Democratic theorists stress the importance of free and equal discussion and debate in a well-functioning democratic process. In this process, citizens attempt to persuade each other to support legislation by appealing to considerations of justice, liberty or the common good and are open to changing their minds when hearing the arguments of others. They are concerned to ground policy and legislation on the most defensible considerations of morality and the best empirical evidence. To be sure, majority rule remains important in democratic decision making because of the persistence of disagreement. But many have argued that debates over legislation that appeal to moral considerations ought to be given a much larger place in our understanding of the ideals of democracy than theorists have given them in the past. This emphasis on the importance of moral debate and discussion in democracy is characteristic of what I call the wide view of deliberative democracy.

Some philosophers believe that appeals to promoting or maximizing good consequences are a suspect way of attempting to justify coercive interference with another person's actions. Suppose that is true. If there is a presumption that individuals have a right not to be coercively interfered with, then, foregoing utilitarian type appeals, it would seem that the only way to justify coercive interference of a paternalistic sort would be to show that under certain conditions the presumption fails.

Almost everyone accepts that parents must provide a good enough upbringing in order to retain custodial rights over children, but little has been said about how that level should be set. In this paper, I examine ways of specifying a good enough upbringing. I argue that the two dominant ways of setting this level, the Best Interests and Abuse and Neglect Views, are mistaken. I defend the Dual Comparative View, which holds that an upbringing is good enough when shortfalls from the best alternative upbringing in terms of the child's interests are no more significant than the parents' interest.

In A Theory of Justice and elsewhere John Rawls writes that the basic structure of any society affects the life prospects of those growing up in different ‘starting places,’ yet his conception of equal opportunity seems to require that one's opportunities not be affected by the class position of one's birth. Here I explicate this apparent contradiction and reconcile these assertions. In Rawlsian fair equality of opportunity children from working-class families have lesser opportunity to attain advantaged positions.

Rawls's view cannot be easily revised to allow equal prospects for all children. Within the framework of Rawls's understanding of a just society, he is right to say that his own conception of fair equality of opportunity allows deep inequalities in life prospects.

In this paper I argue that the explanationist argument in favour of moral realism fails. According to this argument, the ability of putative moral properties to feature in good explanations provides strong evidence for, or entails, the metaphysical claims of moral realism. Some have rejected this argument by denying that moral explanations are ever good explanations. My criticism is different. I will argue that even if we accept that moral explanations are (sometimes) good explanations the metaphysical claims of realism do not follow.

According to moral realists, moral properties such as justice and goodness take their own unique place in nature's ontological roll-call. Although realists disagree about the nature of these moral properties — for example, whether they are reducible or otherwise constituted by non-moral or natural properties — they all agree that such properties are genuine constituents of the world that are sometimes instantiated by objects, events or states of affairs.

Criticism and sarcasm are interspersed with description and analysis throughout Marx's work. Most of the criticism is aimed at one or another side of a single target: what Marx sees as capitalism's pretensions of freedom, equality, and prosperity in the face of exploitation and recurrent crises. But the remarks on commodity fetishism in the first volume of Capital seem to be directed at a different target. Here Marx tells us that a commodity is ‘a queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.’ But instead of going on to reveal the nature of commodites-the task that occupies him for the preceding 30 and subsequent 700 pages-Marx takes the opportunity to explore their ‘mystical’ character. The passage repays careful consideration. It is one of the few places in his mature writings in which Marx returns to the tone of his youthful works. It is also the passage in which commentators have claimed to find grounds for attributing a doctrine of ‘false consciousness’ to Marx.

So begins the first of Locke's Two Treatises of Government. But this Englishman, gentleman, and self-styled ‘lover of liberty’ was not himself above pleading for slavery when it suited him. That plea has been an embarrassment to his admirers ever since. Locke attempted to legitimize slavery by portraying it as a form of punishment for crimes committed where no central political authority or justice system exists. If a victim of an assault is entitled to take his attacker's life in self-defense, Locke reasoned, he must also be entitled to take his attacker's liberty.

In 1844 Marx held that labor alienation was wholly eliminable, primarily through the abolition of private property . Work in the context of private property was alienating because it was performed for wages and the production of exchange-value. With such purposes, work was experienced as selfish and forced. With the abolition of private property, work would be performed for the production of use-¥alue, to satisfy human needs. With this human purpose, work would be experienced as a free and fulfilling expression of life.

