I think the basic intuition behind textualism correct – that the meaning of a law is fixed by referencing the meaning of its words according to the meaning common to the law’s ratifiers. However, even if true, it does not follow that interpretation of a law goes through the original ratifiers. Rather, a citizenry continually ratifies the laws to which it subjects itself, and as the meanings of those words change over time, so will those laws. Concerning, say, the U.S. (...) Constitution, though the text may be very nearly the same now as in the 18th century, a different constitution is in effect. (shrink)

After ratifying the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control in 2004, Bangladesh enacted anti-tobacco laws, policies, and administrative measures. Evidence suggests that the progress so far has not been significant, and Bangladesh will most likely fail to meet its target to become tobacco-free by 2040. This study undertakes a national-level political economy analysis to explore the dynamics that affect the processes of required tobacco policy reforms and implementation. Based on a desk review of pertinent pieces of literature and key informant interviews, (...) this research examines the political behavior of key individuals, institutional reform initiatives, and the government’s commitment to the tobacco control agenda. The findings indicate that the political will of becoming tobacco-free is explicitly present in key narratives. However, intra-government conflict of interests and incentives, the skewed commitment of government bodies, state-business nexus, incapacity of vital organizations, and the dubious role of key individuals and committees fail to translate this will into active implementation. The article concludes that the idea of tobacco control remains a strategic accommodation, and its implementation requires genuine commitment and wider public support. The government must confer adequate authority and resources to the national tobacco control cell and call for agencies to convene to the common of creating a tobacco-free Bangladesh. (shrink)

Uptake is typically understood as the hearer’s recognition of the speaker’s communicative intention. According to one theory of uptake, the hearer’s role is merely as a ratifier. The speaker, by expressing a particular communicative intention, predetermines what kind of illocutionary act she might perform. Her hearer can then render this act a success or a failure. Thus the hearer has no power over which act could be performed, but she does have some power over whether it is performed. Call this (...) the ratification theory of uptake. Several philosophers have recently endorsed an alternative theory of uptake, according to which the hearer can determine the nature of the act the speaker performs. According to this theory, if the hearer regards an utterance as illocutionary act y, then it is act y, even if the speaker intended to perform act x. Call this the constitution theory of uptake. The purported advantage of this theory is that it identifies a common but underanalysed way in which speakers can be silenced. I argue that despite its initial intuitive pull, the constitution theory of uptake should be rejected. It is incompatible with ordinary intuitions about speech, it entails a conceptual impossibility, and it has unsavoury political implications, entailing that marginalised speakers barely qualify as agents. (shrink)

Constitutivism argues that the source of the categorical force of the norms of rationality and morality lies in the constitutive features of agency. A systematic failure to be guided by these norms would amount to a loss or lack of agency. Since we cannot but be agents, we cannot but be unconditionally guided by these norms. The constitutivist strategy has been challenged by David Enoch. He argues that our participation in agency is optional and thus cannot be a source of (...) categorical demands. In this paper, I defend the viability of constitutivism by showing that agency is indeed a special ‘inescapable’ enterprise. Agency has the largest jurisdiction, and it is closed under rational assessment. This inescapability does not exempt constitutivism from raising the question whether agents have reason to be agents, but this question has to be taken up within agency. If this question is answered affirmatively, then—I argue—the criteria of practical correctness are self-ratifying in a non-circular way. This is sufficient to show the viability of the constitutivist strategy. Whether agents have conclusive reasons to be agents, however, is a matter to be addressed in the terms of particular versions of constitutivism. (shrink)

In this paper, I motivate a puzzle about epistemic rationality. On the one hand, there seems to be something problematic about frequently changing your mind. On the other hand, changing your mind once is often permissible. Why do one-off changes of mind seem rationally permissible, even admirable, while constant changes seem quintessentially irrational? The puzzle of fickleness is to explain this asymmetry. To solve the puzzle, I propose and defend the Ratifiable Reasoning Account. According to this solution, as agents redeliberate, (...) they gain two types of evidence. First, they gain inductive evidence that they will not stably settle their belief. Second, this inductive evidence affords higher-order evidence that they are unreliable at assessing the matter at hand. The fact that fickle agents gain this higher-order evidence explains why fickleness can be epistemically—not just practically—irrational. In addition to solving the puzzle, my account captures a wide range of contextual factors that are relevant for our judgments. (shrink)

Seeking a decision theory that can handle both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory, some philosophers recently have turned to ‘graded ratifiability’. However, the graded ratifiability approach to decision theory is, despite its virtues, unsatisfactory; for it conflicts with the platitude that it is always rationally permissible for an agent to knowingly choose their best option.

