Race, Capital Punishment, and the Cost of Murder (VII-B)
Michael J. Cholbi (California State Polytechnic University-Pomona)
Numerous studies indicate that racial minorities are both more likely to be executed for murder and that those who murder them are less likely to be executed than if they murder whites. Death penalty opponents have long attempted to use these studies to argue for a moratorium on capital punishment. Whatever the merits of such arguments, they overlook the fact that such discrimination alters the costs of murder; racial discrimination imposes higher costs on minorities for murdering through tougher sentences, and it imposes lower costs on whites for murdering minorities by dispensing weaker sentences. These cost differentials constitute an injustice not simply to actual minority defendants in capital cases, nor simply to the actual minority victims of murder, but to all members of minority communities. I here offer two arguments for a moratorium on capital punishment: The first draws upon evidence of racial discrimination against minority defendants in capital cases, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy equal status under the law. The second draws upon the evidence regarding racial discrimination in relation to the race of victims, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy the equal protection of the law. Thus, by not assigning equal costs to murder, the American criminal justice system fails to provide racial minorities equality under the law and discounts the value of their lives and liberties. A moratorium is the least unjust response to such a social injustice. I also reply to the criticism that a moratorium prevents us from executing deserving murderers.
Do We Know How Happy We Are? (VI-B)
Daniel M. Haybron (Saint Louis University)
Our powers to assess our own happiness and, more broadly, our experience of life, are probably weaker and less reliable than we tend to suppose: we are subject to a variety of types of error concerning the character of our present affective states. For example, some affects, particularly moods, can greatly affect the quality of our experience even when we are unable to discern their existence. I briefly note two implications of these arguments. First, we may be less competent pursuers of happiness than is commonly believed. This raises concerns about Millian arguments for liberal restrictions on government efforts to promote good lives. Second, some of the errors discussed appear to support Ned Block's controversial distinction between two kinds of consciousness: access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. For it appears that we can have phenomenality without access, as when one is unaware of, and even unable to discern, one's anxiety. Moreover, such divergence may well be not just possible, but quite common.
The Fairness of Blame (VI-E)
Pamela Hieronymi (University of California-Los Angeles)
I consider the fairness of blaming a wrongdoer. More exactly, I consider the claim that blaming a wrongdoer can be unfair because blame has serious negative consequences or implications for the one blamed, consequences or implications which are not fairly meted out to the wrongdoer unless certain conditions are met_unless, e.g., the wrongdoer had fair opportunity to avoid those consequences, or unless the wrongdoer is someone capable of having done right. While agreeing that blame has serious negative implications, I argue that this particular charge of unfairness makes sense only on what I call the "further activity" conception of blame. On what I call the "judgment" conception, the negative implications of blame cannot render it unfair. I argue that the judgment conception is a plausible conception of blame. If this conception is plausible, and if blaming itself, on this conception, cannot be rendered unfair due to its negative consequences, then we might reasonably conclude that there are certain genuine burdens which are not directly subject to principles of fairness.
The Problem of Action in Hegel's Logic: Hegel's Argument against Deflationary Anti-Dualist Accounts of Mind and Action (VI-I)
James Kreines (Yale University)
Nearly all recent work on Hegel's approach to mind and action advocates some version of the same interpretive thesis: like more recent deflationary anti-dualists, Hegel aims to dissolve traditional metaphysical difficulties or to change the subject, rather than to resolve those difficulties with a positive, constructive, or revisionary metaphysics of mind and action. I argue that such readings miss both Hegel's point and the force of his argument. Hegel shows that philosophy must resolve the fundamental problem of how to account for the explanatory relevance of the mental. And Hegel argues that some forms of dualism prevent any resolution of that problem. This suggests to recent interpreters that Hegel advocates one of two opposed deflationary views: (i) that such difficulties need not arise because there is no ontological distinction between purposive action and natural event, only different ways of conceptualizing (or different normative stances towards) one and the same thing; or (ii) that such difficulties need not arise because there is no distinction between action and motivating cause, only actions ontologically inseparable from their intrinsic purposes. But Hegel actually has a strong argument that the problem of explanatory relevance persists and defeats such deflationary views. And Hegel rules out the idea that the relation between mind and world in purposive action might be primitive and so inexplicable, as this would require attributing to ourselves a special non-cognitive and self-justifying grasp of the inexplicable (something like Fichte's appeal to intellectual intuition). The problem of explanatory relevance must be met with a positive and constructive resolution, and we can begin to understand in these terms the philosophical appeal of Hegel's broader project in theoretical philosophy.
