In this paper, I propose a new way of defining sport that I call a ‘core-periphery’ model. According to a core-periphery model, sport comes in degrees – what I refer to as ‘sport-likeness’ – and the aim of the philosopher of sport is to chart those dimensions along which an activity can be more or less a sport. By introducing the concept of sport-likeness, the core-periphery model complicates the picture of what is or is not a sport and encourages philosophers (...) interested in defining sport to engage with the social sciences in exploring the extension of the term sport in common usage. In this paper I present the results of a small survey about attitudes to sport, and use it to illustrate how a core-periphery definition of sport would proceed. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the usefulness of the concept of ‘movement compression’ for understanding sport and games, and particularly the differences between traditional sport and eSport (as currently practised). I suggest that movement compression allows us to distinguish between different activities in terms of how movement quality (in the sense of the qualities the movement possesses, rather than that the movement is of ‘high quality’) affects outcome. While it applies widely, this concept can in particular help us to (...) understand the persistent idea that eSports are in some key way distinct from traditional sports. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that philosophers of sport should avoid value-laden definitions of sport; that is, they should avoid building into the definition of sport that they are inherently worthwhile activities. Sports may very well often be worthwhile as a contingent matter, but this should not be taken to be a core feature included in the definition of sport. I start by outlining what I call the ‘legitimacy-conferring’ element of the category ‘sport’. I then argue that we ought not (...) to include such a dimension in our definition of sport, on the grounds that it confuses issues of description with issues of definition: the issue of what sport does with what sport is. Following this, I consider a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach to defining sport; Kevin Schieman’s argument that sports are necessarily good games; and the oft-cited wide-following and institutional criteria, as arguments for including an evaluative dimension in the definition of sport. I conclude that none succeed, for similar reasons: they either fail to track our common sense intuitions about what does or does not count as a sport; and/or they make it impossible for us to ever describe something a ‘bad’ sport (or instance of sport). Just as a good definition of, say, art, shouldn’t make it impossible for us to describe something as ‘bad art’, I argue that our definition of sport shouldn’t build in a necessarily positive evaluation. I conclude by discussing some of the practical reasons why supporters of activities about which there is currently debate as to their status as sports might want to see those activities included under the sports umbrella, but suggest that this on its own isn’t a good reason for modifying a philosophical definition of sport to include them. (shrink)

Speedrunning is a kind of ‘metagame’ involving video games. Though it does not yet have the kind of profile of multiplayer e-sports, speedrunning is fast approaching e-sports in popularity. Aside from audience numbers, however, from the perspective of the philosophy of sport and games, speedrunning is particularly interesting. To the casual player or viewer, speedrunning appears to be a highly irreverent, even pointless, way of playing games, particularly due to the incorporation of “glitches”. For many outside the speedrunning community, the (...) use of glitches appears to be cheating. For speedrunners, however, glitches are entirely within the bounds of acceptability. Because of this, however, speedrunning frequently involves sidestepping what are typically taken to be the core challenges of the game. By examining the distinction between the use of glitches and cheating in speedrunning, we can gain a greater understanding of the unique ethos of this activity; that is, we can make sense of what fundamentally constitutes speedrunning as a metagame. I argue that by understanding the code of the game not as rules but as physics, and by examining what actions are deemed impermissible by the speedrunning community – such as hardware modification and hacking – we can see that the ethos of speedrunning has three components: constitutive skills (including dexterity, memorisation and mental fortitude); a collective, fine-grained knowledge of the game and the desire to subvert the intentions of the programmers. Each of these components limits and structures the earlier ones: collective knowledge takes priority over constitutive skills, and subversion takes priority over both. These three components form the ethos that structures speedrunning as a metagame, expressing what speedrunners take to be its central aim. (shrink)

The concept of metagames can be of use to philosophers of sport and games. However, the term “metagame” is used throughout the literature in several different, distinct senses, few of which are clearly defined, and as a result there remains ambiguity about what, precisely, this term means. In this paper, I attempt to disambiguate the term metagame. I have come across at least four different senses of “metagame” in academic literature about games. Of these four senses, most relevant to philosophers (...) of sport and games is what I have termed “ludic” metagames. Ludic metagames involve playing a game “on top of” another game. I attempt to spell out this concept in particular detail, distinguishing it from related – but distinct – ways in which the formal features of a game can be modified without giving rise to metagames. (shrink)