Semantic originalism is a theory of constitutional meaning that aims to disentangle the semantic, legal, and normative strands of debates in constitutional theory about the role of original meaning in constitutional interpretation and construction. This theory affirms four theses: (1) the fixation thesis, (2) the clause meaning thesis, (3) the contribution thesis, and (4) the fidelity thesis. -/- The fixation thesis claims that the semantic content of each constitutional provision is fixed at the time the provision is framed and ratified: (...) subsequent changes in linguistic practice cannot change the semantic content of an utterance. -/- The clause meaning thesis claims that the semantic content is given by the conventional semantic meaning (or original public meaning) of the text with four modifications. The first modification is provided by the publicly available context of constitutional utterance: words and phrases that might be ambiguous in isolation can become clear in light of those circumstances of framing and ratification that could be expected to known to interpreters of the Constitution across time. The second modification is provided by the idea of the division of linguistic labor: some constitutional provisions, such as the natural born citizen clause may be terms of art, the meaning of which are fixed by the usages of experts. The third modification is provided by the idea of constitutional implicature: the constitution may mean things it does not explicitly say. The fourth modification is provided by the idea of constitutional stipulations: the constitution brings into being new terms such as House of Representatives and the meaning of these terms is stipulated by the Constitution itself. -/- The contribution thesis asserts that the semantic content of the Constitution contributes to the law: the most plausible version of the contribution thesis is modest, claiming that the semantic content of the Constitution provides rules of constitutional law, subject to various qualifications. Our constitutional practice provides strong evidence for the modest version of the contribution thesis. -/- The fidelity thesis asserts that we have good reasons to affirm fidelity to constitutional law: virtuous citizens and officials are disposed to act in accord with the Constitution; right acting citizens and officials obey the constitution in normal circumstances; constitutional conformity produces good consequences. Our public political culture affirms the great value of the rule of law. -/- We can summarize semantic originalism as a slogan: The original public meaning of the constitution is the law and for that reason it should be respected and obeyed. The slogan recapitulates each of the claims made by semantic originalism, but it is potentially misleading because it does not clearly distinguish between the semantic claims made by the fixation and clause meaning theses, the legal claim made by the contribution thesis, and the normative claim made by the fidelity thesis. -/- Part I introduces the four theses. Part II is entitled An Opinionated History of Constitutional Originalism, and it provides the context for all that follows. Part III is entitled Semantic Originalism: A Theory of Constitutional Meaning, and it lays out the case for original public meaning as the best nonnormative theory of constitutional content. Part IV is entitled The Normative Implications of Semantic Originalism, and it articulates a variety of normative arguments for originalism. Part V is entitled Conclusion: Semantic Originalism and Living Constitutionalism, and it explores the broad implications of semantic originalism for living constitutionalism and the future of constitutional theory. (shrink)

This text upon the national and universal acceptance of Iranians, may serve as a testament and a sturdy wall against the transgressions of future autocracy. We possess a history and a tendency toward individual rule; however, autocratic rule bears no relation to the Rule of Law. This Covenant does not derive its authority from any parliament; rather, the legitimacy of every future parliament shall be contingent upon its adherence to this Covenant. Should the people ratify this text, we shall be (...) empowered to draft a new Constitution aimed at the preservation and fulfillment of these rights, thereby constructing a democratic future for all the children of Iran. These “Rights” belong to man not to God. Let us forge a new history. A new law signifies a new history! (shrink)

The most prominent philosophical defenders of indigenous rights have been egalitarian liberals such as Will Kymlicka and Alan Patten. Libertarians, on the other hand, are often critical of such arrangements. Given the prevalence of this view, it is natural to think that no form of libertarianism is compatible with a distinct set of legal rights for native people. But the work of one of libertarianism's most distinguished defenders is striking in the degree to which it ratifies the liberal case for (...) indigenous rights. In support of this claim, I offer a reconstruction of arguments drawn from the work of Robert Nozick. I start with his libertarian framework for utopia and the many ways in which it legitimizes separate and distinct native communities. I then note how any state, even a minimal one, inevitably places indigenous minorities at a disadvantage. Given this, Nozick's libertarianism lends support to the liberal conception of native rights as a form of compensation for state-imposed disadvantage. I justify this claim by noting how a libertarian principle of compensation overlaps with and validates the understanding of compensation that features in the liberal rationale for native rights. While my primary motivation is to bolster the legitimacy of indigenous rights, I also hope to show how the aspects of libertarianism that vindicate such rights have bearing on broader debates about Nozick's work. Charles Mills, for example, has argued that Nozick's libertarianism displays a colonialist mindset, one that Mills takes to be representative of Anglo-American political philosophy as a whole. That fact that libertarianism lends support to a theory of indigenous rights suggests that it does not suffer from this and other charges. (shrink)

