Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

ABSTRACT In “What is terrorism?” Igor Primoratz defines ‘terrorism’ as “the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating them, or other people, into a course of action they otherwise would not take.” I argue that this definition needs to be modified (1) by requiring that the harm or threat be to persons other than those intimidated, (2) by including aims which do not concern action, and (3) by distinguishing terrorists who know they are terrorists from those who do not.

If there is a moral reason for A to do X, and if A cannot do X without doing Y, and if doing Y will enable A to do X, then there is a moral reason for A to do Y. This principle is plausible but mysterious, so it needs to be explained. It can be explained by necessary enabler consequentialism, but not by other consequentialisms or any deontological moral theory. Or so I argue. Frances Howard-Snyder objects that this argument fails to establish consequentialism as understood by, because it fails to establish agent-neutrality. I respond by distinguishing consequentialism, which need not be agent-neutral, from utilitarianism, which claims agent-neutrality. Howard-Snyder also presents a schema for a non-consequentialist theory that is supposed to explain moral substitutability. I respond that her explanation cannot be completed without introducing incoherence into deontological moral theories

Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), now also known as Dissociative Iden- tity Disorder, raises many questions about the nature of persons, the goals of treatment, the suggestibility of patients, and the reliability of defendant reports of their own mental states. These issues become crucial when courts need to decide whether or not to punish a person with MPD who has committed a crime. This paper will explore that issue and propose a test of when people with MPD should be held criminally responsible.

Analytic particularism claims that judgments of moral wrongness are about particular acts rather than general principles. Metaphysical particularism claims that what makes true moral judgments true is not general principles but nonmoral properties of particular acts. Epistemological particularism claims that studying particular acts apart from general principles can justify beliefs in moral judgments. Methodological particularism claims that we will do better morally in everyday life if we look carefully at each particular decision as it arises and give up the search for a complete moral theory. This paper raises problems for each of these versions of particularism

Neuromarketing is an emerging field in which academic and industry research scientists employ neuroscience techniques to study marketing practices and consumer behavior. The use of neuroscience techniques, it is argued, facilitates a more direct understanding of how brain states and other physiological mechanisms are related to consumer behavior and decision making. Herein, we will articulate common ethical concerns with neuromarketing as currently practiced, focusing on the potential risks to consumers and the ethical decisions faced by companies. We argue that the most frequently raised concerns—threats to consumer autonomy, privacy, and control—do not rise to meaningful ethical issues given the current capabilities and implementation of neuromarketing research. But, we identify how potentially serious ethical issues may emerge from neuromarketing research practices in industry, which are largely proprietary and opaque. We identify steps that can mitigate associated ethical risks and thus reduce the threats to consumers. We conclude that neuromarketing has clear potential for positive impact on society and consumers, a fact rarely considered in the discussion on the ethics of neuromarketing.

Scrupulosity raises fascinating issues about the nature of moral judgment and about moral responsibility. After defining scrupulosity, describing its common features, and discussing concrete case studies, we discuss three peculiar aspects of moral judgments made by scrupulous patients: perfectionism, intolerance of uncertainty, and moral thought-action fusion. We then consider whether mesh and reasons-responsiveness accounts of responsibility explain whether the scrupulous are morally responsible

I reply to comments by Gerry Hough, Peter Baumann and Martijn Blaauw on my book Moral Skepticisms. The main issues concern whether modest justifiedness is epistemic and how it is related to extreme justifiedness; how contrastivists can handle crazy contrast classes, indeterminacy and common language; whether Pyrrhonian scepticism leads to paralysis in decision-making or satisfies our desires to evaluate beliefs as justified or not; and how contextualists can respond to my arguments against relevance of contrast classes.

I conclude that Gibbard fails to solve several of the traditional problems for expressivism. He solves some of these problems, but his solutions to them in effect give up expressivism. Of course, one might respond that it does not really matter whether his theory is expressivist. In some ways, I agree. Gibbard says many fascinating things about morality which have at most indirect connections to his expressivist analysis. I am thinking especially of his later discussions of hyperscepticism, parochialism, and indirect pragmatism. These views could still be developed even if he gave up expressivism. All I have tried to show here is that he does need to give up expressivism unless he can solve the problems that I have raised.

People with personality disorders should be treated fairly. Potential crime victims should be protected. That much is uncontroversial. The hard questions ask what is fair, when is protection adequate, and how should we achieve fairness and protection together. Peay outlines five main hurdles that the law must jump to reach these goals. All five raise serious challenges. To begin to address these challenges, we must first clarify what a personality disorder is. The notion of a personality disorder is defined very broadly in DSM-IV-TR as any inflexible, pervasive, enduring, stable, and early-onset pattern of experience and behavior that deviates markedly from cultural expectations, leads to clinically ..

Throughout the history of philosophy, skepticism has posed one of the central challenges of epistemology. Opponents of skepticism--including externalists, contextualists, foundationalists, and coherentists--have focussed largely on one particular variety of skepticism, often called Cartesian or Academic skepticism, which makes the radical claim that nobody can know anything. However, this version of skepticism is something of a straw man, since virtually no philosopher endorses this radical skeptical claim. The only skeptical view that has been truly held--by Sextus, Montaigne, Hume, Wittgenstein, and, most recently, Robert Fogelin--has been Pyrrohnian skepticism. Pyrrhonian skeptics do not assert Cartesian skepticism, but neither do they deny it. The Pyrrhonian skeptics' doubts run so deep that they suspend belief even about Cartesian skepticism and its denial. Nonetheless, some Pyrrhonians argue that they can still hold "common beliefs of everyday life" and can even claim to know some truths in an everyday way. This edited volume presents previously unpublished articles on this subject by a strikingly impressive group of philosophers, who engage with both historical and contemporary versions of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Among them are Gisela Striker, Janet Broughton, Don Garrett, Ken Winkler, Hans Sluga, Ernest Sosa, Michael Williams, Barry Stroud, Robert Fogelin, and Roy Sorensen. This volume is thematically unified and will interest a broad spectrum of scholars in epistemology and the history of philosophy.