A philosophical essay under this title faces severe rhetorical challenges. New accounts of the good life regularly and rapidly turn out to be variations of old ones, subject to a predictable range of decisive objections. Attempts to meet those objections with improved accounts regularly and rapidly lead to a familiar impasse — that while a life of contemplation, or epicurean contentment, or stoic indifference, or religious ecstasy, or creative rebellion, or self-actualization, or many another thing might count as a good (...) life, none of them can plausibly be identified with the good life, or the best life. Given the long history of that impasse, it seems futile to offer yet another candidate for the genus “good life” as if that candidate might be new, or philosophically defensible. And given the weariness, irony, and self-deprecation expected of a philosopher in such an impasse, it is difficult for any substantive proposal on this topic to avoid seeming pretentious. (shrink)

_Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations,_ first published in 1977, comprehensively examines the general justifications for systems of private property rights, and discusses with great clarity the major arguments as to the rights and responsibilities of property ownership. In particular, the arguments that hold that there are natural rights derived from first occupancy, labour, utility, liberty and virtue are considered, as are the standard anti-property arguments based on disutility, virtue and inequality, and the belief that justice in distribution must take precedence over (...) private ownership. Lawrence Becker goes on to contend that there are four sound lines of argument for private property that, together with what is sound in the anti-property arguments, must be co-ordinated to form the foundations of a new theory. He therefore expounds a concise but sophisticated theory of property that is relevant to the modern world, and concludes by indicating some of the implications of his theory. (shrink)

The tendency to reciprocate – to return good for good and evil for evil – is a potent force in human life, and the concept of reciprocity is closely connected to fundamental notions of ‘justice’, ‘obligation’ or ‘duty’, ‘gratitude’ and ‘equality’. In _Reciprocity_, first published in 1986,_ _Lawrence Becker presents a sustained argument about reciprocity, beginning with the strategy for developing a moral theory of the virtues. He considers the concept of reciprocity in detail, contending that it is a basic (...) virtue that provides the basis for parental authority, obligations to future generations, and obedience to law. Throughout the first two parts of the book, Becker intersperses short pieces of his own narrative fiction to enrich reflection on the philosophical arguments. The final part is devoted to extensive bibliographical essays, ranging over anthropology, psychology, political theory and law, as well as the relevant ethics and political philosophy. (shrink)

The editors, working with a team of 325 renowned authorities in the field of ethics, have revised, expanded and updated this classic encyclopedia. Along with the addition of 150 new entries, all of the original articles have been newly peer-reviewed and revised, bibliographies have been updated throughout, and the overall design of the work has been enhanced for easier access to cross-references and other reference features. New entries include * Cheating * Dirty hands * Gay ethics * Holocaust * Journalism (...) * Political correctness * and many more. (shrink)

The question addressed by this book is what, if anything, stoic ethics would be like today if stoicism had had a continuous history to the present day as a plausible and coherent set of philosophical commitments and methods. The book answers that question by arguing that most of the ancient doctrines of Stoic ethics remain defensible today, at least when ancient Stoicism's cosmological commitments are replaced by modern scientific ones.

The editors, working with a team of 325 renowned authorities in the field of ethics, have revised, expanded, and updated this classic encyclopedia. Along with the addition of 150 new entries, all of the original articles have been newly peer-reviewed and revised, bibliographies have been updated throughout, and the overall design of the work has been enhanced for easier access to cross-references and other reference features. New entries include * Aristotelian Ethics * Avicenna * Bad Faith * Beneficence * Categorical (...) and Hypothetical Imperatives * Cheating * Civil Liberty * Conventions * Dirty hands * Evolution * Fiduciary Relationships * Gay ethics * Genetic Engineering * Holocaust * Journalism * Killing/Letting Die * Moral Imagination * Narrative Ethics * Political correctness * Population Ethics * Public and 0rivate Morality * Racism, concepts of * and many more. (shrink)

This book argues for adopting a new account of the circumstances of justice ("the habilitation framework") for philosophical theories of basic justice. It proposes a concept of basic health as a metric for such theories, and healthy agency as a target for them. It does not, however, propose a specific distributive rule or set of distributive principles. Nor does it propose a specific type of theory to pursue (e.g., utilitarian, contractarian, etc.). The book is thus meant to be largely theory-independent (...) respect to standard normative theories. (shrink)

This symposium paper for the APA analyzes Locke's labor theory of property acquisition as a formal argument – or set of alternative arguments – and shows how several of them are indeed sound, if appropriately limited by what amounts to a social welfare proviso. That proviso is, however, strong enough to limit the acquisition of private property in a significant way. The argument here anticipates fuller and more decisive ones in later work by the same author.

