A philosopher’s case for the importance of good—if ethically questionable—humor. A good sense of humor is key to the good life, but a joke taken too far can get anyone into trouble. Where to draw the line is not as simple as it may seem. After all, even the most innocent quips between friends rely on deception, sarcasm, and stereotypes and often run the risk of disrespect, meanness, and harm. How do we face this dilemma without taking ourselves too seriously? (...) In Wisecracks, philosopher David Shoemaker examines this interplay between humor and morality and ultimately argues that even morally suspect humor is an essential part of ethical life. Shoemaker shows how improvised “wisecracks” between family and friends—unlike scripted stand-up, sketches, or serials—help us develop a critical human skill: the ability to carry on and find the funny in tragedy. In developing a new ethics of humor in defense of questionable gibes, Wisecracks offers a powerful case for humor as a healing presence in human life. (shrink)

In this open access book, Timothy Aylsworth and Clinton Castro draw on the deep well of Kantian ethics to argue that we have moral duties, both to ourselves and to others, to protect our autonomy from the threat posed by the problematic use of technology. The problematic use of technologies like smartphones threatens our autonomy in a variety of ways, and critics have only begun to appreciate the vast scope of this problem. In the last decade, we have seen a (...) flurry of books making “self-help” arguments about how we could live happier, more fulfilling lives if we were less addicted to our phones. But none of these authors see this issue as one involving a moral duty to protect our autonomy. (shrink)

This publication articulated in three parts, and twelve chapters endeavours to engage with the complex negative emotions and consequent phenomenon of self-deceit, radicalisation and extremism. First part: Emotions as Lines of Demarcation or Guidelines to Our Self. The Psychodynamic Surrounding of our Intentional Self; second part: Case Studies of Some Concrete Societal Encapsulations of the Negative Passions; and third part: Resisting the Colonisation of Tyrannical Affections. Possible Paths of Mitigating Radicalisation and Extremism. What kind of educational responses can be given (...) to extremist claims of territory, identity, resources, power, and interpretations? How can a dialogue on unifying ethical principles and values aid in developing common grounds for preventing radical and extremist excesses? With authors from three continents, this publication endeavours to not only ask the uncomfortable questions with regard to the exteriorisation of human emotive predispositions and inclinations to ostracize, stigmatise and discriminate. The exit door from the extreme is also clearly presented, through four contributions, notably the interplay of Charvaka philosophy, Sikh wisdom on balanced forms of engagement with strong emotions. (shrink)

Should college teachers still teach works with immoral content? What if the works are by deeply immoral thinkers? This guide is intended to help us answer these sorts of pedagogical questions by articulating the pertinent moral issues and then suggesting strategies for navigating them.

Here is a familiar liberal argument: just as it can be beneficial to establish a marketplace, in which producers of goods freely compete for the custom of consumers, it can be beneficial to establish a “marketplace of ideas,” in which defenders of ideas freely compete for the acceptance of those ideas by others. This paper is about the preconditions for the proper functioning of liberal marketplaces, and of marketplaces of ideas in particular. I will argue that, just as the proper (...) functioning of marketplaces, in general, requires certain kinds of mutual trust among their participants, the proper functioning of marketplaces of ideas requires certain kinds of mutual trust – which I unite under the heading of “intellectual trust” – among their participants. I apply this conclusion to one problem for the familiar liberal argument, the problem of offensive speech, by arguing that intellectual trust can partially mitigate the harms of offensive speech. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debates surrounding toleration have revolved around three issues: What is toleration? Should we tolerate and, if so, why? What should be tolerated? These questions are of central importance to social and political thought.

