scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Showing papers in "Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement in 2004"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue against an exaggerated empiricism about human cognition, and defend natural normativity or natural goodness against certain familiar lines of objection, but their main purpose is to make room for a certain range of doctrines in ethical theory and the theory of practical rationality.
Abstract: My immediate aim in this lecture is to contribute something to the apt characterization of our representation and knowledge of the specifically human life form, as I will put it—and, to some extent, of things ‘human’ more generally In particular I want to argue against an exaggerated empiricism about such cognition Meditation on these themes might be pursued as having a kind of interest of its own, an epistemological and in the end metaphysical interest, but my own purpose in the matter is practical-philosophical I want to employ my theses to make room for a certain range of doctrines in ethical theory and the theory of practical rationality—doctrines, namely, of natural normativity or natural goodness, as we may call them I am not proposing to attempt a positive argument for any such ‘neo-Aristotelian’ position, but merely to defend such views against certain familiar lines of objection; and even here my aims will be limited, as will be seen

69 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The notion of non-observational knowledge was introduced by Anscombe as mentioned in this paper, who argued that an agent's knowledge of what he is doing is characteristically not based on observation.
Abstract: Among the legacies of Elizabeth Anscombe's 1957 monograph Intention are the introduction of the notion of ‘practical knowledge’ into contemporary philosophical discussion of action, and her claim, pursued throughout the book, that an agent's knowledge of what he is doing is characteristically not based on observation. Each idea by itself has its own obscurities, of course, but my focus here will be on the relation between the two ideas, how it is that the discussion of action may lead us to speak of non-observational knowledge at all, and how this notion can be part of the understanding of a kind of ordinary knowledge that we have reason to consider practical rather than speculative. Anscombe mentions several quite different things under the heading of ‘non-observational knowledge’, and she first introduces the notion of the nonobservational for purely dialectical purposes, associated with the task of setting out the field she wants to investigate, in a way that avoids begging the very questions she means to raise. She needs a way of distinguishing the class of movements to which a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ applies, but which doesn't itself employ the concepts of ‘being intentional’ or ‘acting for a reason’. Section 8 begins: “What is required is to describe this class without using any notions like ‘intended’ or ‘willed’ or ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’. This can be done as follows: we first point out a particular class of things which are true of a man: namely the class of things which he knows without observation.” (p. 13) She first illustrates this by the example of knowledge of the position of one's limbs, the immediate way one can normally tell, e.g., whether one's knee is bent or not. But examples of this sort are in fact ill suited to shed light on the idea of ‘practical knowledge’, which is the true focus of the idea of the non-observational in the study of action. When we see this we will be better able to see why Anscombe is concerned with the non-observational in the first place, and how this concern is tied to other characteristic Anscombian theses, for instance that an action will be intentional under some descriptions but not others, and that practical knowledge is distinguished from speculative knowledge in being “the cause of what it understands” (p. 87). And we will be able to understand how it is that an agent can be said to know without observation that he is doing something like painting the wall yellow, when this knowledge so patently involves claims about what is happening in the world, matters which it seems could only be known observationally.

67 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make a distinction between philosophical questions about human agency arising in philosophy of mind and those that arise in ethics, and they offer a way to make sense of attitudes to what has come to be known as the standard story of action.
Abstract: Among philosophical questions about human agency, one can distinguish in a rough and ready way between those that arise in philosophy of mind and those that arise in ethics. In philosophy of mind, one central aim has been to account for the place of agents in a world whose operations are supposedly ‘physical’. In ethics, one central aim has been to account for the connexion between ethical species of normativity and the distinctive deliberative and practical capacities of human beings. Ethics then is involved with questions of moral psychology whose answers admit a kind of richness in the life of human beings from which the philosophy of mind may ordinarily prescind. Philosophy of mind, insofar as it treats the phenomenon of agency as one facet of the phenomenon of mentality, has been more concerned with how there can be ‘mental causation’ than with any details of a story of human motivation or of the place of evaluative commitments within such a story. This little account of the different agenda of two philosophical approaches to human agency is intended only to speak to the state of play as we have it, and it is certainly somewhat artificial. I offer it here as a way to make sense of attitudes to what has come to be known as the standard story of action. The standard story is assumed to be the orthodoxy on which philosophers of mind, who deal with the broad metaphysical questions, have converged, but it is held to be deficient when it comes to specifically ethical questions. Michael Smith, for instance, asks: ‘How do we turn the standard story of action into the story of ‘orthonomous action?’, where orthonomous action is action ‘under the rule of the right as opposed to the wrong’. Smith is not alone in thinking that the standard story is correct as far as it goes but lacks resources needed to accommodate genuinely ethical beings. Michael Bratman is another philosopher who has this thought; and I shall pick on Bratman’s treatment of human agency in due course.

65 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: According to the standard story of action, a story that can be traced back at least to David Hume (1740), actions are those bodily movements that are caused and rationalized by a pair of mental states: a desire for some end, where ends can be thought of as ways the world could be, and a belief that something the agent can just do, namely, move her body in the way to be explained, has some suitable chance of making the world the relevant way.
Abstract: According to the standard story of action, a story that can be traced back at least to David Hume (1740), actions are those bodily movements that are caused and rationalized by a pair of mental states: a desire for some end, where ends can be thought of as ways the world could be, and a belief that something the agent can just do, namely, move her body in the way to be explained, has some suitable chance of making the world the relevant way. Bodily movements that occur otherwise aren't actions, they are mere happenings (Davidson 1963, Davidson 1971).

34 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Russian Revolution and National Socialist ascendancy in Germany are the two most important sources of evidence of moral philosophy in our time, as the French Revolution was for Hegel and Marx, and later to Tocqueville and for Mill as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Problem ‘The Russian Revolution and the National Socialist ascendancy in Germany are the two most important sources of evidence of moral philosophy in our time, as the French Revolution was for Hegel and Marx, and later to Tocqueville and for Mill. Although both revolutions produced, both in intention and in effect, a triumph on a gigantic scale, there are often remarked differences between the evil effects planned and achieved.’ This is an observation made by Stuart Hampshire, a keen philosophical connoisseur of the 20th century. It is embarrassingly banal to say that these two historical events shook the world. But it is less banal, although true, to say that these two events created a change in the world order which had in turn grave moral consequences. Both paved the way to unparalleled murderous regimes (especially if we view Mao's regime as connected, even if indirectly, to the October Revolution). It is injustice, not justice, which brings us into normative politics; despotism, not freedom. Moral political theory should start with negative politics: the politics that informs us on how to tackle evil before it tells us how to pursue the good. Stalin's Communism and Hitler's Nazism are perhaps the most glaringly dark examples, if I may be allowed the oxymoron, of evil. Thus negative moral politics should be informed by these two examples, and it should be able to provide us with the moral vocabulary adequate for coping with them.

31 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the moral doubter is defined as a person who has problems about the rationality of acting morally rather as many Christians have problems with the existence of evil in the world, but has a worry about why "in the tight corner" anyone has reason to do what there seems to be reason enough not to do, or why it would be unjust or uncharitable to do it.
Abstract: The problem I am going to discuss here concerns practical rationality, rationality not in thought but in action. More particularly, I am going to discuss the rationality, or absence of rationality (even, as one might put it, the contra-rationality or irrationality) of moral action. And ‘moral action’ shall mean here something done by someone who (let us suppose rightly) believes that to act otherwise would be contrary to, say, justice or charity; or again not done because it is thought that it would be unjust or uncharitable to do it. The question is whether in so acting, or refusing to act, this person will be acting rationally, even in cases where he or she believes that not only desire but self-interest would argue in favour of the wrongdoing. In starting out like this I shall be addressing the concerns of one whom I might label ‘the moral doubter’: one who has problems about the rationality of acting morally rather as many Christians have problems about the existence of evil in the world. This person wants to be convinced and may be particularly attached to morality, but has a worry about why ‘in the tight corner’ anyone has reason to do what there seems to be reason enough not to do, or again not to do what there seems reason enough to do. My moral worrier may not be in any doubt about what is right and wrong, and is therefore different from an immoralist such as Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic , who insists that justice is not a virtue but rather ‘silly good nature.’

