In their Target Article, Rahimzadeh et al. (2023) discuss the virtues and vices of employing ChatGPT in ethics education for healthcare professionals. To this end, they confront the chatbot with a moral dilemma and analyse its response. In interpreting the case, ChatGPT relies on Beauchamp and Childress’ four prima-facie principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for patient autonomy, and justice. While the chatbot’s output appears admirable at first sight, it is worth taking a closer look: ChatGPT not only misses the point when (...) applying the principle of non-maleficence; its response also fails, in several places, to honour patient autonomy – a flaw that should be taken seriously if large language models are to be employed in ethics education. I therefore subject ChatGPT’s reply to detailed scrutiny and point out where it went astray. (shrink)

Existing analyses of disinformation tend to embrace the view that disinformation is intended or otherwise functions to mislead its audience, that is, to produce false beliefs. I argue that this view is doubly mistaken. First, while paradigmatic disinformation campaigns aim to produce false beliefs in an audience, disinformation may in some cases be intended only to prevent its audience from forming true beliefs. Second, purveyors of disinformation need not intend to have any effect at all on their audience’s beliefs, aiming (...) instead to manipulate an audience’s behavior through alteration of sub-doxastic states. Ultimately, I argue that attention to such non-paradigmatic forms of disinformation is essential to understanding the threat disinformation poses and why this threat is so difficult to counter. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, the parties to moral or legal disputes genuinely disagree only if their uses of key normative terms in the dispute express the same meaning. Recently, however, this orthodoxy has been challenged. According to an influential alternative view, genuine moral and legal disagreements should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations over which meaning a given term should have. In this paper, we argue that the shared meaning view is motivated by much deeper considerations than its recent critics recognize, (...) and that much would be lost in opting for the explanation of normative disputes as metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

This article presents a theory of intuitive skill in terms of three constitutive elements: getting things right intuitively, not getting things wrong intuitively, and sceptical ability. The theory draws on work from a range of psychological approaches to intuition and expertise in various domains, including arts, business, science, and sport. It provides a general framework that will help to further integrate research on these topics, for example building bridges between practical and theoretical domains or between such apparently conflicting methodologies as (...) a heuristics and biases approach on the one hand and one based on naturalistic decision-making on the other. In addition, the theory provides a clearer and more precise account of relevant concepts, which will help to inspire new directions for future research. Intuitive skill is defined as a high level of intuitive ability, that is, the ability to make good use of intuition; specifically, a high level of ability at either getting things right intuitively, not getting things wrong intuitively, or sceptical ability, where the latter is the ability to detect instances of getting things wrong intuitively so as to avoid forming incorrect intuitive judgements, which may itself be partly intuitive. (shrink)

According to some philosophers and social scientists, mainstream economic theories currently play an unprecedented role in shaping human societies. This phenomenon can be linked to the dissemination of methodological individualism, where common goods are interpreted as reducible to aggregates of individuals' well-being. Nonetheless, some emergent difficulties of economics in coping with global institutional issues have encouraged some authors to revise that paradigm. In the last three decades, there has been a parallel growing philosophical interest in investigating social sciences' epistemological and (...) ontological foundations. Unfortunately, these two research trends have often not communicated systematically enough to understand the specific ontology of collective aims. It is still unclear whether some irreducible social goods exist and how the answer to this question can set up a consistent understanding of cooperative actions. This dissertation addresses this issue, drawing on philosophical investigations about collective intentionality. It claims that a coherent ontological taxonomy of irreducible and reducible social goods is theoretically viable and can reframe prevailing approaches to collective action dilemmas influenced by the traditional economic categorisation of goods. The research begins by analysing how the influential theory of public goods has paved the way for some social and moral impasses. Furthermore, some theoretical proposals suggesting the existence of relational goods and common-pool resources are scrutinised. Hence, a refutation of the ontological reduction of all social goods to individual ones is developed, arguing that a specific form of cooperation, grounded in we-intentions and we-reasoning, shows the plausibility of the existence of some kinds of irreducible collective goods. Expanding on that view, a refinement of this categorisation of social goods is put forward by underlying the function of some relational entities, such as trust and shared sensemaking processes, in making cooperation robust in uncertain environments. Finally, by applying the taxonomy to collective action gridlocks regarding climate change, digital information, and public education, the consistency of this hypothesis is tested, showing that a pluralistic ontological account of social goods might improve the moral understanding of current social dilemmas. (shrink)