This paper compares two readings of Baruch Spinoza – those of Gilles Deleuze and Rama Kanta Tripathi – with a particular focus on three features of Spinoza’s philosophy: the relationship between substance and attribute; the problem of acosmism and unity; and the problem of the parallelism of attributes. Deleuze and Tripathi’s understanding of these three issues in Spinoza’s thought illustrates for us their own concerns with becoming over substance and māyā, respectively. This investigation provides not just two interesting and contradictory (...) interpretations of Spinoza, but also gives us insight into Deleuze’s metaphysics and Tripathi’s Vedāntic philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that sportspersonship is a means of performing fundamental sociality; it is about the conversion of a foe (inimicus) into an enemy (hostis). Drawing on Carl Schmitt’s distinction between enemy and foe – inimicus and hostis – as well as his discussion of the ius publicum Europaeum, I suggest a model of sportspersonship that sees it as expressing the competitive relations between equals that undergird the most minimal form of sociality; relations that any deeper union takes (...) as its foundation. It is the performance of this fundamental sociality, I argue, that grounds the value of sport in general (though this does not mean that there cannot be other, contingent values in sport). (shrink)

I argue that in purely professional games of pure chance, such as slot machines, roulette, baccarat or pachinko, any instance of cheating that successfully deceives the judge can be ‘part of the game’. I examine, and reject, various proposals for the ‘ethos’ that determines how we ought to interpret the formal rules of games of pure chance, such as being a test of skill, a matter of entertainment, a display of aesthetic beauty, an opportunity for hedonistic pleasure, and a fraternal (...) activity. Ultimately, I argue that ‘winning the benefit’ is the only ethos that can apply in purely professional games of pure chance, and that if we interpret the formal rules according to this ethos, cheating that is undertaken with respect for the judge’s authority, but that attempts to cause the judge of the game to ‘voluntarily’ relinquish the benefit of the game by deceiving them into thinking that the formal rules of the game have been followed, is impermissible but acceptable cheating, and is therefore within, rather than outside, the game. Here, I define ‘games of pure chance’ as games in which chance is the only determinant of winning. (shrink)

I argue that John Hick’s soul-making theodicy is committed to opposing social progress. By focusing on justifying the current amount and distribution of suffering and evil, Hick’s theodicy ends up having to condemn even positive change as undesirable. First, I give a brief outline of Hick’s theodicy, with a particular emphasis on the role of earned virtue in justifying the existence of evil. Then I consider two understandings of social progress: progress as the elimination of suffering and evil; and progress (...) as the promotion of earned virtue. I further distinguish the earned virtue understanding of social progress into two kinds, in which the relationship between social structures and moral growth either: allows members of a more advanced society to start closer to perfection; or allows members of a more advanced society to progress more quickly. I argue that no matter which approach we take, Hick’s theodicy struggles with the idea of social progress. Hick is either straightforwardly committed to opposing social progress, or he can support it only at the expense of being unable to justify status quo of suffering and evil. (shrink)

Mozi and George Berkeley are philosophers who are not often put into conversation. However, I argue that comparing them can shed some light on the relationship between certain philosophical positions and their resulting moral philosophies. Specifically, I will draw attention to the way that their lack of interest in an appearance-reality distinction and in "essence" gives rise to a tension between consequentialism and divine command theory. These similarities exist despite the fact that Mozi and Berkeley otherwise have quite distinct views. (...) For example, Mozi's dao-centered theoretical orientation leads him to assume that the world simply is as it is given through our senses, whereas Berkeley holds that the world is... (shrink)

In this paper I will examine a number of justifications for environmental concern, and show why all except for the (broadly) anthropocentric demonstrate problematic conservative logics that incline them towards socially conservative positions. Environmentalists would do best to take up an anthropocentric, or at least anthropogenic, defence of green values if they want to pair it with a progressive social politics.