"_Reciprocity _is an exciting book—it forces its readers to rethink some important issues in recent moral philosophy."—Ruth Anna Putnam, _Ethics _ "By reciprocity Becker understands a complex disposition to make suitable return for the benefit we receive from others, to resist the harm others inflict on us rather than retaliate for it, and to make restitution for the harm we ourselves cause.... This is a clearly written book which makes fresh contributions to a number of topics."—A. D. M. Walker, _Philosophical (...) Books _. (shrink)

Logic and Computation is concerned with techniques for formal theorem-proving, with particular reference to Cambridge LCF (Logic for Computable Functions). Cambridge LCF is a computer program for reasoning about computation. It combines methods of mathematical logic with domain theory, the basis of the denotational approach to specifying the meaning of statements in a programming language. This book consists of two parts. Part I outlines the mathematical preliminaries: elementary logic and domain theory. They are explained at an intuitive level, giving references (...) to more advanced reading. Part II provides enough detail to serve as a reference manual for Cambridge LCF. It will also be a useful guide for implementors of other programs based on the LCF approach. (shrink)

Focusing on the human necessity of habilitation leads to a more inclusive and adequate account of the circumstances of justice. Such an account involves paying persistent attention to similarities and differences in the physical and psychological abilities of actual human agents. That in turn leads to equally persistent attention to the basic good health (or lack of it) in such agents, and to their inabilities (disabilities) and abilities. Such attention to basic good health then yields a disability-friendly starting point for (...) the construction of normative theories of basic justice generally. It does this by providing a constant undercurrent of attention to the crucial problems of human habilitation and rehabilitation that any plausible normative theory of justice must address. Those problems of justice, moreover, are framed as part of the inescapable project of working around human disabilities, or through them, toward situations in which their salience for basic justice is minimized. (shrink)

Ackermann’s function can be expressed using an iterative algorithm, which essentially takes the form of a term rewriting system. Although the termination of this algorithm is far from obvious, its equivalence to the traditional recursive formulation—and therefore its totality—has a simple proof in Isabelle/HOL. This is a small example of formalising mathematics using a proof assistant, with a focus on the treatment of difficult recursions.

This brief, elegantly written book puts forward a view of normative reasoning--a view White calls "corporatism"--based upon an analogy with certain views about reasoning in the empirical sciences. Duhem and Quine have argued that an empirical statement is not tested, accepted, or rejected in isolation from other beliefs. Rather, it is seen in the context of a web of related beliefs, assumptions, and sense experiences--even relevant laws of logic--and the testing process is essentially the process of deciding which, of all (...) those items, "must" or "ought to be" accepted or rejected. Moral reasoning, White thinks, is similar. Moral judgments are always assessed in a context which includes moral feelings of sentiments and empirical beliefs. Their assessment is essentially the process of deciding which, of all of those items, must be accepted, revised, or rejected. One of White's examples concerns abortion. The relevant normative judgments include the prohibition of homicides of certain sorts, the relevant empirical beliefs have to do with developmental biology, medicine, intention, and the like; the relevant moral feelings include a sense of obligation. Moral judgments drawn from the conjunction of such "premises" may set up conflicting feelings, or the premises themselves may be inconsistent. In such cases something must give: deciding just what must give is analogous to deciding what beliefs to give up when scientific experiments yield anomalous results. (shrink)

In her many articles on the subject, Trudy Govier has made a substantial contribution to the recent philosophical literature on trust—not only to the discussion kindled by Annette Baier's provocative article "Trust and Anti-Trust", but to the larger, much older, low-intensity discussion among social scientists and philosophers about the relation between trust and effective government, stable social relationships, and psychological health. This book is devoted to the varieties and uses of trust in various largely non-intimate social relationships, ranging from the (...) mundane, casual, or routine interactions of daily life to international affairs. The book is primarily expository, though there are occasional passages of conceptual analysis and some criticism of the work of others. Govier says, in her Preface, that. (shrink)

When philosophers speak of the inconclusiveness of arguments for the existence of God, they often do so as if they were talking about a matter of principle—as if it were in principle impossible to prove God's existence, that every proof was in principle inconclusive. Of course, rebutals of the cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments are usually designed to show that these types of arguments are in principle inconclusive. But one supposes that religious experience arguments are not all in such difficulties. (...) That is, one supposes, for example, that an encounter with the deity would provide a proof of his existence which is at least as conclusive as proofs for the existence of an ‘external world’. And thus it would be false to maintain in an unqualified way that ‘Reason cannot prove the existence of God’. The most one would be able to say would be that at present, or in terms of the currently available evidence, no one can prove God's existence. Further, whether or not sufficient evidence has ever been available in the past would be seen as an historical question— a matter of contingencies, not logical possibilities. (shrink)

This book is a systematic introduction to the outlines of contemporary analytical and normative jurisprudence, intended for use in introductory courses in which philosophy of law plays a role. It is clearly written, concise, and organized in a way that fits with major books of readings in philosophy of law.