Recently added articles from Social Theory and Practice:
Self-deception and the limits of folk psychology.(Report)
Jan 01, 2009; ... 1. Deeply Conflicted Self-Deceivers and a Static Problem It would be nice if theorists interested in self-deception could start with an agreed-upon understanding of the phenomenon--what it even means to be self-deceived and what are some of its paradigm examples--and then ...
Maladies of fantasy and depth.(Essay)
Jan 01, 2009; ... As conscious beings, we are confronted with what we might call the problem of self-understanding. Self-understanding is a problem for us because we generally want it, and cannot always (if ever) be sure that we have it. We recognize that we may be "strangers" to ourselves--subtly or ...
Happily self-deceived.(Report)
Jan 01, 2009; ... Classical conceptions of self-deception are rooted in general perspectives on human nature. For example, writing in 1630 within a Christian world view, the Reverend Daniel Dyke understands self-deceit as rebellion against God, and in 1726 Bishop Joseph Butler condemns it as self-partiality ...
The essential instability of self-deception.(Report)
Jan 01, 2009; ... Two apparent paradoxes lie at the heart of discussion of self-deception, one focusing on belief, the other on intention. The belief paradox concerns how the self-deceived can combine the belief that p and the belief that not-p. The intention paradox concerns how the self-deceived can ...
Unsettling questions: cognitive dissonance in self-deception.(Report)
Jan 01, 2009; ... In 1989, Leonard Berkowitz and Patricia Devine argued that Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance had come, largely for reasons having little to do with its virtues, to be abandoned or ignored by investigators in social psychology. (1) One consequence of this, they suggested, was ...
Mill, Moore, and intrinsic value.(John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore)(Critical essay)
Oct 01, 2008; ... In this paper, I examine how philosophers before and after G.E. Moore understood intrinsic value. The main idea I wish to bring out and defend is that Moore was insufficiently attentive to how distinctive his conception of intrinsic value was, as compared with those of the writers he ...
On fair lotteries.(Essay)
Oct 01, 2008; ... 1. Introduction When James Watson and Francis Crick submitted to Nature their groundbreaking paper relating DNA structure to protein synthesis, they faced a choice. In what order were their names to be listed? Would it be "Watson and Crick," or "Crick and Watson?" They resolved ...
Why the old sexual morality of the new natural law undermines traditional marriage.(Essay)
Oct 01, 2008; ... Natural law theory typically is represented as a loyal and doting theoretical partner to traditional marriage. Indeed, on the standard reading, lifelong monogamous heterosexual partnerships could hardly receive a more reliable endorsement than that offered by the natural law tradition ....
War Crimes and Just War.(Critical essay)
Oct 01, 2008; ... [Review Essay: Larry May, War Crimes and Just War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), xi + 343 pp.] Introduction War Crimes and Just War is the second book of Larry May's trilogy of volumes on the normative foundations of international criminal law. (1) ...
Raja Halwani (ed.), Sex and Ethics: Essays on Sexuality, Virtue, and the Good Life.(Book review)
Oct 01, 2008; ... Raja Halwani (ed.), Sex and Ethics. Essays on Sexuality, Virtue, and the Good Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), xiv + 276 pp. Sex and Ethics is the first published volume devoted exclusively to a virtue ethical approach to evaluating human sexual life. Only three of the ...
John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy.(Book review)
Oct 01, 2008; ... John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), xix + 476 PP. 1. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy presents a set of lectures written by John Rawls for his students at Harvard. They ...
Books received.
Oct 01, 2008 ... Adams, Harry. Justice for Children. Autonomy Development and the State. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. 254 pp. Alcock, Pete, Margaret May, and Karen Rowlingson (eds.). The Student's Companion to Social Policy, 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. 516 ...
Introduction.
Jul 01, 2008; ... Earlier versions of the papers in this issue were prepared for a workshop, directed by the editors, held under the auspices of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) at the University of Helsinki in May 2007. The other participants in the workshop were John Baker, Derek ...
What's ideal about ideal theory?(Report)
Jul 01, 2008; ... One of the main tasks that occupies political theorists, and arouses intense debate among them, is the construction of theories--so-called ideal theories--that share a common characteristic: much of what they say offers no immediate or workable solutions to any of the problems our ...
Ideal theory in theory and practice.(Report)
Jul 01, 2008; ... 1. Introduction In the post-Rawlsian literature on theories of justice, most of the work done by mainstream political theorists and philosophers is part of what is known as "ideal theory." John Rawls explicitly defined his work as ideal theory, which he described as a conception ...
The value of philosophy in nonideal circumstances.(Report)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Introduction The aim of this paper is to clarify the role of philosophy in unjust, nonideal, circumstances, and to insist on its importance. Some political theorists, concerned that theorizing about justice has become unhelpfully detached from the real world, complain that this ...
Political theory and the evaluation of political conduct.(Report)
Jul 01, 2008; ... 1. In my book Political Conduct, I argue that we need a deeply contextual analysis of political agency if it is to be appropriately understood and evaluated. (1) The argument is essentially that we cannot judge people in politics solely in terms of the states of affairs that ...
Global justice and poverty relief in nonideal circumstances.(Report)
Jul 01, 2008; ... 1. Introduction This paper explores the problem of how to think about the fulfillment of an ideal-theoretical conception of basic global justice demanding the eradication of global poverty given the recognition of two facts or nonideal circumstances: (a) the absence of robust ...
Egalitarians and the market: dangerous ideals.(Report)
Jul 01, 2008; ... One of my colleagues at the Gender Institute has a brilliantly colored collage on her office door, presented to her by her students, that defiantly proclaims "Theory Saves Lives." As this suggests, the notion that theory of any kind matters is contested, perhaps particularly in ...
Against ideal rights.(Report)
Jul 01, 2008; ... The paper makes two related claims. The first is that an ideal theory of rights is mistaken. The second claim follows on from the first: if an ideal theory of rights is mistaken, then some ideal theories of justice are either implausible or impoverished. In the first part of the ...