In this paper I contrast the metaphysical philosophies of Benedict de Spinoza and the ‘sudden enlightenment’ tradition of Chan Buddhism. Spinoza’s expressivist philosophy, in which everything can be conceived via a lineage of finite causes terminating in substance as a metaphysical ground of all things, emphasises the relative sameness of all entities. By contrast, Chan’s philosophy of emptiness, which rests on the dependent co-origination of all entities, renders such comparison fundamentally meaningless. Having no source beyond dependent co-origination to generate a (...) thing’s distinct nature leads to a metaphysics in which, rather than being relatively similar or different, all things are at one and the same time absolutely the same and absolutely distinct. As a result, Spinoza grounds ethics wholly is sameness or similarity, whereas Chan transcends the dichotomy of sameness and difference and offers an environmental ethics grounded simultaneously in absolute sameness and absolute difference. As a result, in Spinoza’s case, the dissimilarity between human beings and the non-human world places limits on our concern for it. In Chan Buddhism, however, insight into the emptiness of all phenomena leads to a concern for all entities in their suchness, regardless of whether they are similar or different to human beings. As such, I argue that Chan is in a better position than Spinoza to develop a robust environmental ethic. (shrink)

I argue that a commitment to liberal neutrality, and an opposition to coercion, means that we ought to support a redistributive state in which wealth, insofar as it is instrumental in allowing us to pursue our ends, is equalised. This is due to the fact that any conception of justice and desert works in favour of some, but against others, and that those who lose out by any particular conception are likely not to consent to it (meaning that its imposition (...) is coercive). As having some understanding of justice and desert is inescapable in a society, coercion is unavoidable. However, those who are harmed by the imposition of a certain conception of justice and desert deserve compensation for their foregone position in the alternate conceptions in which they would be better off. This compensation is owed by those who have benefitted from the existing conception of justice and desert. (shrink)

Human Beings and Freedom: An Interdisciplinary Perspective focuses on some contemporary issues relating to freedom, equality, identity and resistance from various perspectives, such as psychological, social, political, and metaphysical. In doing so it addresses topics such as the nature of human beings, political freedom, the relationship between freedom and equality, sex, gender and race, humour, and the notion of critique.

According to the received account of guilt in the philosophical literature, one cannot feel guilt unless one takes oneself to have done something morally wrong. But ordinary people feel guilt in many cases in which they do not take themselves to have done anything morally wrong. In this paper, I focus on one kind of guilt without perceived wrongdoing, guilt about being merely causally responsible for a bad state-of-affairs. I go on to present a novel account of guilt that explains (...) guilt about mere causal responsibility, according to which guilt represents part of the self as bound up with what is bad. (shrink)

What is the relation between small-scale collaborative plans and the execution of those plans within interactive contexts? I argue here that joint attention has a key role in explaining how shared plans and shared intentions are executed in interactive contexts. Within singular action, attention plays the functional role of enabling intentional action to be guided by a prior intention. Within interactive joint action, it is joint attention, I argue, that plays a similar functional role of enabling the agents to act (...) in a collaborative way such that their actions are rationally guided by a prior shared intention. This understanding of joint attention – as having a key functional role of enabling the rational guidance of joint intentional action by a prior shared intention – allows for an alternative understanding of the kind of minimal cooperation that infants can engage in. On this understanding, infants’ capacity to engage in joint actions is already an incipient capacity to engage in rational and intentional joint actions, albeit a capacity that is necessarily scaffolded by an adult rational co-partner. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to present the distinct ways in which Wolff, Baumgarten, and Kant understand the relationship between necessitation, constraint, and reluctant action in an effort to illustrate the subtle ways in which their conceptions of obligation differ from each another. Whereas Wolff conceives of natural or moral obligation as incompatible with constraint, Baumgarten holds that constraint and reluctant action are, in some instances, compatible with natural obligation. Kant departs from Baumgarten by conceiving of obligation as necessarily (...) involving constraint: as Kant’s reply to Schiller’s famous objection reveals, obligation must take on the character of constraint to reluctant action on account of the fact that human beings possess inclinations that always threaten to impel them in directions that oppose morality. (shrink)

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates, Inquiry 1:161–171, 1958, p. 165). In this chapter, (...) we evaluate Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

What is the relation between joint attention and common knowledge? On the one hand, the relation seems tight: the easiest and most reliable way of knowing something in common with another is for you and that other to be attentively aware of what you are together experiencing. On the other hand, they couldn’t seem further apart: joint attention is a mere perceptual phenomena that infants are capable of engaging in from nine months of age, whereas common knowledge is a cognitive (...) phenomenon involving (so it seems) complex, overlapping metarepresentational states that require the kind of sophisticated mindreading skills that developmental psychology has shown to be beyond the capabilities of young children. In 'The Shared World: Perceptual Common Knowledge, Demonstrative Communication, and Shared Social Space', Axel Seemann attempts, inter alia, to makensense of this conundrum. (shrink)

Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether or not it is true, is only understood—and understood to be true—if p1 is uttered in a particular time, place, (...) and situation (i.e. during a theatrical event); otherwise, the propositional content in those theatrical utterances can either be false or contingently true. (shrink)

I show that the common reading of Thomson, that she argues by analogy for the conclusion that abortion is permissible, is mistaken. The correct reading of Thomson is that she argues by counterexample, showing that arguments against abortion are unsound. The remainder of the paper highlights the lessons learned from Thomson once we read her aright.

What exactly do we mean when we refer to disability as a social construction? How viable are the justifications for this? These questions are explored in this paper. To this end, various theories that are influential in German-language disability studies are examined and criticised. These include Oliver's social model, furthermore the "Thomas theorem", Berger and Luckmann's sociology of knowledge, Foucault's discourse theory and Waldschmidt's theory. Subsequently, social constructivist approaches of Watzlawick and Gergen and Gergen are discussed. It is shown that (...) a relativistic understanding of social construction can be used to deny facticity and thus undermines the foundations of scientific knowledge. This danger must be taken seriously when defending the scientificity of disability studies. (shrink)

This excerpted chapter of the book THE IMAGE OF LANGUAGE discusses the philosophical implications of geometric visualizations of the alphabetic patterning encoded in the orthography of words (a project showing examples of the visualizations is included). Reference pages are also included.

This paper argues that Kant’s concept of ‘respect’ for the moral law has roots in Adam Smith’s concept of ‘regard’ for the general rules of conduct, which was translated as Achtung in the first German translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. After illustrating that Kant’s technical understanding of respect appeared relatively late in his intellectual development, I argue that Kant’s concept of respect and Smith’s concept of regard share a basic similarity: they are both a single complex phenomenon with (...) two core aspects, namely an attitude and a feeling. I then suggest that the concept of regard offered Kant a way to deal a problem concerning moral motivation that he was trying to solve at the time he likely first read Smith. I conclude by drawing some implications from the account I have offered for our understanding of Kant’s relation to Smith more generally. (shrink)

Freedom can be seen as individual’s capacity to choose between alternatives. As such, it stands in a dialectical relationship to its environment that both imposes constraints on freedom and allows carrying it out. Yet if we see liberty as freedom’s social accommodation, how would freedom shape liberty, and how would liberty accommodate freedom? As a capacity for choice, freedom is formal. Negative liberty, or freedom from, protects this capacity yet does not give it content. To make freedom meaningful, its societal (...) accommodation has ensure that the choice can be carried out – in terms of accessing alternatives, understand them, and making informed choices. The paper, using the tools provided by the Hegelian philosophy and by information theory, explores the concept of liberty as an enabler of freedom and the role of knowledge in its enablement. This exploration leads us to specific positive rights that are necessary to make freedom meaningful. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

In this paper, we explore how a conversational theory of moral responsibility can provide illuminating resources for building a theory about the nature and norms of moral forgiveness.

An excerpt of "The SignalGlyph Project and Prime Numbers" (a chapter of the book THE IMAGE OF LANGUAGE) that attempts to illustrate how dimensional limitations of mathematical language have obscured recognition of the system of patterning in the distribution of prime numbers.

This chapter offers an account of Crusius’ conception of freedom. In the first part of the chapter I sketch Crusius’ understanding of ‘Thelematology’ or ‘science of the will’ and his conception of the will itself. In the second part of the paper I provide an account of Crusius’ conception of freedom of the will and I focus on two topics: his understanding of freedom as self-determination and his conception of free choice. Contrary to how some of the secondary literature portrays (...) his view, I argue that freedom of the will, for Crusius, is not best described as the freedom to choose otherwise or liberty of indifference. On the contrary, Crusius argues that free choice is rarely indifferent to its choices and is most often strongly inclined towards certain ends that free choice must overcome and choose against. (shrink)