To identify the place of religious pluralism in democratic political discourse, this chapter refocuses on the purported normative authority of religious claims, providing a philosophical analysis of its features and implications. Bagnoli proposes an account of religious authority as a variety of normative authority, whose distinctive features are the independence of epistemic proof, the unconditionality and universality of its foundational claims, and the obligations based on membership. Bagnoli then considers whether and how the appeal to religious authority could contribute to (...) the process of rational justification in political discourse in contexts marked by divisive religious disagreements. To this purpose, she adopts a constructivist approach, which takes rational justification to be “public,” that is, addressed to others as having equal normative standing. Bagnoli takes reasoning to be productive and transforming: it does not merely manage conflicts by ratifying overlapping reasons but generates new forms of rational agency. Radically departing from current debates, Bagnoli argues that we should reconceive of public reason dynamically, rather than as a static concept. In the third part, Bagnoli points out and illustrates how constructivism may help provide a suitable normative framework for interfaith dialogue and normative adjustments. (shrink)

The notion of ‘illocutionary silencing’ has been given a key role in defining the harms of pornography by several feminist philosophers. Though the literature on silencing focuses almost exclusively on the speech act of sexual refusal, oddly enough, it lacks a thorough analysis of that very act. My first aim is to fill this theoretical gap. I claim that refusals are “second-turn illocutions”: they cannot be accomplished in absence of a previous interrogative (or open) call by the hearer. Furthermore, I (...) maintain that refusals constitute authoritative illocutions only when preceded by requests for permission. The secondary goal of my paper is to assess Mary Kate McGowan’s (2009) account of silencing as authority denial. Despite its virtues, I argue that ultimately it should be rejected on two grounds: (i) it entails an objectification of female sexuality; (ii) if sexual advances are requests for permission (as McGowan implies), a man who asks a woman for sex cannot fail to ratify her authority over her own body. I conclude by sketching an alternative explanation for the failure of women’s refusals, according to which women may be unable to refuse sex for their interlocutors’ advances are intended as imperative (or closed) calls. (shrink)

Causal and Epistemic Decision theories differ in their recommendations in a large number of cases, the most famous of which is Newcomb's Problem. These cases, including the original one, tend to be outlandish and unusual. We show that if one applies decision theory to epistemic utilities measured by a strictly proper scoring rule, the two theories will deviate in their recommendations in cases that any Bayesian agent can easily put themselves in. Moreover, the recommendations of Causal Decision Theory in these (...) cases are implausible: it recommends that we perform the action whose performance gives us no information regarding the hypothesis with respect to which we are maximizing our epistemic utility. We shall see that requiring choices to be ratifiable, or using Barnett's recent graded ratifiability criterion, does not help either. Nor is it completely clear that Evidential Decision Theory is off the hook. (shrink)

A family of recursive ethical frameworks takes the spiral as its governing image: a return that advances rather than merely repeats. The image is doing a great deal of work, and it has never been made to earn it. This paper asks whether the distinction between healthy recursion and mere repetition can be formalized, or whether "recursion" is destined to remain a virtue term that ratifies whatever a framework was already doing. I argue that the distinction is real and statable, (...) and I state it. Borrowing the phase-portrait vocabulary of dynamical-systems theory, I model self-revision as a trajectory in a state space and distinguish two shapes that trajectory can take: a limit cycle, a closed orbit that returns to its own prior states (this is repetition), and a spiral, an open trajectory that returns in one coordinate while displacing in another (this is recursion). A third shape shadows the second: the converging spiral, which displaces on every return while tightening toward a fixed point. It is capture wearing recursion's shape. On the governance-continuity formula S(t+1) = R(S(t), E(t)), repetition is the degenerate case in which the revision operator has gone blind to its evidential argument and is iterating on state alone. From this I extract three criteria a return must meet to count as recursive rather than repetitive: novelty (it incorporates content not derivable from the prior state, the analog of Lakatos's progressive problemshift), non-recovery (the prior position cannot be reoccupied as live belief without suppressing what the return disclosed, against the AGM Recovery postulate), and independence (its conclusion survives the bracketing of the commitment that produced it). The converging spiral can mimic each criterion on any single pass, which is why the verdict is directional and historical, read across returns rather than turn-by-turn. I then turn the criteria on the recursive framework itself. The reflexive result is uncomfortable and, I argue, correct: no framework can certify from inside its own loop that it is spiraling rather than spinning, because the Indistinguishability Thesis forecloses exactly that first-person confirmation. Spiraling, properly understood, is not a property a framework can claim. It is a discipline it can only be held to. (shrink)

