservation in all models. Based on some observations about arguments involving conditionals, Brogaard and Salerno argue that the consequence relation should be defined in terms of truth-preservation within one fixed context. I will argue that Ichikawa’s contextualism for counterfactuals can be treated as an elucidation of what they have in mind. Instead of standing for or (...) against Stalnaker’s or Lewis’s semantics of counterfactuals, I will argue that the key to explaining the phenomena in question is the concept of a consequence relation. To support the point above, logical contextualism or relativism will be introduced and defended. I thus suggest that the concept of a consequence relation is sensitive to the context in which a certain argument is asserted. (shrink)
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Values, desires, and love: Reflections on Wollheim's moral psychology.Ching-wa Wong -2011 -Ratio 24 (1):78-90.detailsIn The Thread of Life, Richard Wollheim argues that a person's sense of value is grounded in the power of love to generate certain favourable perceptions of an object. Following from his view is a psychoanalytic conception of valuing as constituted by the imaginative force of phantasy, rather than rational deliberation. In this paper, I shall defend this conception with a view to explaining the relation between values and desires. I suggest that valuing qua phantasy-making can ‘tune up’ a person's (...) desires to fit his perception of the good. Such power of phantasy is to be contrasted with various types of motivational failure in moral imagination. Finally, I argue that ‘effective valuing’, which makes us capable of desiring what we perceive to be good, requires an affective kind of imagination which assures us that we have the ability to love and to be loved. (shrink)
Real and Imaginary Freedom.Ching-Hung Woo -2010 -Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 18 (2):35-40.detailsThe body of this essay is free of philosophical jargons. Since however some readers are accustomed to thinking about the free-will problem in terms of the compatibilism/incompatibilism divide, I wish to briefly comment on why this emphasis is not very helpful. If by “freedom” one means that a person’s will is the ultimate choicemaker free from prior causes, then the position of this essay is that “freedom is incompatible with determinism”; but if by “freedom” one means that there is harmony (...) between the intended consequences of a choice and the nature of the choice-maker, the position of this essay is that “freedom is compatible with determinism.” This illustrates that unless there is first an agreement on what is meant by “freedom,” it is premature to put the focus on whether freedom is compatible with determinism. (shrink)
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Relational nonhuman personhood.NicolasDelon -2023 -Southern Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):569-587.detailsThis article defends a relational account of personhood. I argue that the structure of personhood consists of dyadic relations between persons who can wrong or be wronged by one another, even if some of them lack moral competence. I draw on recent work on directed duties to outline the structure of moral communities of persons. The upshot is that we can construct an inclusive theory of personhood that can accommodate nonhuman persons based on shared community membership. I argue that, once (...) we unpack the internal relation between directed duties, moral status, and flourishing, relations can ground personhood and include nonhuman animals. (shrink)