We aim to generate a dilemma for virtual reality-based research that we motivate through an extended case study of Judith Thomson’s (1985) Bridge variant of the trolley problem. Though the problem we generate applies more broadly than the Bridge problem, we believe it makes a good exemplar of the kind of case we believe is problematic. First, we argue that simulations of these thought experiments run into a practicality horn that makes it practically impossible to produce them. These problems revolve (...) around concepts that we call “perspectival fidelity”and “context realism.” Moral dilemmas that include features present in the Bridge variant will, as a result, be practically impossible to simulate. We also argue that, should we be wrong about the practical impossibility of creating a VR simulation of Bridge, such a simulation must face an ethical horn which renders these simulations ethically impermissible to develop or use. For these reasons, we argue that it is virtually impossible to simulate the bridge problem (and other thought experiments with similar features) both practically and ethically in VR. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there is at least a pro tanto reason to favor the control account of the right to privacy over the access account of the right to privacy. This conclusion is of interest due to its relevance for contemporary discussions related to surveillance policies. We discuss several ways in which the two accounts of the right to privacy can be improved significantly by making minor adjustments to their respective definitions. We then test the improved versions (...) of the two accounts on a test case, to see which account best explains the violation that occurs in the case. The test turns out in favor of the control account. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on what liberal states should tolerate outside their borders. This requires definitions of `liberalism, ́ `toleration, ́ and `state. ́ In the first section of this paper, I briefly indicate how I use those and other terms necessary to the discussion and introduce the normative principle I take liberals to be committed to. In the second section, I continue clearing the path for the rest of my discussion. In the rest of (...) the paper, I draw conclusions about what liberals should tolerate outside their state that I believe follow from the proffered definitions and principles. I limit myself to interference aimed at providing humanitarian aid, but do so in a way that is meant to provide resources for thinking about other sorts of interventions. In the third section, I consider humanitarian interventions done with the permis- sion of the other state and will point toward a toleration-based view; here we are really talking about non-toleration of suffering. In the fourth section, I consider humanitarian interventions done without the permission of the other state; here we are talking about non-toleration of a state that harms its residents. I consider an objection in section five. (shrink)

Gamification is the use of elements and techniques from video game design in non-game contexts. Amid the rapid growth of this practice, normative questions have been under-explored. The primary goal of this article is to develop a normatively sophisticated and descriptively rich account for appropriately addressing major ethical considerations associated with gamification. The framework suggests that practitioners and designers should be precautious about, primarily, but not limited to, whether or not their use of gamification practices: takes unfair advantage of workers (...) ; infringes any involved workers’ or customers’ autonomy ; intentionally or unintentionally harms workers and other involved parties; or has a negative effect on the moral character of involved parties. (shrink)

According to the expressivist argument the choice to use biotechnologies to prevent the birth of individuals with specific disabilities is an expression of disvalue for existing people with this disability. The argument has stirred a lively debate and has recently received renewed attention. This article starts with presenting the expressivist argument and its core elements. It then goes on to present and examine the counter-arguments before it addresses some aspects that have gained surprisingly little attention. The analysis demonstrates that the (...) expressivist argument has a wide range of underpinnings and that counter-arguments tend to focus on only a few of these. It also reveals an important aspect that appears to have been ignored, i.e., that people do not select foetuses based on chromosomes or other biological traits, but based on characteristics of living persons with specific disabilities. This makes it more difficult to undermine the claim that negative selection of foetuses expresses a disvaluing of persons with such disabilities. It leaves the expressivist argument with a strong bite still. (shrink)

This paper makes two essential claims about the nature of shame and shame punishment. I argue that, if we properly understand the nature of shame, that it is sometimes justifiable to shame others in the context of a pluralistic multicultural society. I begin by assessing the accounts of shame provided by Cheshire Calhoun (2004) and Julien Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, & Fabrice Teroni (2012). I argue that both views have problems. I defend a theory of shame and embarrassment that connects both (...) emotions to “whole-self” properties. Shame and embarrassment, I claim, are products of the same underlying emotion. I distinguish between moralized and nonmoralized shame in order to show when, and how, moral and non-moral shame may be justly deployed. Shame is appropriate, I argue, if and only if it targets malleable moral or non-moral normative imperfections of a person’s ‘whole-self.’ Shame is unjustifiable when it targets durable aspects of a person’s “whole-self.” I conclude by distinguishing shame punishments from guilt punishments and show that my account can explain why it is wrong to shame individuals on account of their race, sex, gender, or body while permitting us to sometimes levy shame and shame punishment against others, even those otherwise immune to moral reasons. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

In their excellent monograph, Crimes, Harms and Wrongs, Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch argue for an account of legitimate criminalisation based on wrongfulness, the Harm Principle and the Offence Principle, while they reject an independent anti-paternalism principle. To put it at its simplest my aim in the present paper is to examine the relationship between ‘the harms’ and ‘the wrongs’ of the authors’ title. I begin by comparing the authors’ version of the Harm and Offence Principle with some other (...) influential accounts. After examining the role wrongfulness plays in their work, I ask what there is left for their Harm and Offence Principles to do. In the light of the understanding and foundations of the Harm and Offence Principles proposed by the authors, I suggest that the answer is little or nothing. The wrongfulness constraint the authors place on their Offence Principle comes close to swallowing it up entirely. Furthermore the part of their Offence Principle that is not thus swallowed by wrongfulness leaves the account with a commitment that is probably best dropped. As far as their Harm Principle is concerned I suggest that the authors’ account of ‘harm’ is so broad that it lacks the resources to distinguish harm-based reasons from wrongfulness- or immorality-based reasons in any principled way. Among other things, I ask in this context, first, whether one can be harmed as one’s character deteriorates and, secondly, whether one is harmed by virtue of the serious wrong one does to another. What really drives the authors’ account of legitimate criminalisation, I believe, is wrongfulness together with an important, amorphous set of potential defeating conditions. They themselves accept such a picture so far as paternalism is concerned. I conclude that their account, which I think has considerable force, would lose little of any significance were their Harm and Offence Principles simply excised. More generally I suspect that a strong role for wrongfulness in an account of legitimate criminalisation is likely to put into serious question the plausibility of an independent principled role for harm and offence. (shrink)