22 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the attitude described by William James: "faith" has to do with intention, not with intention itself, but with hope and confidence in oneself, which makes me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps have been impossible.
Abstract: What, if anything, has faith to do with intention? By ‘faith’ I have in mind the attitude described by William James:Suppose … that I am climbing in the Alps, and have had the illluck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap. Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps have been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate; or suppose that…I feel it would be sinful to act upon an assumption unverified by previous experience,—why, then I shall hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss.… There are then cases where faith creates its own verification. Believe, and you shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall perish.

19 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The case of Elizabeth Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" as discussed by the authors, published in 1958, is something of an exception. But there has been less close attention to its arguments than one might have expected.
Abstract: Someone once told me that the average number of readers of a philosophy article is about six. That is a particularly depressing thought when one takes into account the huge influence of certain articles. When I think of, say, Gettier's article on knowledge, or Quine's ‘Two Dogmas’, I begin to wonder whether anyone is ever likely to read anything I write. Usually the arguments of these very influential articles have been subjected to widespread analysis and interpretation. The case of Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, published in 1958, is something of an exception. That article has played a significant part in the development of so-called ‘virtue ethics’, which has burgeoned over the last three decades in particular. But there has been less close attention to its arguments than one might have expected.

15 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" is read and remembered principally as a critique of the state of ethical theory at the time when she was writing, an account of certain faulty assumptions underlying that theory in its different variants, and rendering trivial the points on which they ostensibly disagree as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ is read and remembered principally as a critique of the state of ethical theory at the time when she was writing—an account of certain faulty assumptions underlying that theory in its different variants, and rendering trivial the points on which they ostensibly disagree. Not unreasonably, the essay serves as a starting point for the recent Oxford Readings collection on ‘virtue ethics’, and as an authoritative text on the failings of other approaches with which philosophy students have to acquaint themselves. Yet what really commands attention on rereading it is Anscombe's denunciation of the impotence of current moral philosophy to generate resistance to certain quite specific forms of wrongdoing. The question that provides a kind of gold standard here, recurring several times in the course of the discussion, is that of the killing (or judicial execution or other ‘punishment’) of the innocent in order to avoid some putatively greater evil, or to bring about some sufficiently great good.