The rapid normalization of generative artificial intelligence has produced two distinct epistemic problems that are routinely conflated. The first is a problem of quality: language models can generate false, derivative, vacuous, or stylistically polished but epistemically poor material at enormous scale. The second is a problem of judgment: the causal provenance of a text is increasingly treated as a substitute for evaluating its propositional content. This paper argues that the latter practice, when the label “AI-generated” or “AI-assisted” is used to (...) reject a claim, argument, or intellectual artifact without content-responsive evaluation, instantiates the genetic fallacy at institutional scale. I first distinguish truth, warranted credence, authorship, and policy compliance, showing that provenance may rationally affect prior confidence or trigger additional scrutiny without thereby refuting a proposition. I then analyze AI-text detection and automated content moderation as forms of probabilistic classification that become epistemically illegitimate when converted directly into adverse adjudication. Empirical work on machine-generated-text detectors demonstrates substantial vulnerability to false positives, distribution shift, linguistic bias, and adversarial evasion, while the literature on automation bias and algorithmic accountability shows why nominal “human oversight” is inadequate when humans merely ratify machine outputs. I argue for a principle of human answerability: tools may be causal contributors to error, but responsibility for consequential epistemic decisions remains with the persons and institutions that design, deploy, supervise, and rely upon them. Finally, I propose six norms for legitimate epistemic governance in the age of generative AI: provenance modesty, content-responsive refutation, proportionality, contestability, auditability, and human answerability. The central danger is not that machines can produce bad arguments. Bad arguments can be answered. The deeper danger is that automated systems can acquire authority over which arguments are permitted to receive an answer at all. (shrink)

This article reframes theodicy not as a project of universal justification but as an existential inquiry confronting each sufferer. Suffering presents what I call the worthiness inquiry: the question of whether existence is worth affirming in the face of pain. Drawing on Augustine, Leibniz, Plantinga, Hick, Dostoevsky, Frankl, Wiesel, Camus, and Buddhist thought, I argue that responses to this inquiry are not merely subjective but carry what I term existential correctness. An answer is existentially correct when it is authentically chosen (...) and, crucially, when it is sealed by God’s radical respect for creaturely freedom. On this view, Hell is not divine retribution but the metaphysical sign of God’s willingness to ratify even ultimate dissent. This account finds Christological depth in Gethsemane and the cross, where Christ Himself confronts the worthiness inquiry and enters into human suffering from within. Theodicy, on this reframing, is less about discovering God’s reasons and more about recognizing God’s confirmation of human freedom in the face of suffering. (shrink)

HLA Hart tells us about how law would have emerged in a world of primary rules—informal, beneficial norms—by adjustments that the primary rules would naturally require; these adjustments would have introduced secondary rules for regulating the primary. But he does little to explain how the primary rules would themselves have emerged and, by most accounts, does not expand appropriately on the idea that the relevant players in his story would have taken an internal point of view, as he calls it, (...) on the rules involved. This article, presented as the Hart Memorial Lecture on 14 June 2018, argues that both problems can be resolved at once. Elaborating on Hart’s story with an account of how primary rules might have emerged, it also explains why those regularities would have attracted such a point of view. It argues that the emerging primary rules would have come to be perceived, internalised and ratified by all, and would even have been seen as rules to which each was personally committed. (shrink)

This review essay of Economics Rules situates Dani Rodrik’s contribution with respect to the 2007–2008 global economic crisis. This financial meltdown, which the eurozone did not fully recover from before the Covid-19 pandemic, led to soul- searching among economists as well as a call for heterodox economic approaches. Yet, over the past decade, instead the economics profession has maintained its orthodoxy. Rodrik’s Economics Rules offers a critique of the economics profession that is castigating but mild. It calls for economists to (...) use more and diverse models without becoming wedded to any single model or an overarching vision. Yet Rodrik ratifies many of the benchmark models standard to orthodox economics and provides little ground for a fundamental rethinking of the discipline. This essay analyses the conservatism underlying Rodrik’s approach, which upholds general equilibrium theory and rational expectations underlying the efficient market hypothesis. It argues that the economics discipline’s scope-creep to maintain its applicability to all human decision-making, and its acceptance of all-inclusive utility functions, crowds out moral sentiments and civic virtue. Thus. it argues that rather than urging economists simply to be more cautious in their application of models to address particular social concerns, instead economists must recognise their discipline’s inherent limitations. (shrink)

Newman remains an ecumenical figure held in high esteem by Roman Catholics and Anglicans. His ecumenical hermeneutics is observable in Tract No. 90. This Tract is a re-reading of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion ratified in 1571 as the fundamentals of the Anglican faith. This tract is the product of the Oxford Movement that returned to the Antiquity in view of resolving the Anglican faith crises epitomized by erastianism. This return to the Fathers of the Church had a lot of (...) implications for the Anglican faith. Influenced by Antiquity, Newman rediscovered the common grounds between the Anglican faith and the church Catholic that inheres in the Roman Church. Thus, Tract No. 90 demonstrated that more things united the Nineteenth Anglicans and the Roman Catholics than what separated them. (shrink)

It has long been recognised that great art, whether visual art, literature or music, has a special capacity to “live on” – to endure – long after the moment of its creation. Thus, our world of art today includes, for example, ancient Mesopotamian sculpture, Shakespeare’s plays, and the music of medieval times. How does this capacity to endure operate? Or to ask that question another way: what does “endure” mean in the case of art? The Renaissance concluded that art endures (...) because it is timeless – impervious to change, “eternal”, “immortal” – and this solution, which was ratified without question by Enlightenment philosophers of art such as Hume and Kant, still lingers on in some quarters today. But developments since the nineteenth century have gravely weakened the credibility of the proposition that art is immortal, and the idea is now effectively dead. This leaves us with a major dilemma: if art is not impervious to change, how exactly does it endure? If the time-honoured solution of immortality is no longer viable, what alternative explanation can we find to replace it? This paper explains why immortality is dead, describes our contemporary dilemma, and briefly canvasses a possible solution. (shrink)