This paper takes a bottom-up approach to empirically investigate how people construct the meaning of obscenity, and offers an experientialist, cognitive linguistic account to explain why the term appears to defy definition and makes a problematic legal concept. To study the contextual dependence of the term, we examined the extent to which various item characteristics (such as genre, context, and the race or celebrity status of the people portrayed) and individual variables (such as gender, religion, sexual orientation and previous personal (...) and cultural experiences) influence our perception of seemingly obscene materials. We report correlations that have not been previously shown. The data support the thesis that the meaning of obscenity emerges in a cognitive-affective response that arises during a dynamic process of interpretation, and thus allows for extralegal factors to influence judgment. The results challenge the assumption that obscenity is a symbolic representation of objectively existing reality and argue that community standard of obscenity is a legal fiction. (shrink)

After distinguishing different species of Legal Moralism I outline and defend a modest, positive Legal Moralism, according to which we have good reason to criminalize some type of conduct if it constitutes a public wrong. Some of the central elements of the argument will be: the need to remember that the criminal law is a political, not a moral practice, and therefore that in asking what kinds of conduct we have good reason to criminalize, we must begin not with the (...) entire realm of wrongdoing, but with conduct falling within the public realm of our civic life; the need to look at the different processes of criminalization, and to ask what kinds of consideration can properly figure in those processes; the need to attend to the relationship, and the essential differences, between criminal law and other modes of legal regulation. (shrink)

In almost all opt-in systems of postmortal organ procurement, if the deceased has not made a decision about donation, his relatives will be asked to make it. Can this decision power be justified? I consider three possible justifications. (1) We could presume the deceased to have delegated this power to his relatives. (2) It could be argued that, if the deceased has not made a decision, a proxy decision has to be made in his best interests. (3) The relatives could (...) have a standing of their own because they are singled out from the parties whose interests are being affected by the decision by the special relation they had to the deceased. None of these arguments turns out to be convincing. (shrink)

Do privacy rights restrict what is permissible to infer about others based on statistical evidence? This paper replies affirmatively by defending the following symmetry: there is not necessarily a morally relevant difference between directly appropriating people’s private information—say, by using an X-ray device on their private safes—and using predictive technologies to infer the same content, at least in cases where the evidence has a roughly similar probative value. This conclusion is of theoretical interest because a comprehensive justification of the thought (...) that statistical inferences can violate privacy rights is lacking in the current literature. Secondly, the conclusion is of practical interest due to the need for moral assessment of emerging predictive algorithms. (shrink)

Prof. Miščević has long been an ardent defender of the use of thought experiments in philosophy, foremost metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Recently he has, in his typically sophisticated manner, extended his general account of philosophical thought-experimenting to the domain of normative politics. Not only can the history of political philosophy be better understood and appreciated, according to Miščević, when seen as a more or less continuous, yet covert, practice of thought-experimenting, the very progress of the discipline may crucially (...) depend on finding the right balance between the constraints of (biological, psychological, economic, political, and so on) reality and political-moral ideals when we set to design our basic political notions and institutions. I have much less confidence in this project than prof. Miščević does. As a subspecies of moral TE, political TE share all their problems plus exhibit some of their own. In the paper, I present and discuss two types of evidence that threaten to undermine political philosophers’ trust in thought-experiments and the ethical/political intuitions elicited by them: (i) the dismal past record of thought-experimentation in moral and political philosophy; and (ii) the variety, prevalence, and stubbornness, of bias in ordinary social/political judgment. (shrink)