This thesis develops an account of ethics called the Linguistic Perspective, which is realist in a practical, non-theoretical sense, and is rooted Wittgenstein’s 'On Certainty'. On this account, normativity is intrinsic to human action and language; the norms of ethics are the logical limits of the most basic, unassailable concepts that practical reasoning requires for intelligibility. Part I lays the groundwork for this account by developing a Tractarian Reading of 'On Certainty'. Here, I contend that 'On Certainty' is primarily concerned (...) with the logical requirements and limits of language, and like the 'Tractatus' it develops these concerns in a realist direction. 'On Certainty', I argue, does so by advancing three key claims about logic: Everything descriptive of a language-game is part of logic; the boundary between logical and empirical propositions is not sharp; logic is founded on action. I investigate these claims, with particular emphasis on how natural human reactions provide logical conditions for the possibility of language. Hinge propositions, I argue, are rooted in these reactions; they point us to the limits of intelligibility of our concepts, though these limits are vague and inarticulable. In Part II, I discuss the practical syllogism and its validity. I argue that practical reasoning is distinct from theoretical reasoning and embodies a different standard of logical validity for inference. This standard is not strict and narrow, but creative and wide open; furthermore, it is an intrinsically ethical standard. Then, I advance my Linguistic Perspective on ethics, according to which human reactions provide the conditions for ethical normativity, just as they do for language. I argue that we can access ethical norms by reflecting on those linguistic concepts that are rooted in the most basic patterns of action, and by identifying the norms of behaviour that ensure the development of those concepts without contradiction. (shrink)

Whataboutism is een strategie waarbij op een beschuldiging wordt gereageerd met een wedervraag die eveneens een beschuldiging impliceert, waardoor de oorspronkelijke vraag eerder wordt ontweken dan beantwoord. Het is een effectieve methode om de aandacht te verplaatsen naar een andere situatie door een vergelijkbaar, dan wel onvergelijkbaar, contrast te bieden, waardoor de beschuldigde het eigen gedrag probeert te rechtvaardigen en verantwoordelijkheid probeert te ontlopen. Maar niet alle vormen van whataboutism impliceren echter een drogredenering, noch worden ze altijd verkeerd toegepast. Het (...) contrast dat voortkomt uit de vraag ‘what about’ kan dan een cruciale bijdrage leveren aan een situatie die een verdere kritische analyse vereist, en daarmee de geloofwaardigheid van de argumentatie versterken. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists sometimes categorize emotions like surprise and curiosity as specifically epistemic. Is there some reasonably unified and interesting class of emotions here? If so, what unifies it? This paper proposes and defends an evaluative account of epistemic emotions: What it is to be an epistemic emotion is to have fittingness conditions that distinctively involve some epistemic evaluation. We argue that this view has significant advantages over alternative proposals and is a promising way to identify a limited and interesting (...) class of emotions. (shrink)

A very influential idea in the epistemology of modality is that we acquire knowledge of metaphysical modality through knowledge of essence. As a consequence, the epistemology of essence becomes crucial in the attempt to answer the question of how we come to know modal propositions. In this paper I investigate Lowe’s and Hale’s approach to the epistemology of essence and argue that both of them remain in a crucial, structural sense incomplete. Systematizing this criticism against Lowe and Hale, I then (...) break down desiderata of what I call a structurally complete picture of the epistemology of essence. Finally, I discuss Husserl’s epistemology of essence and defend it against a notorious objection. However, Husserl’s approach also seems to remain incomplete, due to its appeal to imagination, which operates on the basis of background assumptions that are themselves in need of justification. I indicate, however, that a Husserlian theory of intuitive awareness of universals might supply us with (direct) justification of these background assumptions and, hence, that we might be able to paint a structurally complete picture of the epistemology of essence with Husserlian means. (shrink)

Could the concept of 'evil' apply to AI? Drawing on PF Strawson's framework of reactive attitudes, this paper argues that we can understand evil as involving agents who are neither fully inside nor fully outside our moral practices. It involves agents whose abilities and capacities are enough to make them morally responsible for their actions, but whose behaviour is far enough outside of the norms of our moral practices to be labelled 'evil'. Understood as such, the paper argues that, when (...) it comes to AI and evil, we have more to fear from semi-autonomous, hybrid agents: agents who have enough of a capacity to operate within a minimal form of human practices of participation and responsibility, yet remain partially outside of it, capable of acting from outside the parameters of ordinary interactions in certain circumstances, perhaps sometimes for reasons unknown. (shrink)

Argues that considerations central to the justification of euthanizing humans do not readily extrapolate to the euthanasia of pets and companion animals; that the comparative account of death's badness can be successfully applied to such animals to ground the justification of their euthanasia and its timing; and proposes that companion animal guardians have authority to decide to euthanize such animals because of their epistemic standing regarding such animals' welfare.