WHAT THIS PAPER ARGUES. Judith Butler's Frames of War (2009) develops grievability: whether a life is framed, prior to its loss, as the kind of life whose loss would register as loss at all — a precondition for mourning, moral concern, and political claim-making that this corpus's own Symmetric Wound paper independently reconstructed, under the name communicability, without citing the theorist who had already named it. This paper closes that citation gap and, in closing it, finds that the corpus's Grief-Attribution-Legitimation-Concentration (...) sequence has been missing an independent variable its own historical case record could not fully explain without it. The Biological Zero-Day Mechanism's contribution is to make death discrete, dated, and attributable — to move a population's loss from unattributable tragedy to a specific, nameable decision. This paper argues attribution of this kind is necessary but not sufficient for the Legitimation stage this corpus's Grammar of Grievance identifies as requiring cross-class ratification from strata without direct stake in the loss. Grievability is the independent, prior filter that determines whether any amount of attribution accuracy can produce that ratification. A population whose deaths are fully, discretely, attributably caused by a dated institutional decision, but who were never framed as grievable to the strata positioned to ratify a moral claim on their behalf, will not complete the sequence this corpus's other papers model — not because the attribution is weak, but because attribution and grievability are independent variables, and the corpus's prior formal work has only modeled one of them. The paper distinguishes this from the Mortality Symmetry Axiom's own diffuse/opaque framing, which names a property of causal structure, not of perceptual frame; a death can be causally diffuse and fully grievable, or causally discrete and fully attributable while remaining ungrievable, and these are orthogonal axes rather than restatements of one another. It rereads the Irish Famine — already established in this corpus's historical record and already analyzed for its necropolitical structure in a prior paper — for a layer neither of those treatments isolated: not only that colonial extraction caused the famine deaths, but that metropolitan British discourse substantially failed to grieve them as it would have grieved a comparable death toll among a population already framed as grievable. The paper closes by asking what this implies for this corpus's own predictive apparatus: BZM event frequency alone, weighted by attribution clarity alone, may systematically overpredict political activation in populations already framed as ungrievable, and underpredict nothing, because the correction only ever runs in one direction. (shrink)

While in this paper I focus on adoptees, my argument is applicable to donor-conceived children and children of misattributed paternity. I address some of the noted risks of closed adopted and the benefits of open adoption, which is more in keeping with Article 7 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which provides all children with a right to know about their genetic parents and which the Australian government ratified in 1980.

Joint practical deliberation is the activity of deciding together what to do. In this dissertation, I argue that several speech acts that we can use to alter our moral obligations – promises, offers, requests, demands, commands, and agreements – are moves within joint practical deliberation. The dissertation begins by investigating joint practical deliberation. The resulting account implies that joint deliberation is more flexible than we usually recognize, in two ways. First, we can make joint decisions not only about what we (...) will do together, but also about what you or I will do alone. Second, we can deliberate by means of two distinct methods: propose-and-ratify, in which a proposed joint decision must be explicitly accepted to come into effect, and propose-and-challenge, in which a proposed joint decision comes into force unless it is explicitly challenged. Varying these parameters generates a botany of different kinds of proposals we can make within joint deliberation. When we look at these proposals more closely, we make a surprising discovery: for each kind of proposal we can make in joint practical deliberation, there is an everyday speech act with the very same properties. A certain kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one’s own actions has the same normative effects, under the same conditions, as a promise. One kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one’s addressee’s actions has all the essential features of a command; another kind of deliberative proposal – with the same content but a different method of evaluation – looks exactly like a request. And so on. These similarities are too systematic to be coincidental. The only explanation, I argue, is that these ordinary speech acts are identical to their doppelgängers within joint practical deliberation. Promises and offers are proposals to make joint decisions about what I will do. Commands, demands, and requests are proposals to make joint decisions about what you will do. And agreements are joint decisions about what we will do. Call this the deliberative theory of these speech acts. Considering each speech act in turn, I defend the deliberative theory by arguing that it provides a uniquely powerful explanation of its targets’ social and moral significance. Once we see how naturally these speech acts fall out of our practice of joint deliberation, theories that treat them as sui generis – as many moral philosophers now do – will come to seem redundant and nonexplanatory. Conversely, thinking of promises, offers, commands, demands, requests, and agreements as moves within joint practical deliberation allows us to give an elegant and generative theory of these phenomena that have confounded moral philosophers for so long. (shrink)

The Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement is a particularly noteworthy poster child of the influential international human rights system. It is predicated on the liberal individualist conception of human rights and gender equality. With the landmark 1979 UN adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement has been empowered to pressure ratifying non-Western states to transform their nonliberal cultures by incorporating its liberal individualist principles in their (...) domestic legal systems. Despite the risk that this may impose liberal individualism of the West on the nonliberal Global South, most human rights activists from the Global South have enthusiastically embraced the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement. Western feminists have taken this as evidence that the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement exemplifies transnational feminist solidarity. Against this widespread view, this article highlights the danger that the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement may replicate the imperialist stance of the colonial era and erode culturally diverse modes of gender justice in the Global South. (shrink)

Many eternal-hell theists affirm both that God may justly impose, permit, ratify, or sustain a no-exit eschatological condition, eternal conscious torment, permanent annihilation, or irreversible self-exclusion, and that God cannot lie, deceive, manipulate, harden, or epistemically distort because veracity belongs to the divine nature. I argue that this conjunction is unstable. The central claim is not just a “greater harm permits lesser harm” inference, but an action-type parity argument: once eternal or irrecoverable ruin is justified by sin, rejection, omission, or (...) disordered love, no principled asymmetry remains that categorically excludes punitive deception under the same justificatory description. I test proposed asymmetries from natural law, self-exclusion, skeptical theism, Sunni and Christian command-structures, and externalist religious epistemology. Each fails to secure the needed boundary. The result is an epistemic defeater: eternal-hell theists lose non-question-begging warrant that God has not deceived, hardened, or distorted them about revelation, salvation, divine goodness, or the afterlife. Universalist eschatologies, especially purgatorial universalism constrained by proportionality, avoid this collapse by rejecting irrecoverable punishment, capping the stakes, preserving a safe exit, and giving divine truthfulness a more stable moral home. (shrink)

This article is an extended exercise in 'genocide originalism.' Some leading genocide scholars have propounded a supposedly “legal” definition that is unduly narrow. Purportedly based on the drafting history of the Genocide Convention, this narrow definition actually rests upon incomplete and selective references to legal sources. A narrow definition has important effects on debates concerning whether partial genocides, such as by 'ethnic cleansing,' may constitute the crime of genocide. -/- In this article, I survey evidence that the drafters and ratifiers (...) of the Genocide Convention did not adopt a requirement of genocidal intent that would be nearly impossible to satisfy, namely an intent to totally destroy a race. Efforts to equate genocidal intent with total racial destruction have been disturbingly common within the United Nations system over the past decade, including in the findings of International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (ICID) on genocide in western Sudan and eastern Chad, and of the trial chamber of the U.N.-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) on genocide in Darfur. At the root of this misunderstanding is the equation of the intent to destroy a group required by Article II of the Genocide Convention with a deliberate plan or policy of a state to exterminate the members of an entire racial group, or a total genocide. Contrary to this distortion of the Convention, its drafters rejected efforts to limit genocide to total destruction, a plan or policy of destruction, or a motive of racial hatred. This article contends that the original understanding of the crime of genocide did not require a total genocide, and that this original understanding is reflected in the text of the Genocide Convention, the 'travaux preparatoires', and the course of performance of the treaty by the United Nations and its member states. (shrink)

Our work focuses on the novel Julie, or the New Heloise by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1761), particularly on the character of Saint Preux, Julie's lover. Our interest is strictly philosophical. First, we expose the ways in which Rousseau takes pleasure in denigrating Saint Preux to conclude that he is a feminine character: the virility-femininity distinction has no relation to the gender difference because (following a Socratic tradition through Plutarch) it is in agreement with the opposition between self-control (activity) - submission (...) to the passions (passivity); femininity is always a lack of virtue proper to men. Secondly, we focus on the annihilation of Saint Preux by the voluntary renunciation of his freedom, that is, of his humanity—an absurd and inconceivable renunciation, according to The Social Contract (1762). Thirdly, we examine the reasons for this annihilation; we propose that the novel, far from contradicting, ratifies and deepens the ethical and political condemnation of gallant love that Rousseau had carried out in the Letter to M. D'Alembert on Spectacles (1758). Finally, we examine the relevance of Saint Preux in our time, pointing out the connection that Rousseau denounces between the alleged freedom to love and political inaction Keywords: Virtue  Freedom  Slavery  Ethics  Plutarch. -/- Nuestro trabajo se centra en la novela Julia o la Nueva Eloísa de Jean Jacques Rousseau (1761), particularmente en el personaje de Saint Preux, el amante de Julia. Nuestro interés es estrictamente filosófico. Primero, mostramos los modos en los que Rousseau se complace en denigrar a su personaje enamorado para concluir que Saint Preux es femenino: la distinción virilidad-femineidad prescinde de la diferencia de género porque (recuperando una tradición socrática a través de Plutarco) coincide con la oposición entre dominio (de sí) /actividad - sumisión (a las pasiones) /pasividad; la femineidad es un defecto de virtud que compete siempre a los hombres. Segundo, nos detenemos en la (auto) aniquilación de Saint Preux por la renuncia voluntaria a su libertad, es decir, a su humanidad, renuncia absurda e inconcebible, según Del Contrato Social (1762). Tercero, preguntamos por las razones de esta aniquilación; proponemos que la novela de amor, lejos de contradecir, ratifica y lleva al último extremo la condena ética y política del amor galante que Rousseau había llevado a cabo en la Carta a d’Alembert sobre los espectáculos (1758). Finalmente, preguntamos sobre la actualidad de Saint Preux señalando la vigencia de esta imbricación que Rousseau denuncia entre la pretendida libertad de amar y la inacción política. Palabras Clave: Virtud  Libertad  Esclavitud  Ética  Plutarco. -/- . (shrink)

