Defensible Spaces

A Defensible Divine Command Theory

The term 'The Divine Command Theory of Ethics' is similar to 'The Ontological Argument' in that there is no unique entity deserving of that title. Rather, there is a multiplicity of theories, each of which is appropriately taken to be a divine command theory. The strongest versions are, if not the finest, at least definist. That is, according to these versions moral predicates, such as 'is obli...

Building a Defensible Curriculum Base

Educators seem to have a strong desire to relive historical mistakes. During the 1960s, industrial arts innovators divided into three fairly distinct camps. One group could be characterized as the technology camp and was championed by DeVore (1966) and others. Another group was the industry group which was championed by the Ohio State IACP staff (Towers, 1966). A third group was the child-cente...

Pseudo-Malignancy: A Defensible Neologism?

Epistemic Democracy with Defensible Premises12

The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the ‘wisdom of crowds’. But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises — voter independence — is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem’s misleading conclusion that ‘large crowds are infallible’. We prove a more useful j...

Is respect for autonomy defensible?

Three main claims are made in this paper. First, it is argued that Onora O'Neill has uncovered a serious problem in the way medical ethicists have thought about both respect for autonomy and informed consent. Medical ethicists have tended to think that autonomous choices are intrinsically worthy of respect, and that informed consent procedures are the best way to respect the autonomous choices ...