There is one important point about which Fischer and I are in agreement. We agree that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility. We disagree about the best way of defending that claim. He thinks that Frankfurt's strategy is a good one, that we can grant incompatibilists the metaphysical victory (that is, agree with them that determinism means that we are never able to do otherwise) while insisting that we are still morally responsible. I think this a huge mistake and I think the literature spawned by Frankfurt's attempt to undercut the metaphysical debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists is a snare and a delusion, distracting our attention from the important issues.

According to Church’s thesis, we can identify the intuitive concept of effective computability with such well-defined mathematical concepts as Turing computability and partial recursiveness. The almost universal acceptance of Church’s thesis among logicians and computer scientists is puzzling from some epistemological perspectives, since no formal proof is possible of a thesis that involves an informal concept such as effectiveness. Elliott Mendelson has recently argued, however, that equivalencies between intuitive notions and precise notions need not always be considered unprovable theses, and that Church’s thesis should be accepted as true.

I want to discuss a thesis that is nearly as important in current research in computer science as Church’s thesis. I call the newer thesis the tractability thesis, since it identifies the intuitive class of computationally tractable problems with a precise class of problems whose solutions can be computed in polynomial time. After briefly reviewing the theory of intractability, I compare the grounds for accepting the tractability thesis with the grounds for accepting Church's thesis. Intimately connected with the tractability thesis is the mathematical conjecture, whose meaning I shall shortly explain, that P≠NP. Unlike Church's thesis, this conjecture is precise enough to be capable of mathematical proof, but most computer scientists believe it even though no proof has been found. As we shall see below, understanding the grounds for acceptance of the conjecture that P≠NP has implications for general questions in the philosophy of mathematics and science, especially concerning the epistemological importance of explanatory and conceptual coherence.

1. 1) ‘“Be true to yourself!” and “Don't cave in!” express the value people place on [_]….’

2. 2) ‘… an important sense of [_] is being true to oneself.’

3. 3) ‘[_] encourages and protects people's general capacity to lead their lives out of a distinctive sense of their own character, a sense of what is important to and for them. ’

4. 4) ‘… to value [_] is to place value on an agent's acting from herreasons, whether they are good ones or not.’

Quiz: fill in the blanks. Here is a hint: two are autonomy and two are integrity. Can you sort out which ones are which? I suspect not, especially since the first two are nearly identical but have different answers. The third seems clearly to be integrity, at least given what philosophers such as Bernard Williams write about integrity: that it involves preserving one's own distinct character. However, the answer to 3) is autonomy. The fourth quotation brings to mind discussions about how autonomous agents can make bad choices, but we respect their autonomy by allowing them to do so. However, the answer to 4) is integrity.

Act Utilitarianism has traditionally been regarded as the view that you should always perform the action that will bring about the greatest possible excess of happiness over unhappiness or, if there is no such alternative, the least possible excess of unhappiness over happiness.1 Following Rawls, I shall call this the classical principle. An alternative which Rawls calls the average principle is the view that you should always do the thing that will bring about the highest possible average happiness level. Rawls, Rescher and Broad2 regard the average principle as superior to the classical principle, and there are considerable grounds for supposing that Mill accepted the average principle.3 Smart favours the classical position but confesses that if someone doesn't feel the same way, he doesn't know how to argue with him.4

Summing up the lessons of the final book of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke describes two ‘ways to enlarge our Knowledge, as far as we are capable.’ One involves the cultivation of our capacity for demonstrative reasoning, the other the proper framing of the ideas from which any such reasoning must issue and on which mere ‘experimental Knowledge’ (IV .iii.29: 560) is likewise founded. Under the latter heading, we are urged to aim not only for ‘clear’ and ‘distinct’ ideas, but also for ‘perfect’ ones. Finally, a laconic insertion in the fourth edition specifies how the perfection of one class of ideas is to be pursued:

The capacity of a work of fictional literature to elicit (some) emotional responses is part of what is valuable about it, and having (relevant) emotional responses is part of appreciating it. These claims are not very controversial; perhaps they are even common sense. But philosophy rushes in where common sense fears to tread, raising questions and looking for explanations.