This paper considers the justifiability of criminalising anti-social behaviour through two-step prohibitions such as the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). The UK government has recently proposed to abolish and replace the ASBO; however, the proposed new orders would retain many of its most controversial features. The paper begins by criticising the definition of anti-social behaviour employed in both the current legislation and the new proposals. This definition is objectionable because it makes criminalisation contingent upon the irrational judgements of (putative) victims, and (...) its often modest preventive benefits come at a high cost to citizens’ liberty and autonomy. The paper then goes on to propose a new definition of anti-social behaviour that would meet these objections: that is, as a course of conduct that causes others to experience serious and justifiable anxiety about the safety of their local community. Whilst this definition identifies a serious form of wrongdoing, its precise scope is inevitably uncertain. The paper thus concludes that we have good reason to use two-step prohibitions such as the ASBO to regulate such conduct, so as to enable the use of the criminal law against it whilst minimising possible concerns of legality arising from the proposed definition’s uncertain scope. (shrink)

Joel Feinberg’s Offense to Others is the most comprehensive contemporary work on the significance of offense in a liberal legal system. Feinberg argues that being offended can impair a person’s liberty, much like a nuisance, and that it is therefore legitimate in principle to regulate conduct because of its offensiveness. In this article, I discuss some overlooked considerations that give us reason to resist Feinberg’s conclusion, even while granting this premise. My key claim is that the regulation of offense can (...) inadvertently increase the incidence of offense, by nurturing offense-taking sensibilities. In the course of defending this claim and spelling out its implications, I explain why concerns about the inadvertent nurturing of offense are now more pressing, given the identity–political character of contemporary offense-based social conflicts, and I discuss why a reluctance to legally regulate offensive conduct need not be insensitive to the identity–political issues that animate those conflicts. (shrink)

This paper discusses Rawls’s thesis that the social basis of self-respect is one of the primarysocial goods. While the central element of the social basis consists in the attitudes of others(e.g. respect or esteem) the social basis may include also possession of various goods. Further,one may distinguish, following Honneth, universalistic basic respect from differential esteem andfrom loving care. This paper focuses on esteem, and further distinguishes three importantvarieties thereof (anti-stigmatization; contributions to societal goods, projects of self-realization),which all differ from recognition (...) of cultural identity. The normative implications will differ in these different contexts. (shrink)

Both philosophers and literary critics have championed artworks as necessary to moral education. As a result many of these critics believe that art that is bad or immoral can causally affect our character, resulting in moral harm. Moral harm is the idea that artworks possess a strong disposition to affect our moral beliefs such that we are less able to distinguish between what is good and what is bad. I examine this concept of moral harm and argue that immoral artworks (...) do not have this kind of causal power over our moral beliefs. Proponents of the moral harm thesis are in error to attribute such a power to artworks. Additionally, I propose a definition of immoral artworks consistent with moral harm, as well as discuss the distinction between immoral artworks and artworks that are merely elicit disgust or offense. (shrink)

Current International Criminal Law suffers from at least four theoretical shortcomings regarding its ‘concept and meaning’, ‘ius puniendi’, ‘overall function’ and ‘purposes of punishment’. These issues are intimately interrelated; in particular, any reflection upon the last two issues without having first clarified the ius puniendi would not make sense. As argued elsewhere, in an initial contribution towards a consistent theory of ICL, the ius puniendi can be inferred from a combination of the incipient supranationality of the value-based world order and (...) the world citizens’ fundamental human rights predicated upon a Kantian concept of human dignity. On this basis, it is now possible to examine the overall function of ICL. Given the fact that ICL has not yet achieved the status of an autonomous discipline, the inquiry must start with a discussion of national theories of criminalisation. The article focuses on the two most important theories of criminalisation, namely the theories of protection of Rechtsgüter and the prevention of harm. Next, it examines whether and how these national theories can be transferred to ICL. (shrink)

An objection frequently brought against critical or satirical expressions, especially when these target religions, is that they are ‘offensive’. In this article, I indicate why the existence of diverse and conflicting beliefs gives people an incentive to formulate their complaints in the language of offence. But I also cast doubt on whether people, in saying they are offended really mean to present that as the foundation of their complaint and, if they do, whether their complaint should weigh with us. These (...) doubts do not apply to everything we might find offensive; in particular, they do not apply to simple cases of ‘sensory offence’; but they do apply to ‘belief-based offence’. Relying on offence also implies, inequitably, that different faiths should be differently protected depending on their susceptibility to offence; and the faithful themselves should worry about the flimsiness of claims based on ‘bare knowledge’ offence. I propose a principle of respect for beliefs as a differently grounded and more plausible reason for curbing our treatment of others’ beliefs. However, that principle has a limited compass and is hemmed in by the claims of free expression. It is also less suited to dictating the content of law than to influencing our conduct within the law. (shrink)