El presente artículo se basa en la teoría de la creatividad artística de Jon Elster para tratar de ofrecer un esbozo de definición del concepto de arte, así como las bases para una teoría del valor artístico. Se sostiene que una obra de arte es una creación humana realizada con la intención de provocar una experiencia estética, así como que el principal valor de una obra de arte radica en su capacidad para producir emociones estéticas y no estéticas. Dicha concepción (...) pone en dificultades a algunas importantes formas de arte contemporáneo, como el arte conceptual. (shrink)

Özet: Bilgi kirliliği eski bir sorun olsa da sosyal medya ve Internet tabanlı mesajlaşma uygulamalarının yaygınlaşmasıyla daha sık gündeme gelmeye başladı. Salgın hastalık gibi kriz dönemlerinde kirli bilginin etkinliğinin tehlikeli olabilecek boyutta arttığı görüldü. Bu yazıda bilgi kirliliği sorununu felsefi açıdan inceleyeceğim. Bilgi kirliliğinin ne olduğu sorusunu tartıştıktan sonra bilgi kirliliğinin üç türü arasındaki ayrımları ele alacağım. Son olarak bilgi kaynağı ve bilgi aktarıcısı olarak bir öznenin sorumluluklarının neler olduğu konusunu inceleyeceğim. Tartışmanın pratik sonuçlarını salgın hastalık konusuyla bağlantılı örnekler seçerek (...) canlandırmaya çalışacağım. -/- Abstract: Although disinformation is an old problem, it has become more common with the rise of social media and Internet-based messaging applications. In times of crisis such as pandemics, it has been observed that the effectiveness of disinformation has increased to a dangerous extent. In this work, I will examine the problem of disinformation from a philosophical point of view. After discussing the question of what disinformation is, I will distinguish between the three types of disinformation. Finally, I will explore an agent's responsibilities as an information source and sharer. I will try to illustrate the practical implications of the discussion by giving examples related to the pandemic. (shrink)

When thinking about collective responsibility, we face a dilemma: on the one hand, we want to hold individuals, such as the responsible—or representative members accountable; on the other hand, we want to blame the entire corporation, as an independent entity over and above its composite parts. Such questions are taken up by Jennifer Lackey in her short but rich monograph. She points out that the two described ways of approaching collective responsibility are linked to the central divide between deflationist and (...) inflationist approaches to social philosophy. While deflationists understand collective attitudes as being entirely grasped by analysing “individual members and their states”, inflationists hold that “group phenomena are importantly over and above, or otherwise distinct from, individual members and their states” (p. 3). Amidst several thought-provoking and insightful philosophical ideas introduced and discussed by Lackey, there is one that stretches throughout the entire book: the will to overcome this traditional division between inflationism and deflationism. As such, the book can be understood as having two interrelated projects, one being negative and the second being positive. The critical project is an extensive critical analysis of both inflationary/non-summativist, as well as deflationary/summativist approaches to socio-epistemological phenomena. In five chapters, each devoted to one phenomenon, Lackey discusses group belief (chapter 1), group justified belief (chapter 2), group knowledge (chapter 3), group assertions (chapter 4), and group lies (chapter 5). (shrink)

Recent AI ethics has focused on applying abstract principles downward to practice. This paper moves in the other direction. Ethical insights are generated from the lived experiences of AI-designers working on tangible human problems, and then cycled upward to influence theoretical debates surrounding these questions: 1) Should AI as trustworthy be sought through explainability, or accurate performance? 2) Should AI be considered trustworthy at all, or is reliability a preferable aim? 3) Should AI ethics be oriented toward establishing protections for (...) users, or toward catalyzing innovation? Specific answers are less significant than the larger demonstration that AI ethics is currently unbalanced toward theoretical principles, and will benefit from increased exposure to grounded practices and dilemmas. (shrink)