We provide a new interpretation of Zeno’s Paradox of Measure that begins by giving a substantive account, drawn from Aristotle’s text, of the fact that points lack magnitude. The main elements of this account are (1) the Axiom of Archimedes which states that there are no infinitesimal magnitudes, and (2) the principle that all assignments of magnitude, or lack thereof, must be grounded in the magnitude of line segments, the primary objects to which the notion of linear magnitude applies. Armed (...) with this account, we are ineluctably driven to introduce a highly constructive notion of (outer) measure based exclusively on the total magnitude of potentially infinite collections of line segments. The Paradox of Measure then consists in the proof that every finite or potentially infinite collection of points lacks magnitude with respect to this notion of measure. We observe that the Paradox of Measure, thus understood, troubled analysts into the 1880’s, despite their knowledge that the linear continuum is uncountable. The Paradox was ultimately resolved by Borel in his thesis of 1893, as a corollary to his celebrated result that every countable open cover of a closed line segment has a finite sub-cover, a result he later called the “First Fundamental Theorem of Measure Theory.” This achievement of Borel has not been sufficiently appreciated. We conclude with a metamathematical analysis of the resolution of the paradox made possible by recent results in reverse mathematics. (shrink)

Rawlsian justice as fairness is neither fundamentally luck egalitarian nor relational egalitarian. Rather, the most fundamental idea is that of society as a fair system of cooperation. Collective pensions provide a case study which illustrates the fruitfulness of conceiving justice in these latter terms. Those who have recently reached the age of majority do not now know how long they will live in retirement or how well any investments they try to save up for their retirement would fare. From the (...) perspective of the beginning of their working lives, it is therefore rational for each to enter into an agreement with others, who also do not yet know their fates, that, if one turns out to be among the unfortunate whose private pension pots would not have yielded enough for one’s retirement, one will receive much more in retirement, whereas those whose pension pots would have overflowed their retirements will receive somewhat less. These terms are to each person’s expected advantage, which is made possible by a fair sharing of the fruits of social cooperation which arise through the efficiencies reaped by the pooling of the risk of outliving what one could save for one’s retirement on one’s own. It is rational for each to agree to share one another’s fates by pooling risks across both space and time, on fair terms of social cooperation for mutual advantage. Even when collective pensions arise from, and are proportional to, a baseline of unequal income, they can be defended on grounds of reciprocity involving regard for one another as equals. (shrink)

Traditionally, species have been treated as classes. In fact they may be considered individuals. The logical term “individual” has been confused with a biological synonym for “organism.” If species are individuals, then: 1) their names are proper, 2) there cannot be instances of them, 3) they do not have defining properties, 4) their constituent organisms are parts, not members. “ Species " may be defined as the most extensive units in the natural economy such that reproductive competition occurs among their (...) parts. Species are to evolutionary theory as firms are to economic theory: this analogy resolves many issues, such as the problems of “reality” and the ontological status of nomenclatorial types. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Kant’s psychology of moral motivation has less in common with Hutcheson’s view than interpreters have traditionally thought. I first offer an interpretation of the role that feeling, desire, and cognition play in Kant’s account of moral action. I then outline the essential features of Hutcheson’s understanding of desire before arguing that although Kant and Hutcheson share the trivial similarity that even moral action springs from a desire, Kant conceives of the desire at the root (...) of moral action as qualitatively different from all other desires in a number of important ways. (shrink)

Opponents of medically assisted dying have long appealed to ‘slippery slope’ arguments. One such slippery slope concerns palliative care: that the introduction of medically assisted dying will lead to a diminution in the quality or availability or palliative care for patients near the end of their lives. Empirical evidence from jurisdictions where assisted dying has been practiced for decades, such as Oregon and the Netherlands, indicate that such worries are largely unfounded. The failure of the palliation slope argument is nevertheless (...) instructive with respect to how slippery slope arguments can be appraised without having to await post-facto evidence regarding the effects of a proposed change in public policy. Close attention in particular to the norms operative in a given institution and how changes to policy will interact with those norms enable slippery slopes to be credibly appraised. (shrink)

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? Employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defend a surprising answer last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. For replies to critics, see my publications of 1997 and (especially) 2004.

