摘要:

The confusion that persists over Aboriginal claim in North America calls for close examination. The paper begins by sorting out various versions of ‘Aboriginal right’and some of the main factors that govern its use. Confusion is analysed as the result of conflating different frames of reference which determine different sets of expectations by Aboriginal and government representatives.To appreciate the significance of this conflation, it is helpful if not necessary to view the move to use the concept ‘Aboriginal right’as a strategic rather than a legally substantive one. Understanding the move in this way helps to explain why it is that definitions remain elusive. The effect of using the concept has indeed been to enable Aboriginals finally and effectively to table their claim. However, the strategy has its cost. Using the language of the courts places Aboriginal negotiators at a disadvantage, since that language is ineluctably tied to European social and legal sensibilities that militate against understanding Aboriginal claim.If, in the end, we understand that the move to use the language of the courts has been conciliatory, we can better recognise the nature of Aboriginal claim. We can begin to understand that it involves a complex web of responsibilities and commitments, most of which have either been forgotten or perverted to suit government agendas. We can begin to see that it has to do with restoring a relationship of mutual respect and pro

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00156.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

In this paper I expound and criticise the arguments of two leading exponents of critical ecological feminism. According to critical ecological feminism responsibility for the oppressions of the natural world and the oppressions of racism and sexism can be traced to a logic of domination that is based on suspect value dualities and presupposes an unacceptable ‘moral extensionism’(the view that moral status depends on membership of a specified class). I argue firstly that critical ecological feminism's critique of value dualism presupposes the truth of the thesis that humans and non‐humans are morally equal, a thesis for which it offers no persuasive arguments (indeed critical ecological feminism advocates a kind of virtue ethic which is itself incompatible with such supposed equality). Secondly I maintain that moral extensionism, contrary to the claims of critical ecological feminism, can support a genuine respect for the natural world. Finally I suggest that the arguments for one version of critical ecological feminism, in order to be made convincing, themselves require the truth of moral extensi

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00157.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Recently it has been argued that some instances of germ‐line gene therapy will change the identity of the person who receives the benefit of therapy, and that in these instances there is no good moral reason to conduct germ‐line gene therapy. Against this we argue that even if gene therapy should have an effect on the identity of the resulting person, this would not diminish the urgency of the therapy. Not only would impersonal moral reasons speak in favour of such radical gene therapy, there would also be person‐affecting reasons to perfo

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00158.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This essay argues that the concept of ‘reasonableness’plays an important role in Scanlon's, Rawls's, and Barry's theories of justice (or morality). The relationship between moral motivation and reasonableness is critically analysed. Specifically, the paper questions whether it is plausible to impute to the agents of construction the desire ‘to justify our actions to others on impartial terms’. It also argues that most of the work is done by the assumption that people are reasonable rather than by the contractarian formulation. Indeed, the paper argues, the argument could proceed entirely by making explicit and arguing for the moral assumptions embedded in the concept of reasonablen

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00159.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

If crime is a social problem, then ways of preventing it must be sought. Punishment has been the traditional approach to preventing crime, either as a deterrent, or as a means of reforming the offender. Neither of these approaches is wholly acceptable. Even if deterrence punishment, as grounded in utilitarianism, effectively prevents crime, there may be other methods which produce better results. Reform fails to justify any form of punishment since not only does punishment not reform, but it interferes with the reformative process. Reform is limited in scope to those people who commit crimes and are caught. If crime is to be prevented, then it is necessary to go beyond the crime and the criminal and consider the social contexts in which people act, and the ways in which they learn to react to them. By shaping both the environment and people's responses to it, society can solve the problem of preventing crime, without the need for punishment.

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00160.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Although the argument against the neo‐Darwinian theory of evolution presented by Stephen R. L. Clark in From Athens to Jerusalem is based upon sound principles, it fails to provide an a priori refutation. If it did work, it would refute all objective scientific theories, since all of them make consciousness and subjectivity, as Clark characterises them, incomprehensible. Scientism, the thesis that science is the only source of truth, is Clark's real target, rather than science per se, but he does not diagnose this error as it is made by authors such as Jacques Monod and Richard Dawkins. Scientism is not essential to materialism in general, and a successful version of ‘supervenience‐materialism’could avoid both reductionism and scientism. However, Clark still has a reply. He may use his discussion of the value of truth to provide a more general critique of materialism, which in my view is far more ef

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00161.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Do the conditions under which promises are made determine whether they ought to be kept? Philosophers have placed a number of conditions on promising which, they hold, must be met in order to make promise‐keeping obligatory. In so doing, they have distinguished valid promises from invalid promises and justified promises from promises that are not justified. Considering such conditions, one by one, we argue that they are mistaken. In the first place, the conditions they lay down are not necessary for either valid or justified promise‐making. In the second place, promises need not meet such conditions in order to create moral obligations. In general, such analyses of promising fail because they suffer from a confusion between promise‐making and promise‐keeping. Philosophers have wrongly supposed that obligations to keep promises are dependent upon, or derivable from, the quality of the promises themselves, at the time they are made, instead of focusing on conditions that must be satisfied at the time when promises are supposed to be kept. It is not the quality of a promise that determines an obligation to keep it but the rightness or wrongness of performing the promi

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00162.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

If ‘applied philosophy’is really to be applied it is necessary for its practical implications to be spelled out in some detail: both the specific goals implied if not entailed, and the life‐style that would be expected to support such goals. To be as specific as this would only be to emulate the ancient Greek philosophers whose influence may still be discerned and is often claimed. Contributions to a recent issue of this Journal are taken as a basis for the discu

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00163.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

John O'Neill argues in a recent article, ‘Should Communitarians be Nationalists?’, that communitarians are wrong to be committed to the defence of ties of nationhood, both because the nation‐state's rise is associated with the disappearance of the ties of community and because the nation is an illusory community. I argue that the evidence that communitarianism is committed as charged to the defence of nationality is unconvincing. Further, the familiar accusation that the nation is a false or unreal community is neither perspicuous nor obviously true. It is important to evaluate the significance and worth of the nation as a community independently of the nationalist prescription that the nation and the state should coincide. The important question is not whether the political community should be a nation, but what sort of community the nation shou

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00164.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Ethical Essays JonathanHarrisonAvebury, Aldershot Volume I, pp.

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00165.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY