James Garvey

State governments have done little or nothing about climate change, and individuals have done little or nothing about their own carbon footprints. Perhaps both parties would do something if the moral demand for action were clear. This paper presents two arguments for the necessity of meaningful state action on climate change. The arguments depend on certain clear facts about emissions as well as two uncontroversial moral principles — one owed to Peter Singer and the other connecting capacities with the demand for action. Arguments are presented for individual action based on a similar set of facts and the consistent application of principles which apply in state cases. The arguments put consistency, not consequences, at the heart of the call for individual action. This is a strategy which might help individuals recognize their obligations to the environment

Think of some environmentally unfriendly choices – taking the car instead of public transport or driving an SUV, just binning something recyclable, using lots of plastic bags, buying an enormous television, washing clothes in hot water, replacing something when you could make do with last year's model, heating rooms you don't use or leaving the heating high when you could put on another layer of clothing, flying for holidays, wasting food and water, eating a lot of beef, installing a patio heater, maybe even, as some have said lately, owning a dog. Think about your own choices, instances in which you take an action which enlarges your carbon footprint when you might have done otherwise without much trouble. Is there consolation in the thought that it makes no difference what you do?

Exactly what is McGinn saying when he claims that we cannot solve the mind-body problem? Just what is cognitively closed to us? The text suggests at least four possibilities. I work through each them in some detail, and I come to two principal conclusions. First, by McGinn's own understanding of the mind-body problem, he needs to show that we are cognitively closed to how brains generate consciousness, but he argues for something else, that we are cognitively closed to the brain property in virtue of which the brain is the basis of consciousness. Second, it turns out that McGinn is not entitled to any of the four closure possibilities