Capital Punishment Capital punishment, or “the death penalty,” is an institutionalized practice designed to result in deliberately executing persons in response to actual or supposed misconduct and following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant execution. Punitive executions have historically been imposed by diverse kinds of authorities, for an expansive range of conduct, for political or

Emmanuel Kant: Metaphysics Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, épistémologie, éthique, and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him. This article focuses on his metaphysics and epistemology in one of his most important works, La critique de la raison pure. A large part of Kant’s

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) Norman Malcolm was instrumental in elaborating and defending Wittgenstein’s philosophy, which he saw as akin to a kind of “ordinary language” philosophy, in America. He also defended a novel interpretation of Moore’s “common sense philosophy” as a version of ordinary language philosophy, although Moore himself disagreed. Malcolm criticized Descartes’ account of mind by elaborating Wittgenstein’s criticisms of a private language. He produced

The Evidential Problem of Evil The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and, le cas échéant, to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, c'est-à-dire, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness. Evidential arguments from evil attempt to show that, once we put

Michael Dummett (1925-2011) Michael Dummett était l'un des philosophes britanniques les plus influents de sa génération.. Sa réputation philosophique repose en partie sur ses études sur l'histoire de la philosophie analytique et en partie sur ses propres contributions à l'étude philosophique de la logique., langue, mathématiques et métaphysique. L'article traite d'abord du travail historique, puis avec son projet en cours, conclure par une brève discussion

Act and Rule Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is one of the best known and most influential moral theories. Like other forms of consequentialism, its core idea is that whether actions are morally right or wrong depends on their effects. Plus précisément, the only effects of actions that are relevant are the good and bad results that they produce. A key point in this article concerns the distinction