This book addresses how our revisionary practices account for relations between texts and how they are read. It offers an overarching philosophy of revision concerning works of fiction, fact, and faith, revealing unexpected insights about the philosophy of language, the metaphysics of fact and fiction, and the history and philosophy of science and religion. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of literature, literary theory and criticism, (...) and history and philosophy of science and religion. (shrink)

This thesis concerns our moral and epistemic responsibilities regarding our concepts. I argue that certain concepts can be morally, epistemically, or socially problematic. This is particularly concerning with regard to our concepts of social kinds, which may have both descriptive and evaluative aspects. Being ignorant of certain concepts, or possessing mistaken conceptions, can be problematic for similar reasons, and contributes to various forms of epistemic injustice. I defend an expanded view of a type of epistemic injustice known as ‘hermeneutical injustice’, (...) where widespread conceptual ignorance puts members of marginalized groups at risk of their distinctive and important experiences lacking intelligible interpretations. Together, I call the use of problematic concepts or the ignorance of appropriate concepts ‘conceptual incapacities’. I discuss the conditions under which we may be responsible for our conceptual incapacities on several major theories of responsibility, developing my own account of responsibility in the process, according to which we are responsible for something just in case it was caused by one of our reasons-responsive constitutive psychological traits. However, I argue that regardless of whether we are responsible for something, we may still be required to take responsibility for it. Whether or not we are responsible for our conceptual incapacities, we are required to reflect critically upon them in a variety of scenarios that throw our use of those concepts into question. I consider the method of conceptual engineering — the philosophical critique and revision of concepts — as one way we might take responsibility for our concepts, or at least, defer that duty to experts. But, this top-down model of conceptual revision is insufficient. Using a pragmatist model of the social epistemology of morality, I argue that conceptual inquiry is a social endeavour in which we are all required to participate, to some degree. (shrink)

This paper is about the alethic aspect of epistemic rationality. The most common approaches to this aspect are either normative (what a reasoner ought to/may believe?) or evaluative (how rational is a reasoner?), where the evaluative approaches are usually comparative (one reasoner is assessed compared to another). These approaches often present problems with blindspots. For example, ought a reasoner to believe a currently true blindspot? Is she permitted to? Consequently, these approaches often fail in describing a situation of alethic maximality, (...) where a reasoner fulfills all the alethic norms and could be used as a standard of rationality (as they are, in fact, used in some of these approaches). I propose a function α, which accepts a set of beliefs as inputand returns a numeric alethic value. Then I use this function to define a notion of alethic maximality that is satisfiable by finite reasoners (reasoners with cognitive limitations) and does not present problems with blindspots. Function α may also be used in alethic norms and evaluation methods (comparative and non-comparative) that may be applied to finite reasoners and do not present problems with blindspots. A result of this investigation isthat the project of providing purely alethic norms is defective. The use of function α also sheds light on important epistemological issues, such as the lottery and the preface paradoxes, and the principles of clutter avoidance and reflection. (shrink)

This chapter develops an account of epistemic nihilism—roughly, the rejection of truth’s intrinsic or instrumental value in favor of statements that reject or obscure truth to secure an advantage for the speaker—by examining three instances of such nihilism: lying, bullshit, and trolling. It further argues that epistemic nihilism, exacerbated by changes in the media landscape, can pose a significant threat to liberal democratic institutions and ideals by undermining the democratic ideal of good faith engagement on a level playing field, while (...) also encouraging undemocratic actions (e.g., terrorism) among interlocutors who take the nihilist’s claims seriously. Finally, this chapter argues that in extreme cases, we are justified in denying epistemic nihilists a platform from which to speak by drawing a parallel with vexatious litigant laws that deny individuals the right to petition courts for redress on the grounds that abuse of that right results in significant harm to both individuals and the legal system itself. (shrink)