Despite growing evidence of its social and rhetorical aspects, research writing still has a reputation for impersonal neutrality and ‘facelessness'. This study revisits that neutrality by investigating expression of moral obligation—deontic modals and related expressions—in 105 research articles in three disciplines: Forestry, Social Psychology, Urban Geography. In all three disciplines, deontics express obligation to pursue knowledge, these expressions composing disciplined cohorts of researchers. In all three disciplines, but with varying frequency, deontics express obligations to take action in the world, these (...) expressions imagining arenas of professional and public responsibility to act on research-attested knowledge. Urban Geography is unique in quoting, in some cases, deontically modalized statements from worldly sources and thereby implicating rather than directly prescribing action. Modal mergers—pragmatic blends of deontic and dynamic modality—found in Forestry and Social Psychology are described as epitomizing the reciprocity of research-attested knowledge and ratified action. Deontic expressions appear to be a discursive resource for representing knowledge and orienting it to social sectors—research communities and public systems. Findings are interpreted as evidence for the cooperation of neutrality and sociality in research writing—a modern basis for conscientious action. (shrink)

Within the family, siblings work to create separate, stable social identities. One of the jobs of language socialization is the acquisition and appreciation of appropriate forms with which to perform the acts and stances which create social role. Children learn which roles are expected of them, and which forms are appropriate for the enactment of these roles in part through "trying on" various roles which may then be ratified or rejected by other members of the family. In addition to ratifying (...) sibling roles, however, older siblings may be involved in a struggle to maintain their own local position. This paper is particularly interested in how older siblings guide younger siblings' socialization through ratification of social stance, while working to maintain their own role within the family hierarchy. (shrink)

It is revealed the invalidity of the idea that famous Schrodinger's cat thought experiment can be a quantum touchstone. The arguments are: (i) the probabilistic incorrectness in the (over)rating of the subject, (ii) the possibility of imagining non-quantum scenarios but completely similar to that experiment (iii) lack of ratified practical tests having genuine essence (i.e., non-counterfeit). So, the aforesaid experiment appears as a simplistic thought exercise without any notable significance for quantum physics.

The PROSENTIR series investigates the computational correlates of proto-consciousness through agent-based simulations of iterative cooperation. Paper 6 addresses a central open question from Papers 4 and 5: does the self-model mechanism causally produce the internal autonomy indexed by C, or does it merely correlate with it? We report three independent empirical modules. Module C validates mutual information estimators: MINE-SMILE diverges systematically (Δ mean ≈ 56) on emergent differential-of-sigmoid distributions, while the Kraskov k-NN estimator remains stable (Φₚ = 2.19), ratifying Kraskov (...) as the canonical estimator for the PROSENTIR series with empirical rather than conventional justification. Module A ablates the self-model (wₛ = 0, N = 200 pairs per condition): the self-model suppresses the synchrony- cooperation coupling from r = 0.478 to r = 0.029 (p < 0.0001), confirming H6.1, and introduces cooperative behavioral variance (σ = 0.151 vs. 0.062 without self-model). Module B compares PROSENTIR against three baselines (RNN, Tit-for-Tat, Memory agent, N = 200 each): all systems without self-model show synchrony-cooperation coupling r ≥ 0.478; only PROSENTIR with self- model collapses that effect. Additionally, the autonomy-cooperation trade-off present in all baselines (r = −0.551 to −0.606) is neutralized in PROSENTIR (r = −0.045). We interpret these results as computational evidence for the saber-que / saber-desde distinction formalized in Paper 3: without the self-model, agents act as social mirrors; with it, they exhibit reflexive mediation of social responses. The cost of this mediation is social desynchronization; the benefit is behavioral stability and trade-off neutralization. (shrink)

Older siblings play a role in their younger siblings’ language socialization by ratifying or rejecting linguistic behavior. In addition, older siblings may engage in a struggle to maintain their dominant position in the family hierarchy. This struggle is seen through the lens of language and political economy as a struggle for symbolic capital. Bilingual adolescent sibling interactions are analyzed as expressions both of identity and of symbolic power. This paper proposes a theory of political micro-economy, by which analysts may trace (...) connections between broad societal structures and structures of face-to-face interaction. (shrink)