Are the emotions we have in appreciating fictional works of art, what I call art emotions, of the same sort as those which occur in ‘real life’? Which emotions are appropriate to the work, and why: what justifies having one emotion rather than another? And why should we think emotionally responding to fiction is desirable, something which should be respected and encouraged, rather than looked at as a little weird or a waste of time?

In two passages of A Theory of Justice Rawls suggests that, as a consequence of his egalitarian theory, the natural talents of persons are common property.

This paper is meant to link the philosophical debate concerning the underdetermination of theories by evidence with a rather significant socio-political issue that has been taking place in Canada over the past few years: the so-called ‘death of evidence’ controversy. It places this debate within a broader philosophical framework by discussing the connection between evidence and theory; by bringing out the role of epistemic values in the so-called scientific method; and by examining the role of social values in science. While it should be admitted that social values play an important role in science, the key question for anyone who advocates this view is: what and whose values? The way it is answered makes an important epistemic difference to how the relation between evidence and theory is appraised. I first review various arguments for the claim that evidence underdetermines theory and shows their presuppositions and limitations, using conceptual analysis and historical examples. After broaching the relation between evidence and method in science by highlighting the need to incorporate epistemic values into the scientific method, my discussion focuses on recent arguments for the role of social values in science. Finally, I address the implications of the approach outlined for the current ‘death of evidence’ debate in Canada.

A common complaint of biologists is that their subject receives poor treatment from philosophers—it gets but a fraction of the attention accorded to physics and chemistry, and what little it does receive, is usually of the type where ‘All swans are white’ is taken to be a paradigmatic example of the state of biological thinking. It cannot be denied that this complaint is, to a great extent, justified; however, there are some notable breaches in the wall of ignorance and silence, amongst which must be numbered The Ascent of Life by T.A. Goudge. In this book, starting from what is obviously a very wide knowledge of biology, Goudge attempts a careful and thorough analysis of one of the major achievements of biological thought, evolutionary theory. The conclusions that Goudge draws are many; nevertheless, one can discern running through them a common theme, namely that whilst evolutionary theory is indeed a legitimate branch of science, to assume that it is a science of the same nature as physics and chemistry would be a grave error. Goudge argues that, despite certain similarities to other branches of science, the essential aims, methods and results of evolutionary theory are peculiar unto itself.

Human folly, it seems, traces not only to ignorance and impulsiveness but also to the power of wishes that the erring agent acknowledges as unfit to motivate him. The possibility of genuinely perverse preference can be either denied or explained. To explain it, sense must be made of how a person’s understanding of the choices before him could fail to decide his preference—how what convinces could fail to persuade. The question is how the influence a given consideration has over a person’s choice can be other than a function of the beliefs he holds about its merits, so that as between competing considerations the one esteemed best doesn’t win, despite continuing to be esteemed best.

In this paper, I shall be concerned to explore the utilitarian account of promising, which for some time has had, in many circles, the status of a dead horse. My aim is not to flog it, however, but to show that perhaps it yet lives. At least, I hope to show that some prominent and apparently powerful objections to this account do not find their mark. In the course of this, several subjects of wider interest will come in for review as well, and it is hoped that some further light on the utilitarian position in general, as well as the concepts of expectation and obligation, may glimmer forth.

At the outset, some clarification of the question at issue about promising is essential. Briefly, the question is: why ought we to keep our promises? Less question-beggingly put: why, if at all, should we keep promises, and to what extent?; where by talk of ‘extent’ it is meant that the question of whether we sometimes should not keep them, of its being a matter of attaching a “degree of stringency” to the obligation, is to be kept open.

The correlativity of rights and obligations is one of the few stock topics in the basic repertory of English-speaking philosophy th-t is considered suitable for assignment to philosophers specializing in political philosophy (even so it is a topic that must be shared with ethics). It is a topic perennially discussed, chiefly (I think) for reasons that have little to do with its importance: namely, just because it is a recognized topic and because it appears to be a safely tidy one that lends itself readily to being tidied up further by formal or quasi-formal considerations. For my part, I wish more effort went into discussing less tractable subjects like the individuation of rights and their delimitation vis-à-vis one another.

What I have to contribute to the subject of correlativity, returning to the scene of my comments on David Lyons’ paper, “The Correlativity of Rights and Duties,” is mainly a stint of annual or biennial repair-work, designed to restore the obvious — the truth that rights do imply obligations and cannot be understood without accepting this implication.