William Ferraiolo

Terms such as “good” and “evil” are residues of a scientifically benighted worldview, often corrupted by intimations of the supernatural, and the phenomena that moral terms allegedly designate are no more substantial than phlogiston or witchery. Much as eliminative materialists like Paul and Patricia Churchland have attempted to banish the posits of “folk psychology” to the dustbin of history’s defunct and discarded theories, I hope to begin the relegation of moral terminology to humankind’s collective intellectual adolescence. It is prudent to leave moralizing behind, and to retain its memory as nothing more than a souvenir of quaint “folk normativity”. In other words, I hope to eliminate all talk of “morality” and to expose “moral facts” as chimeras, and “moral laws” as superfluous overlays without which we could readily, and comprehensively, describe the salient concerns of propriety regarding interpersonal interaction. In short, I contend that there is no such thing as “morality” and no need to resort to morality-speak. Indeed, the expression “moral fact” not only lacks any referent, it (as well as related terminology) is entirely eliminable in favor of more fundamental, more informative, and more thoroughly well-established features of the human condition. Let us, therefore, dispense with moralizing once and for all.

In Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Chalmers Johnson offers a prescient analysis of the dangers presented by an unchecked U.S. military-industrial complex and the likely consequences of American interventionism abroad. Blowback’s prescience is revealed by the fact that Johnson predicted escalating terrorist attacks on the United States and its citizens prior to the tragedies of September 11, 2001. He goes on to predict the likely decline and ultimate collapse of what he describes as the “American Empire,” largely as a result of the socio-economic consequences of hyper-militarism and growing anti-American sentiment resulting, at least in part, from America’s aggressive militarism and persistent socio-economic meddling abroad. In this paper, I attempt to formulate the “consequences of American empire” as the fruit of what some Buddhists have termed “collective karma”. A proper analysis of collective karma will, I contend, illuminate the role of America’s military and economic imperialism as causal antecedents of “Blowback,” and will also help us grasp the degree to which American citizens unknowingly (or unthinkingly) support the U.S. military-industrial complex that virtually ensures resentment, hostility, and, ultimately, the collapse of the “empire” – and, with that collapse, the reaping of the bitter fruit of our collective karma.

We experience anxiety because things may not turn out as we wish. Perhaps the problem is not located in the unfolding of events, but rather in the nature of the wishing. In this paper, I will argue that the Roman Stoics correctly analyzed the necessary conditions surrounding the arising of anxiety, and offered an effective prescription for the treatment and prevention of this disordered emotional state—a prescription that does not involve benzodiazepines such as Valium or Xanax, but one that holds out the promise of a more stable and enduring anxiolytic effect. Ultimately, anxiety can afflict only those whose desires are not rationally governed. There is little that anyone can do about the vicissitudes of the external world and the unraveling of events therein, but there is a great deal thata rational agent can do to manage the objects and direction of desire and aversion. Though not dispensed in tablet or capsule form, Stoic anxiolytics remain available without prescription and exhibit an extraordinarily benign side effect profile. They rarely cause weight gain, sexual dysfunction, or uncontrollable movements of the limbs. Physiological dependence is relatively rare—and not especially pernicious. Instead, Stoicism offers rationally grounded, proven psychological techniques for the gradual development of consistent self-mastery and emotional detachment from those facets of the human condition that tend to cause the most pervasive and unsettling forms of fear, anxiety, and avoidable disquiet.

In this paper, I make the case that metaphysical doctrines about the nature and existence of God, and a rationally governed cosmos, are rather cleanly separable from Stoic practical counsel, and its conductivity to a well-lived, eudaimonistic life. Stoicism may have developed within a worldview infused with presuppositions of a divinely-ordered universe, and, indeed, there may be a Creator or Designer of some type, but the efficacy of Stoic counsel is not dependent upon creation, design, or any form of intelligent cosmological guidance. The Stoic practitioner does not require a divine stamp of approval to legitimize his pursuit of equanimity, excellence, and wise self-governance.

The foundational principle of stoic counsel is the claim that one’s psychological and emotional health need not depend upon anything that does not directly answer to the exertion of one’s will. Whatever the difficulty, whatever the circumstance, the ideally rational agent will concern himself only with that which is entirely a matter of his own choosing, and will remain imperturbable by anything that he cannot directly control through the force of his will alone. The ideally rational agent will, thereby, rid himself of psychological and emotional distress. In this paper, I attempt to elucidate and defend this element of stoic counsel.