The claim that we live in a post-truth era has led to a significant body of work across different disciplines exploring the phenomenon. Many have sought to investigate the role of fake news in bringing about the post-truth era. While this work is important, the narrow focus on this issue runs the risk of giving the impression that it is mainly new forms of media that are to blame for the post-truth phenomenon. In this paper, we call attention to the (...) ways in which journalistic practices in traditional forms of media also play an important role in contributing to a post-truth environment. We will do so by focusing on one particular practice common in news journalism. False balance involves presenting two sides of a debate as more equal than is justified by the evidence. We will argue that although false balance does not constitute fake news, it does contribute to an environment in which truth is devalued. By obscuring what counts as evidence and who qualifies as an authority, false balance legitimizes post-truth attitudes. We finish by outlining the virtues that journalists should develop in order to guard against false balance. While fake news is made more likely when journalists possess the vices of dishonesty, prejudice or corruption, we argue that focusing too much on guarding against these vices may actually make false balance more likely. In order to be responsible gatekeepers and to avoid false balance, journalists must also develop the virtues of wisdom, vigilance, courage, care and justice. (shrink)

In this dissertation I set out to address the “scope problem” in Nietzsche scholarship. In the secondary literature, the scope problem is characterized as a problem for Nietzsche, who seems deeply skeptical about nearly every item of his inherited western metaphysical toolkit. If his skepticism about western metaphysics penetrates all dimensions of his thought, how can he motivate a reader to also reject western metaphysics without himself committing to some of it? I stipulate that answering the scope problem means explicating (...) what Nietzsche views as the general source of normativity—it is there that we can understand the resources Nietzsche is committing himself to, and the ones he rejects. I examine Leiter’s solution to this problem, which assigns science as the general source of normativity. However, Leiter’s solution depends on textual pedigree that I argue is inconsistent with the texts themselves. I argue that the normativity of science, instead of being the source of general normativity, represents an order of normativity for Nietzsche—but it is not ordered generally. I look to GS 341 to analyze “eternal recurrence,” and argue that an expression of Nietzsche’s “higher morality” can be located in the passage. Higher morality, I argue, places the general source of normativity in the value the reader places on her life. This account of higher morality solves the scope problem by narrowing it to readers who already accept or embrace the challenge of placing a level of value on their life commensurate with eternal recurrence. (shrink)

Partial lying denotes the cases where we partially believe something to be false but nevertheless assert it with the intent to deceive the addressee. We investigate how the severity of partial lying may be determined and how partial lies can be classified. We also study how much epistemic damage an agent suffers depending on the level of trust that she invests in the liar and the severity of the lies she is told. Our analysis is based on the results from (...) exploratory computer simulations of an arguably rational Bayesian agent who is trying to determine how biased a coin is while observing the coin tosses and listening to a liar’s misleading predictions about the outcomes. Our results provide an interesting testable hypothesis at the intersection of epistemology and ethics, namely that in the longer term partial lies lead to more epistemic damage than outright lies. (shrink)

In its ideal conception, the post-apartheid education landscape is regarded as a site of transformation that promotes democratic ideals such as citizenship, freedom, and critical thought. The role of the educator is pivotal in realising this transformation in the learners she teaches, but this realisation extends beyond merely teaching the curriculum to the educator herself, as the site where these democratic ideals are embodied and enacted. The teacher is thus centrally placed as a moral agent whose behaviour, in the classroom (...) space particularly, should, ideally, represent and communicate the values we aspire to cultivate in post-apartheid South African society generally. Thus, this notion of what teaching encompasses fits broadly into the conception of a “practice” in the sense developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, in that it is a transformative activity the enactment of which not only benefits the practitioner, but also extends to and benefits the broader community as well. Furthermore, practices are grounded in features of social or moral life we hold to be significant and, importantly, it is only through their active cultivation that they can be made tangible and further developed. MacIntyre’s theory of virtue is based on a three-fold interrelationship between practices, how they meaningfully narrate and shape an individual life, and how, in turn, this builds and sustains our moral and social traditions. Using these ideas to analyse post-apartheid South Africa, and the structural transformation paradox it is in, reveals the difficult and complex nature of a society that is in this transitional space. The claim is that attentiveness to practices in the educational space, and to the way they shape and inform moral and social traditions, is necessary to more fully understand and guide this societal transformation. (shrink)