12 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Seduction can be thought of as a strong form of inducement to wrong, typified by command, counsel, and enticement through praise or provocations as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: There are a number of ways in which a person can share the guilt of another's wrongdoing. He might advise it, command it or consent to it. He might provoke it, praise it, flatter the wrongdoer, or conceal the wrong. He might stay silent when there is a clear duty to denounce the wrong or its perpetrator; or he might positively defend the wrong done. Finally, he might actively participate or cooperate in the wrongdoing. These various activities, apart from cooperation, typically occur before or after the commission of the wrong itself, only provocation being essentially before the fact. As such they fall into the categories of seduction or comfort, seduction being essentially pre-commission and comfort post-commission. In seduction (mutatis mutandis for comfort), the seducer typically leads another into doing wrong who has not definitely made up his mind. He does not assist in the commission, but he leads to its occurring. If the principal (as I will call the one who commits the wrong) has made up his mind, actions which might otherwise amount to seduction are best characterized as amounting to scandal, since they do not lead to wrong but reinforce the principal in his wrongful intent or provide to third parties a bad example since they connote approval of the principal's action. Closely related to the concept of seduction is that of solicitation, though perhaps these are best thought of as two aspects of the same kind of activity. Seduction can be thought of as a strong form of inducement to wrong, typified by command, counsel (where the seducer knows the advice is likely to be relied upon) and enticement through praise or provocation. Solicitation is a softer form of inducement typically involving requests, appeals, and invitations. Whereas the seducer or solicitor leads another into wrong but does not assist in its commission, the co-operator does not lead the principal into wrong but assists in its commission.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Even offences of strict liability, for which no mens rea is required, require an act: thus, to the familiar slogan that actus non facit reum nisi metis sit reus, we can add the prior, more fundamental slogan that mens non-facit reus nisi actus sat reus ; before we ask whether a defendant acted with men rea or fault, we must ask whether he committed a criminal act at all.
Abstract: The slogan that criminal liability requires an ‘act’, or a ‘voluntary act’, is still something of a commonplace in textbooks of criminal law. There are, it is usually added, certain exceptions to this requirement— cases in which liability is in fact, and perhaps even properly, imposed in the absence of such an act: but the ‘act requirement’ is taken to represent a normally minimal necessary condition of criminal liability. Even offences of strict liability, for which no mens rea is required, require an act: thus to the familiar slogan that actus non facit reum nisi metis sit rea we can add the prior, more fundamental slogan that mens non facit reum nisi actus sit reus ; before we ask whether a defendant acted with mens rea or fault, we must ask whether he committed a criminal act at all.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Anscombe's indictment of modern moral philosophy is full-blooded as discussed by the authors, and it is not profitable to do moral philosophy until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking.
Abstract: Anscombe's indictment of modern moral philosophy is full-blooded. She began with three strong claims:The first is that is not profitable to do moral philosophy… until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation and duty… and of the moral sense of ‘ought’, ought to be jettisoned… because they are derivatives… from an earlier conception of ethics… and are only harmful without it. The third thesis is that the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present are of little importance.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the question whether Anscombe's desire to keep ethics out of the "logical features of practical reasoning" (38.1, p. 72) doesn't lead her to cut those features down too far; whether, that is, there is not more to human action and practical rationality at the grammatical level than she seems inclined to concede.
Abstract: It is the famous first thesis of Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ that we should lay aside moral philosophy—indeed ‘ banish ethics totally from our minds’! (p. 38, paragraph 36)—‘until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology’. By a ‘philosophy of psychology’ I understand Anscombe to mean grammatical investigations into various psychological concepts that hold the key to ethics. Anscombe herself instances ‘action’, ‘intention’, ‘pleasure’, ‘wanting’ (‘more will probably turn up if we start with these’). Without such an understanding, she thinks we will simply go astray. In Intention she addresses herself to this task, at least as regards ‘intention’, ‘action’ and ‘wanting’. Indeed of the four concepts mentioned in ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, it is only the concept ‘pleasure’ that is left ‘in its obscurity; it needs a whole enquiry to itself’. ( Intention 40.4, p. 77) In this paper I explore the question whether Anscombe's desire to keep ethics out of the ‘logical features of practical reasoning’ (38.1, p. 72) doesn't lead her to cut those features down too far; whether, that is, there is not more to human action and practical rationality at the grammatical level than she seems inclined to concede. And I wish to connect this with her suspicion and criticism of Aristotle's concept of preferential choice ( prohairesis ). Part 1 In Intention section 5 Anscombe asks: ‘What distinguishes actions which are intentional from those which are not? The answer that I shall suggest is that they are the actions to which a certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ is given application; the sense is of course that in which the answer, if positive, gives a reason for acting . […]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Stoics as discussed by the authors were divided on points of detail, but they agreed on the broad outline of an account, in which emotions are valuational judgments (or beliefs) and resulting affective states.
Abstract: Introduction: cognitive theories of the emotions Contemporary philosophers have not, at least until very recently, been much concerned with the study of the emotions. It was not always so. The Stoics thought deeply about this topic. Although they were divided on points of detail, they agreed on the broad outline of an account. In it emotions are valuational judgments (or beliefs) and resulting affective states. Thus, for example, fear was understood as the judgment that some object is harmful followed by a desire to avoid it. When a person is afraid, the relevant desire and belief are (typically) accompanied by some further physiological reaction. Both desire and physiological reaction count as types of affective state. The Stoics did not need to say that emotions cause the resulting affective states or that emotions are valuational judgments. For the emotions could, in their view, include both the valuational judgment and the resultant affective states. For them, the judgments or beliefs in question were of the same genus as judgments or beliefs about matters unconcerned with action. According to them, the relevant beliefs could be differentiated as stronger or weaker (in terms of degrees of belief), but in no other salient respect. Whatever their disagreements, they were united in rejecting the older Aristotelian idea that some emotions are based on states more primitive and less rational than belief (or judgment). Why did the Stoics hold this view? There were several reasons. [A] It gave them a way of representing an agent's action as reasonable: the agent has considerations which he/she sees as favouring his/her acting as he/ she does, considerations which make her so acting justified by her own lights. These considerations are encapsulated in the beliefs and desires which provide reasons for their action. […]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticised the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors do take Anscombe work as a starting point.
Abstract: [About the book] Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticised the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors do take Anscombe's work as a starting point. Taken together the collection could be seen as a demonstration of the extent to which moral philosophers have since attempted to answer Anscombe's challenge, and to develop an approach to their subject which, while psychologically plausible, is neither based on divine law nor permissive of the impermissible.



Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: The Free Will Remains a Mystery (FWHM) problem was first raised by van Inwagen as mentioned in this paper, who argued that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism and that some human beings occasionally act freely and are morally responsible for some of what they do.
Abstract: Libertarians hold that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism and that some human beings occasionally act freely and are morally responsible for some of what they do. Can libertarians who know both that they are right and that they are free make sincere promises? Peter van Inwagen, a libertarian, contends that they cannot—at least when they assume that should they do what they promise to do, they would do it freely.2 Probably, this strikes many readers as a surprising thesis for a libertarian to hold. In light of van Inwagen's holding it, the title of his essay—‘Free Will Remains a Mystery’—may seem unsurprising. Although, as I will explain, van Inwagen's effort to motivate his contention about promising is problematic, an interesting challenge to libertarians that is focused on promise making can be motivated. In this essay, I will motivate a challenge of this kind, identify three ways libertarians may try to answer it, and develop one of the answers. Van Inwagen's Predicament As part of an argument against the theoretical utility of agent causation, van Inwagen asks his readers to imagine an indeterministic world in which he knows, perhaps because God told him, that there are ‘exactly two possible continuations of the present’: in one, he reveals a damaging fact about a friend to the press; in the other, he keeps silent about his friend. He also knows that ‘the objective, “ground-floor” probability of [his] “telling” is 0.43 and that the objective, “ground-floor” probability of [his] keeping silent is 0.57.’

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The promotion of value thesis (or principle) as mentioned in this paper is a view as widely endorsed as it is disputed, formulating it in my own words: The only thing we have reason to do is promote value.
Abstract: A view as widely endorsed as it is disputed says, formulating it in my own words: The only thing we have reason to do is promote value . This I will call The promotion of value thesis (or principle).

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A contextually unrestricted "What shall I do?" question is too open to focus reflection as mentioned in this paper, and therefore it is not suitable to focus on in a context where a context is open to reflection.
Abstract: Different questions generate different forms of practical reasoning. A contextually unrestricted ‘What shall I do?’ is too open to focus reflection. More determinately, an agent may ask, ‘Shall I do X, or Y?’ To answer that, he may need to weigh things up—as fits the derivation of ‘deliberation’ from libra (Latin for ‘scales’). Ubiquitous and indispensable though this is, I mention it only to salute it in passing. Or he may ask how to achieve a proposed end: if his end is to do X, he may ask ‘How shall I do X?’ Or he may ask how to apply a universal rule or particular maxim. Aristotle supplies examples in De Motu Animalium (7.701a7 ff.), whose wording I freely adapt to my own purposes: A1 reasons to a necessary means to achieving an end: I will make a cloak. To make a cloak I must do A. So, I will do A.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider the question of how many occurrences of insured events were there on September 11, 2001 in New York, despite the collapse of the two World Trade Center Towers one event, despite two separate airliners crashing into each tower? Or were these two separate insured events?
Abstract: September 11, 2001 brought to legal awareness an issue that has long puzzled metaphysicians. The general issue is that of event-identity, drawing the boundaries of events so that we can tell when there is one event and when there are two. The September 11th version of that issue is: how many occurrences of insured events were there on September 11, 2001 in New York? Was the collapse of the two World Trade Center Towers one event, despite the two separate airliners crashing into each tower? Or were these two separate insured events?