The Ethics of Conception and the Possibility of Harm: A Refutation of Parfit (VI-F)
Janet Malek (Rice University)
The perspective of those who will be most dramatically affected by conception decisions, namely, the children who will be brought into existence as a result of them, has been underrepresented in the ethical dialogue addressing such choices. The scarcity of literature that takes a child-centered perspective is largely due to the work of Derek Parfit. Parfit has argued that it is impossible for a child to be negatively affected by the decision to conceive her as long as her life is worth living. He claims that this is true regardless of the circumstances under which the child is conceived because if the parents had instead chosen not to conceive, or to conceive at a different time or in a different way, the child would never have existed and so is no worse off as a consequence of her own conception. If one accepts Parfit's argument, therefore, it makes no sense to talk about any negative effect that a conception decision could have on a child. This unintuitive conclusion has deterred many philosophers from exploring the implications of conception decisions for future children in a substantive way. However, I show that it is possible to get around Parfit's argument. I argue that his conclusions can be avoided and therefore create a conceptual space in which the effects of conception decisions can be analyzed from the perspective of the future child.
Reasons both Universalizable and Defeasible (III-E )
Adrienne M. Martin (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)
In recent years, a sizeable literature has developed on the topic of "normativity." This is a term of art, and it is often far from clear what people mean when they use it, except that it is closely related to the notion of a reason. Normativity has to do with the way that some considerations operate, not necessarily when they actually motivate us, but when we would say that they should motivate us: they "have a grip on" or "oblige" us; they "speak in favor of" or "weigh in favor of" our acting, living, or thinking in a certain way. Reasons, in this sense, appear to be everywhere ("normativity pervades our lives"). There are reasons for us to act and intend in some ways rather than in others. There are reasons for us to believe some things and not others. There are reasons for us to judge things good or bad, right or wrong, red or blue, round or square. There are even reasons for us to call some considerations and not others "reasons." I am concerned with "reason judgments"—judgments that a consideration or set of considerations provide(s) some reason, though not necessarily conclusive or sufficient reason, to act, believe, etceteras. I explore one question pertinent to a recently important matter of contention. This matter is whether reason judgments are "universalizable," and the question is whether the demonstration that reasons or reason judgments are defeasible would settle this matter one way or the other. I argue that the most common way of accommodating defeasibility within a (non-trivial) universalist conception of reasons is dissatisfactory, and propose an alternative.
Grelling's Paradox (VI-J)
Jay M. Newhard (University of Oklahoma)
Grelling's Paradox is the paradox that results from considering whether heterologicality, the word-property which a designator has when, and only when, the designator does not bear the word-property it designates, is had by `heterologicality'. Although there has been some philosophical debate over its solution, Grelling's Paradox is nearly uniformly treated as a variant of either the Liar Paradox or Russell's Paradox, and thus as a paradox that does not present any philosophical challenges not already presented by the two better known paradoxes. My aims are, first, to present a novel solution to Grelling's Paradox; and, second, to show that there are two lessons to be drawn from Grelling's Paradox that have not yet been drawn from the Liar or Russell's Paradox. The first lesson is that it is possible for the semantic content of a predicate to be sensitive to the semantic context; i.e., it is possible for a predicate to be an indexical expression. The second lesson is that the semantic content of an indexical predicate, though unproblematic for many cases, can nevertheless be problematic in some cases.
The Mind as Neural Software: Functionalism, Computationalism, and Computational Functionalism (VI-M)
Gualtiero Piccinini (Washington University in St. Louis)
I give a novel formulation of computational functionalism based on the view that a piece of software is a particular component of a computer. (Specifically, a piece of software is a component whose function is to control the computer's behavior.) I argue that my formulation of computational functionalism is philosophically more satisfactory than the standard formulation, because (i) it is faithful to our ordinary notions of hardware and software, thereby vindicating the original motivation of computational functionalism, and (ii) it does not conflate functionalism and computationalism, thereby leaving computationalism open to refutation independently of functionalism.
A New/Old Resolution of the Mind-Body Problem (II-M)
C. Wade Savage (University of Minnesota)
It is widely assumed that the theory of mind-body type identity has been proved false by Kripke's objection from the necessity of identity and Putnam's related objection from possible multiple physical realizations of any mental phenomenon, and that at best a theory of mind-body token (event) identity is true. However, there is a second classical objection to mind-body type identities—from the indiscernibility of identicals—that applies to mind-body token identities as well. Furthermore, the arguments from necessity and multiple realization threaten the truth even of token mind-body identities. Finally, many of us have the strong intuition that some version of a mind-body type identity theory is true. A fresh critique of the classical objections is therefore in order and one is here provided. It leads to the conclusion that logical identity must be distinguished from empirical identity, and that mind-body type identities can indeed be true. This thesis is in the spirit of the view of Feigl and Smart that mind-body identities are contingent; but it seems immune to the problems of their view.