Many philosophers assume that, when making moral decisions under uncertainty, we should choose the option that has the greatest expected moral value, regardless of how risky it is. But their arguments for maximizing expected moral value do not support it over rival, risk-averse approaches. In this paper, I present a novel argument for maximizing expected value: when we think about larger series of decisions that each decision is a part of, all but the most risk-averse agents would prefer that we (...) consistently choose the option with the highest expected value. To the extent that what we choose on a given occasion should be guided by the entire series of choices we prefer, then on each occasion, we should choose the option with the highest expected moral value. (shrink)

Solidarity is a widespread but under-explored phenomenon. In this paper, I give a philosophical account of solidarity, answering three salient questions: What motivates acts of solidarity? What unifies different acts into tokens of a single type of act, one of solidarity? And what values do acts of solidarity exhibit? The answer to all three, I argue, involves a certain way of relating to others: identifying with them on the basis of shared features, and identifying with the larger group that one (...) and the others both belong to. (shrink)

In this chapter I offer an account of the nature, scope, and significance of Wolff’s claim that human beings have a duty to cognize moral good and evil. I illustrate that Wolff conceives of this duty as requiring that human beings both acquire distinct cognition of good and evil as well as avoid ignorance and error. Although Wolff intends for the duty to be quite demanding, he restricts its scope by, among other things, claiming it primarily concerns those who have (...) the skills, circumstances, and opportunity to acquire such cognition. Wolff calls these individuals the ‘inventors’ of the truths of morality and he considers himself to be such an inventor. I argue that part of the significance of this duty lies in the fact that Wolff conceives of himself as living up to it by writing the German Ethics, thereby sharing the knowledge he has ‘invented’ with others. (shrink)

Ethical debates about assisted dying typically assume that only medical professionals should be able to provide patients with assisted dying. This assumption partially rests on the unstated principle that assisted dying providers may not be motivated by pecuniary considerations. Here I outline and defend a mixed provider model of assisted dying provision that contests this principle. Under this model, medically competent non-physician professionals could receive fees for providing assisted dying under the same terms and conditions as physicians can in those (...) juris- dictions where medically assisted dying is lawful. The mixed provider model blunts objections to assisted dying rooted in supposed clashes with medical values. In addition to generating a market likely to expand access to assisted dying, the mixed provider model would not create markets that are unjust because they are “noxious” in Satz’ sense or because they raise “semiotic” concerns about the value of human life. (shrink)

Scholars, journalists, and activists working on climate change often distinguish between “individual” and “structural” approaches to decarbonization. The former concern choices individuals can make to reduce their “personal carbon footprint” (e.g., eating less meat). The latter concern changes to institutions, laws, and other social structures. These two approaches are often framed as oppositional, representing a mutually exclusive forced choice between alternative routes to decarbonization. After presenting representative samples of this oppositional framing of individual and structural approaches in environmental communication, we (...) identify four problems with oppositional thinking and propose five ways to conceive of individual and structural reform as symbiotic and interdependent. (shrink)

In this paper I propose three steps to overcome the force-content dichotomy and dispel the Frege point. First, we should ascribe content to force indicators. Through basic assertoric and directive force indicators such as intonation, word order and mood, a subject presents its position of theoretical or practical knowledge of a state of affairs as a fact, as something that is the case, or as a goal, as something to do. Force indicators do not operate on truth- or satisfaction evaluable (...) entities as on the traditional view, but complete and unify them. Second, higher-level acts such as interrogative, logical and fictional acts create higher-level unities that may suspend commitment to the assertions and directions they operate on. But they do not cancel their force, but transfer the meaning of force indicators into the new unities they create. For example, in the context of asking a theoretical or practical question, the assertoric or directive force indicator now presents the kind of knowledge the subject is seeking. Third, the Frege point conflates different varieties of force. We neither need Frege’s assertion sign, nor Hare’s neustic, nor Hanks’s cancellation sign, but only ordinary force indicators and interrogative, logical and fictional markers. Propositions are not forceless contents to which a subject commits by forceful acts, but forceful acts put forward by higher-level acts which may suspend commitment to them. (shrink)