The analysis of the derogatory aspect of slurs has recently aroused interest among philosophers of language. A puzzling element of it is its erratic behaviour in embeddings, for instance negation or belief reports. The derogatory aspect seems sometimes to “scope out” from the embedding to the context of utterance, while at other times it seems to interact with the linguistic constructions in which the slur is implanted. I argue that slurs force us to maintain a kind of semantic indeterminacy which, (...) to my knowledge, has passed largely unnoticed in philosophy of language. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists have long argued that the capacity to distinguish moral and conventional transgressions develops across cultures and emerges early in life. Children reliably treat moral transgressions as more wrong, more punishable, independent of structures of authority, and universally applicable. However, previous studies have not yet examined the role of these features in mature moral cognition. Using a battery of adult-appropriate cases (including vehicular and sexual assault, reckless behavior, and violations of etiquette and social contracts) we demonstrate that these features (...) also distinguish moral from conventional transgressions in mature moral cognition. Each hypothesized moral transgressions was treated as strongly and clearly immoral. However, our data suggest that although the majority of hypothesized conventional transgressions also form an obvious cluster, social conventions seem to lie along a continuum that stretches from mere matters of personal preference (e.g., getting tattoos or wearing black shoes with a brown belt) to transgressions that are treated as matters for legitimate social sanction (e.g., violating traffic laws or not paying your taxes). We use these findings to discuss issues of universality, domain-specificity, and the importance of using a well-studied set of moral scenarios to examine clinical populations and the underlying neural architecture of moral cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, under a specific set of circumstances, designing and employing certain kinds of virtual reality (VR) experiences can be unethical. After a general discussion of simulations and their ethical context, we begin our argu-ment by distinguishing between the experiences generated by different media (text, film, computer game simulation, and VR simulation), and argue that VR experiences offer an unprecedented degree of what we call “perspectival fidelity” that prior modes of simulation lack. Additionally, we argue that (...) when VR experiences couple this perspectival fidelity with what we call “context realism,” VR experiences have the ability to produce “virtually real experiences.” We claim that virtually real experiences generate ethical issues for VR technologies that are unique to the medium. Because subjects of these experiences treat them as if they were real, a higher degree of ethical scrutiny should be applied to any VR scenario with the potential to generate virtually real experiences. To mitigate this unique moral hazard, we propose and defend what we call “The Equivalence Principle.” This principle states that “if it would be wrong to allow subjects to have a certain experience in reality, then it would be wrong to allow subjects to have that experience in a virtually real setting.” We argue that such a principle, although limited in scope, should be part of the risk analysis conducted by any Institutional Review Boards, psychologists, empirically oriented philosophers, or game designers who are using VR technology in their work. (shrink)

1. This paper investigates the viability of the harm principle (HP) to justify restricting consumer freedom regarding the purchase of products, such as meat, that require intense use of antibiotics...

Every year, 1.35 million people are killed on roads worldwide and even more people are injured. Emerging self-driving car technology promises to cut this statistic down to a fraction of the current rate. On the face of it, this consideration alone constitutes a strong reason to legally require — once self-driving car technology is widely available and affordable — that all vehicles on public roads be self-driving. Here I critically investigate the question of whether self-driving, or autonomous, vehicles should be (...) legally mandated. I develop an argument — premised upon Mill’s Harm Principle — that any legislation mandating the use of self-driving vehicles on public roads is morally impermissible. The Harm Principle, under its most plausible interpretation, has it that the state is warranted in legislating against some activity only if that activity violates the rights of others. In brief, I argue that a human driver, who opts to drive herself on public roads rather than rely on self-driving technology, does not violate anyone’s rights when she so acts. Consequently, when granting the Harm Principle, it follows that the state is not warranted in mandating the use of self-driving vehicles on public roads. If I am correct, the proponent of a self-driving vehicle mandate must reject the Harm Principle. Given its intuitive plausibility and central place in liberal philosophical thought, this is a weighty cost. (shrink)

Imagine a citizen (call her Ellen) engages in conduct the state says is a crime, for example, money laundering. Imagine too that the state of which Ellen is a citizen has decided to make money laundering a crime. Does the state wrong Ellen when it punishes her for money laundering? It depends on what you think about the authority of the criminal law. Most criminal law scholars would probably say that the criminal law as such has no authority. Whatever authority (...) is has depends on how well it adheres to the demands of morality inasmuch as morality is the only authority we have. Thus if morality says that money laundering should not be a crime then the state wrongs Ellen when it punishes her. But if the criminal law as such does have authority, and if in the exercise of its authority the state has decided to make money laundering a crime, then the state does Ellen no wrong when it punishes her. (shrink)