Contractarianism and Contribution, Or Why Talents Matter Somewhat (III-I)
Cynthia A. Stark (University of Utah)
A shortcoming of contractarian accounts of justice is that they provide an objectionable ground for claims to justice. Because contractarians generally view justice as mutual advantage, they hold that people are owed justice only if it is to the advantage of others to cooperate with them, which, it turns out, is only when people are roughly equal in ability. Rawls seems to avoid this shortcoming by claiming that persons as such are owed justice. Yet at the same time he invokes the equal ability condition, in his description of the circumstances of justice, and assumes—as an interpretation of this condition, I argue—that every citizen has the ability to engage in social cooperation. It appears, then, that Rawls does not, in the end, surmount the shortcoming of contractarianism: so long as people's ability to engage in social cooperation bears upon their claims to justice, those claims may have an objectionable ground. I suggest that Rawls may want to preserve the equal ability condition in order to capture a widely held moral I intuition, which is that some individuals have claims to distributive justice not on the ground that they are persons, but on the ground that they helped create the social product. If personhood is the sole ground of an individual's claims to distributive justice, then one's contributing to the creation of social goods cannot give her a claim to a share of those goods. If, however, the ability to cooperate with others can also be a ground of one's claim to justice, then her contributing to the creation of goods, through cooperation, can give her a claim to a share of those goods.
Semantic Descent (I-O)
Joan Weiner (Indiana University)
Does Frege have a metatheory for his logic? There is an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which he does. Frege introduces and discusses his new logic in natural language; he argues, in response to criticisms of Begriffsschrift, that his logic is superior to Boole's by discussing formal features of both systems. Insofar as the enterprise of using natural language to introduce, discuss, and argue about features of a formal system is metatheoretic, Frege has a metatheory. There is also an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which Frege does not have a metatheory for his logic. The model theoretic metatheory with which we are familiar today is a post-Fregean development. Nonetheless, the issue of whether Frege has a metatheory has generated considerable controversy. I respond to one particular characterization of Frege's metatheory: that his justifications of his rules of inference require ineliminable use of a truth predicate. I argue that Frege need not (and does not) use truth predicates in his justifications of his rules of inference. This difference between Frege's logic and contemporary logic becomes vivid when we look at Quine's explanation of the necessity of semantic ascent. It shows us exactly why, for Frege, no such strategy is required.
Skeptical Gambits and the Two Roads to Atheism: Swinburne versus CORNEA (III-L)
Stephen Wykstra (Calvin College)
Evidential arguments from evil hold that seeing no God-justifying good for select evils strong confirms there being no such good (and hence, no God). Wykstra's "CORNEA" defense tries to undercut this by arguing that if God did exist, God-justifying goods would likely often be beyond our ken. But Swinburne argues that this fails, for Wykstra neglects a second task: showing that if God does not exist, outweighing goods for E (if they exist) would still be beyond our ken. I distinguish two paths from noseeum data to atheism, showing that while Wykstra blockades the Low Road, Swinburne in effect promotes the "High Road" as avoiding this blockade. I then argue this is wrong. If Wykstra discharges the first task, the High Road is blocked as much as the Low Road.
Requirements of Inclusive Feminist Social Theory (VI-K)
Naomi Zack (University of Oregon)
I define women historically as having the relation of identifying with and/or being assigned to the historical category of human beings who are designated female at birth or biological mothers or primary sexual choices of men. Being a woman is an external, non-substantive relation and as such it is shared by all women, regardless of their varied genders and circumstances. It is not necessary that any woman be a member of any or all of the disjuncts of the category (FMP). Category FMP is a universal social construction but women are real, existent individuals, with proper names and dates of birth and death. In this paper I propose requirements for feminist social theory, as part of my larger project of outlining an Inclusive Feminism in the Third Wave. Feminist social theory is a form of feminism as critical theory and its subject is societies and institutions that are oppressive to women, from the perspective of the relation between individual women and social structures. Feminist social theory is about the kinds of sociological and anthropological studies that are relevant to the concerns of women. It should be normative, factual, comprehensive, explanatory, and distinct from feminist psychological theory. The Normativity of feminist social theory is given by the ways in which feminism more generally is critical theory, and it grounds the potential to change society. Factuality requires that theorists proceed on the basis of existent social problems. Comprehensiveness requires analyses of social structures of oppression without concepts of identity or sex and gender as starting points. The explanatory requirement is that ultimate causes or conditions for specific gender oppressions be specified. Finally, I argue that feminist social theory must be distinct from feminist psychological theory, because they are about different kinds of things, and the subjects of social theory are more easily changed than those of psychology.