Open Access Publications
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Open access publications by faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students in the Department of Philosophy.
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Item Benatar and Beyond: Rethinking the Consequences of Asymmetry(Utilitas, 2023-08-04) Draper, KailaDavid Benatar's asymmetry argument in defense of anti-natalism is unconvincing, but not, as most of his critics would have it, because the alleged asymmetry on which it is based does not exist. Rather, the problem is that the existence of that asymmetry does not warrant the conclusion that it is better never to have been. This paper explains Benatar's mistake and identifies the correct conclusions to draw from the axiological asymmetry he identifies. It also sheds light on certain puzzles in population ethics.Item The Rule of Law and Jury Trials(Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal, 2023-04-06) Peters, RaymondIn The Rule of Law in the Real World, Paul Gowder presents a new account of the rule of law based on three conditions: publicity, regularity, and generality. In this essay, I examine two closely related questions that are prompted by Gowder’s version of the rule of law. First, does the rule of law require citizens to follow the law? Second, what does Gowder’s account mean for jury nullification? I argue that the rule of law does not require citizens to follow the law, but it does prohibit jury nullification. A discussion of some moral implications and objections follow.Item The Meaning of Clinical Normality(Medical Research Archives, 2022-07-31) Boorse, ChristopherMany writers have called the term ‘normal’ highly ambiguous both in and out of medicine, especially between descriptive and normative meanings. But careful analysis shows that its ambiguity is much less than usually supposed. In fact, all correct nontechnical uses of ‘normal’ mean “typical” in some way – either typical, at least typical, or at most typical – and therefore express no value judgments except by contextual implication. The distinctive, purely medical use, as the opposite of ‘pathological’, is just a specialization of the second meaning, to at-least-typical biological part-function. As statisticians have often warned, one must not confuse this uniquely medical use with a general use formerly applied to clinical tests, in the term “normal range.” That term is misleading because the reference ranges of clinical variables entail nothing about pathology, for three reasons: besides resting on an arbitrary choice of a 95% central range, they are derived from apparently healthy populations, and the variables’ connection to underlying biological function can be very indirect. So the term “clinical abnormality” is best restricted to a diagnosed or diagnosable pathological condition. If so, true clinical normality contrasts with theoretical normality in some interesting ways: it may or may not correlate with disease severity; it is individual-relative; and it is partly determined by value judgments.Item St. Anselm of Canterbury on God and Morality(The Monist, 2022-06-14) Rogers, KatherinAnselm of Canterbury, as a classical theist, does not hold that there is a moral, or value, order independent of God. What is good, indeed what is necessary and possible, depends on the will of God. But Anselm’s development of this claim does not succumb to the problems entailed by divine-command theory. One such problem addresses the question of whether or not the moral order is available to reason, bracketing Scripture and Church teaching. Anselm holds that to be just is to conform to God’s will. Nevertheless Anselm proposes a eudaimonistic ethical theory that allows reason to assess moral principles. And Anselm holds that the non-believer recognizes justice, even before he can appreciate the more general category of “good.”