In order for the liberalization and increase of international trade, the free trade agreement is generally deemed a most useful instrumentality within the region. Under the WTO regime, we can see that a plethora of FTA arrangements are negotiated, come into the treaty laws, as well as operate to regulate the binational or tri-national trade disputes on the regional basis. As most typical and frequented in FTAs, they usually include an arbitration and binational panel procedure as a dispute settlement mechanics. (...) In many aspects, the procedures prescribed in most of FTAs could be apposite that most effectively and cheaply handle the disputes arising from the specific binational or trinational treaties. On the other hand, they could offer a chance to avoid the constitutional musters merely because diplomacy, international negotiation, ratification of treaties and approval of them traditionally fall within the powers of Congress or Executive under the separation of powers principle. This paper examined the legal issues as focused upon the NAFTA ch. 19, ch. 11 and US constitution. The chapters instituted the binational panel procedure dealing with the anti-dumping or counter measures as of subsidies, as well as legal dispute from the binational investment arrangements. From the consitutional viewpoint, we can be aware that the chapters could expressly contravene the Article III of original jurisdiction, Eleventh amendment of state sovereignty, and limitations of the treaty making powers inherent in the separation of powers principle. Given the overriding feature of such treaty clauses, the treaty should be ratified through the form of constitutional amendment, which requires a more stern step over most of the civilized constitutional states. The constitution is a supreme law in land, and represents a popular sovereignty as sheerly distinguished from the constitutional function of normal branches. When the special mechanics of dispute settlement may adopt an option of forum for escape, it is viewed that its unconstitutionality could yet be cured because the constitutional language of Article III original jurisdiction is considered mandatory or exclusive. I believe that the constitutional amendment procedure only could properly dispose such arrangements. While some areas of the presidential powers are deemed not subject to constitutional review as resorted upon the doctrine of political question or judicial self-restraint, the current jurisprudence gradually finds some limitations on the presidential power of foreign affairs including the treaty or war making provisions. As for a would-be treaty party of FTA, the constitutional issues raised in US is not entirely irrelevant to the Korean case ahead. (shrink)

This article reconsiders one of the most frequently moralized episodes in Lu Yao's Ordinary World: Hao Hongmei's theft of handkerchiefs at the end of high school and Sun Shaoping's intervention on her behalf. Existing readings often treat the incident as evidence of Hao's vanity, compromised character, or eventual moral education. Such interpretations remain too close to the evaluative grammar supplied by the novel itself. Through close reading informed by affect theory, the anthropology of the gift, class analysis, and rhetorical narrative (...) ethics, this article argues that the episode organizes a transfer of moral value. Hao's shame originates in a social relation. Graduation gifts impose a debt of reciprocity on a student whose poverty has to remain concealed if she is to preserve ordinary membership in the class. Once she is caught, however, the narrative reallocates agency and interpretive authority. Sun explains her motives, pays for the handkerchiefs, controls the circulation of knowledge, and converts the objects from evidence of theft into gifts that can safely re-enter social exchange. Witnesses then ratify his kindness, while Hao is reduced largely to fear, tears, and gratitude. Her crisis therefore becomes the condition under which Sun's goodness can appear as exceptional, magnanimous, and independent of romantic self-interest. I call this process borrowed shame: the narrative conversion of one character's socially produced humiliation into another character's ethical credit. The article further shows that this structure reappears in Hao's later widowhood and remarriage, where her vulnerability again tests and enlarges male moral character. A counterfocal reading does not deny Sun's compassion. It distinguishes the ethical merit of his action within the story from the unequal distribution of voice, action, and value through which the novel makes that merit legible. -/- . (shrink)

What powers do to several states of the United States have individually to enter into environmental agreements with other sovereign nations? In this article, the author reviews the power that states may have generally and then specifically regarding environmental agreements. Several traditional tools of analysis have historically been used including the constitutional doctrine of pre-emption, cooperative federalism and the foreign affairs doctrine. Some newer tools of analysis are also offered including the revival of the treaty-compact and the author's own concept (...) of "de-emption". The United States Senate's explicit refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, coupled with the consequent state initiatives to control greenhouse gasses - especially the documents concluded between New Jersey and the Netherlands, provide rich examples of these tools in contemporary action. (shrink)

Andy Egan recently drew attention to a class of decision situations that provide a certain kind of informational feedback, which he claims constitute a counterexample to causal decision theory. Arntzenius and Wallace have sought to vindicate a form of CDT by describing a dynamic process of deliberation that culminates in a “mixed” decision. I show that, for many of the cases in question, this proposal depends on an incorrect way of calculating expected utilities, and argue that it is therefore unsuccessful. (...) I then tentatively defend an alternative proposal by Joyce, which produces a similar process of dynamic deliberation but for a different reason. (shrink)