The following two claims have each captivated some of the very most penetrating intellects both in and out of philosophy, yet they are typically taken to be mutually exclusive: The world exists and has its nature independently of cognition Many facts obtain only relative to some conceptual scheme for ordering reality. ;Most of us feel compelled to assent to the world's mind-independent existence when we consider the presence of the world as a determinate entity prior to the existence of cognizers. Many of us also find it difficult to deny that there are a multiplicity of equally viable descriptions of any part of reality . Some of the "competing" descriptions appear to be mutually exclusive in the sense that the facts that obtain relative to the one are precluded by facts that obtain relative to the other. ;In this dissertation, I argue that there exist viable versions of metaphysical realism and conceptual relativity that are not mutually exclusive, and that can be combined to generate a novel, consistent, and explanatorily powerful metaphysic. Along the way, I diagnose a number of confusions that have perpetuated the unfortunate presumption of the mutual exclusivity of metaphysical realism and conceptual relativity; these confusions have generated a shockingly stagnant dialectic between the proponents of each doctrine. I also expose as untenable some of the more prominent versions of realism and relativism, and I reject a number of previous attempts to reconcile metaphysical realism with conceptual relativity. Holistic Realism, as the unification of these two compelling theses, emerges from pruning away the ill-formed branches from each doctrine and integrating their core elements. At the heart of this project is the deep suspicion that neither metaphysical realism nor conceptual relativity is likely to be eliminable from a comprehensive theory of the nature of reality

The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is that he looks to himself for all help or harm.– Epictetus [Enchiridion, 48]Make your rules of life brief, yet so as to embrace the fundamentals; recurrence to them will then suffice to remove all vexation, and send you back without fretting to the duties to which you must return. – Marcus Aurelius [Meditations, Book Four, 3]Epictetus was born a slave. Marcus Aurelius became an emperor. Both were Stoics, and adhered to the same root principles of self-discipline, broadly sharing an understanding of the human condition. In this paper, I present, in skeletal outline, a simple program of personal governance derived from Roman Stoicism as espoused by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. What I have dubbed “The IDEAMethod” is my attempt to resuscitate a few central tenets of Stoic counsel and to explain and defend their efficacy for responding rationally and effectively to the many vicissitudes and challenges endemic to the human condition. I hope to breathe a bit of new life into a Stoic analysis of self-disciplinary propriety that served the needs of a slave, an emperor, and innumerable lives lived between those two material extremes

Free agency and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism because causal determinism, properly understood, entails that originating conditions beyond the agent's control ultimately compel all human choices and actions. If causal determinism is true, then causal antecedents and laws of nature nomologically necessitate all deliberation, choice and action. If conditions beyond the agent's control ultimately compel the agent's behaviors, then the agent is not free and is not morally responsible. Compatibilists claim that externally compelled acts are not free, but fail to recognize that causally determined acts are, ultimately, externally compelled

Robust alethic relativism is the thesis that no truth bearer is objectively true or false. According to the robust alethic relativist, the most we can ever say of any truth bearer is that it is true or false relative to some conceptual framework, worldview, or other parameter . In this paper, I will argue that robust alethic relativism is either self-refuting, or an entirely trivial and uninteresting thesis that cannot coherently serve as a theory of truth. I hope to show that Socrates understood this difficulty for the full-blooded relativist, and that his attack on alethic relativism is more effective than some have recognized

I intend to explicate the phenomenon of simplicity insofar as it is constitutive of an agent’s character, and also to argue that it is a cardinal virtue – every bit as fundamental to a well-lived and admirable life as is wisdom, compassion, fortitude, or any of the more commonly acknowledged praiseworthy qualities. Simplicity, as I will use the term, refers to a disposition in favor of the rational governance of desire and aversion and, in particular, the renunciation of pretense. The simple person eschews interests rooted in concern about how he may be perceived or regarded by other persons. Simplicity, in short, is a rational restriction of one’s interests to the sphere of one’s direct, unmediated control – and a correlative disregard for matters lying beyond that sphere .Amacım bir bireyin kişiliğini oluşturan özelliklerden yalnızca biri olan sadelik olgusunu yorumlamak ve bunun çoğu zaman önemsenmese de bir erdem olduğunu tartışmaktır. İyi yaşanılmış ve hayranlık uyandıran bir yaşama temel olan sadelik aslında bilgelik, merhamet, metanet ya da genellikle takdire değer olarak kabul edilen özelliklerden biridir. Sadelik, kullanacağım şekliyle, arzu ve hoşnutsuzluğun ve özellikle de gösterişi bırakmanın rasyonel yönetiminden yana bir duruşa işaret etmektedir. Erkek ya da kadın olsun sade bir kişi diğerleri tarafından nasıl algılanabileceğiyle ilgili endişelerden kaçınır. Kısaca sadelik, bir kimsenin ilgisinin direkt ve Romalı Stoacıların anladığı şekilde aracısız kontrol zemininin ötesindeki konulara ilişkin akılcı kısıtlamalarını içermektedir