Eric Reitan

There seems to be nearly universal agreement that society cannot do without some form of criminal punishment. At the same time, it is generally acknowledged that punishment, involving as it does the imposition of hardship and suffering, stands in need of justification. What form such a justification should take, however, is a matter of considerable contention, in part because of basic theoretical disagreements on the nature of moral obligation, and in part because of disagreements concerning the nature and purpose of criminal punishment itself.These disagreements have given rise to a number of rival ‘theories’ of punishment - rival accounts of the purposes of punishment and the conditions which justify it. The traditional theories can be broadly categorized as deterrence theories, incapacitation theories, retributive theories, and rehabilitative theories. My purpose here is to contribute to this discussion on punishment by introducing a largely overlooked theory of punishment, one whose outlines can be found in the writings of Simone Wei!, but which has yet to be fully developed and discussed. This theory, which I call the ‘reintegrative theory,’ has, I believe, a number of advantages over more traditional theories of punishment.

In response to powerful criticisms of older arguments, contemporary defenders of the Church’s traditional stance on homosexuality have fashioned a new kind of argument based upon the special relationship God created between the sexes. In this paper we examine two recent incarnations of this kind of argument and show that both fail to demonstrate the inherent immorality of homosexual relationships, and at most demonstrate that homosexual relationships are inferior to heterosexual relationships in certain respects. At the end of the paper we argue that a good God would have reason to make a certain proportion of humanity homosexual in order to unmask sexist myths. In this way homosexuality could itself strengthen, rather than weaken, the special relationship God created between the sexes.

For the sake of developing and evaluating public policy decisions aimed at combating terrorism, we need a precise public definition of terrorism that distinguishes terrorism from other forms of violence. Ordinary usage does not provide a basis for such a definition, and so it must be stipulative. I propose essentially pragmatic criteria for developing such a stipulative public definition. After noting that definitions previously proposed in the philosophical literature are inadequate based on these criteria, I propose an alternative, which I call the 'group-target' definition and which distinguishes terrorism from other forms of violence by the distinctive principle of discrimination used by terrorists to identify legitimate targets. I argue that this definition meets the criteria for a satisfactory public definition, and suggest that based on it there is good reason to suspect the adequacy of anti-terrorism policies that rely predominantly on forceful interdiction of terrorists

One reason for the persistent appeal of Don Marquis' ‘future like ours’ argument is that it seems to offer a way to approach the debate about the morality of abortion while sidestepping the difficult task of establishing whether the fetus is a person. This essay argues that in order to satisfactorily address both of the chief objections to FLO – the ‘identity objection’ and the ‘contraception objection’ – Marquis must take a controversial stand on what is most essential to being the kind of entity that an adult human being is. Such a stand amounts to a controversial account of personhood. To the extent that FLO's success depends on accepting such a controversial metaphysical view, one apparent attraction of FLO proves illusory

Both Arne Naess and Warwick Fox have argued that deep ecology, in terms of “Selfrealization,” is essentially nonmoral. I argue that the attainment of the ecological Self does not render morality in the richest sense “superfluous,” as Fox suggests. To the contrary, the achievement of the ecological Self is a precondition for being a truly moral person, both from the perspective of a robust Kantian moral frameworkand from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. The opposition between selfregard and morality is a false one. The two are the same. The ecological philosophy of Naess and Fox is an environmental ethic in the grand tradition of moral philosophy.

Richard Swinburne’s formulation of the argument from evil is representative of a pervasive way of understanding the challenge evil poses for theistic belief. But there is an error in Swinburne’s formulation : he fails to consider possible deontological constraints on God’s legitimate responses to evil. To demonstrate the error’s significance, I show that some important objections to Swinburne’s theodicy admit of a novel answer once we correct for Swinburne’s Lapse. While more is needed to show that the resultant “deontological theodicy” succeeds, its promise highlights the significance of Swinburne’s Lapse and the prospects for theodicy it has obscured

When philosophers contribute to public debates as polarized as contemporary ones about theistic belief, it is common to encounter responses that, philosophically, are woefully misguided. While it is tempting to simply dismiss them, a closer examination of recurring responses can offer insight of philosophical significance. In this paper I exemplify the value of engaging with recurring but misguided popular objections by looking carefully at one such objection to my recent book, Is God a Delusion?