In this paper, a particular case of deceptive use of images – namely, misattributions – will be taken in consideration. An explicitly wrong attribution (“This is a picture of the event X”, this not being the case) is obviously a lie or a mistaken description. But there are less straightforward and more insidious cases in which a false attribution is held to be acceptable, in particular when pictures are also used in their exemplary, general meaning, opposed to their indexical function (...) in referring to a specific event. In fact, the boundary between referential use and symbolic-exemplificative use is not always clear-cut, and it often becomes the subject of ideological dispute. The main point that this paper would like to do is that in some circumstances there is a deep-seated belief that images that are clearly misattributed could still be legitimately used to refer to the fact, even if this is not the case. This twisted epistemological stance, that I will summarize under the oxymoronic concept of “emblematic evidence”, is both the product of political and tribal polarization in the ideological debate, and the result of a shift in our understanding of what photographic images should do. (shrink)

This chapter introduces a novel account of fake news and explains how it differs from other definitions on the market. The account locates the fakeness of an alleged news report in two main aspects related to its production, namely that its creators do not think to have sufficient evidence in favor of what they divulge and they fail to display the appropriate attitude towards the truth of the information they share. A key feature of our analysis is that it does (...) not require that fake news must be circulated with the intention to deceive one’s audience. In this way, our account overcomes a potential limitation of the current philosophical discussion about fake news, which appears to individuate the main problem with this phenomenon in the fact that fake news consumers are misled and misinformed. In contrast, the proposed analysis shows that an additional (and perhaps equally fundamental) problem uncovered by the spread of fake news is a widespread pathological relationship with information, one on which we consume information not to satisfy our interest in the truth but to strengthen our social identities and quench our hunger for social recognition. (shrink)

The central claim of this article is that post-truth requires a political and socio-economical perspective, rather than a moral or epistemological one. The article consists of two parts. The first part offers a critical examination of the dominant analyses of post-truth in terms of shifting standards of the origin and the evaluation of facts. Moreover, the claim that postmodernism is the cause of post-truth is examined and refuted. In the second part an alternative perspective is developed, centring around the notion (...) of gatekeepers. Rather than linking post-truth to bullshit and postmodernism, it should be understood as a symptom of a contemporary shift in the gatekeepers of truth and knowledge. Knowledge and truth are always mediated in society through the hands of gatekeeping institutions such as journalism or science. Post-truth is a symptom of a broader transformation of the gatekeeping institutions of our current society. It therefore requires a political philosophy of these institutional shifts and the new risks they involve. (shrink)

Editors van Ditmarsch, Hendriks and Verbrugge of this special issue of topiCS on lying describe some recent trends in research on lying from a multidisciplinary perspective, including logic, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, behavioral economics, and artificial intelligence. Furthermore, they outline the seven contributions to this special issue.

Shills are people who endorse products and companies for pay, while pretending that their endorsements are ingenuous. Here we argue that there is something objectionable about shilling that is not reducible to its bad consequences, the lack of epistemic conscientiousness it often relies upon, or to the shill’s insincerity. Indeed, we take it as a premise of our inquiry that shilling can sometimes be sincere, and that its wrongfulness is not mitigated by the shill’s sincerity, in cases where the shill (...) is sincere. Our proposal is that the shill’s defining characteristic is their knowingly engaging in a kind of speech that obscures a certain aspect of its social status – most commonly, by pretending to speak on their own personal behalf, while in fact speaking as an employee – and that this sort of behaviour is objectionable irrespective of any other features of the shill’s conduct. This sort of obfuscation undermines a socially beneficial communicative custom, in which we conscientiously mark the distinction between personal speech and speech-for-hire. (shrink)

Questo articolo prende in esame il fenomeno della proliferazione di fake news da un punto di vista filosofico—anzi, per meglio dire, prettamente epistemologico—con particolare attenzione a tre questioni fondamentali: cosa sono le fake news e come debbano essere definite; quali meccanismi ne favoriscono la proliferazione sui social media; chi debba essere ritenuto responsabile e degno di biasimo nel processo sotteso alla generazione, pubblicazione e diffusione di fake news. A partire dall'analisi dei principali lavori nella letteratura filosofica sul tema, ci proponiamo (...) di: offrire una definizione di fake news che eviti le obiezioni sollevate contro altre definizioni discusse dalla letteratura (§1); mettere in luce le principali cause della propagazione di fake news, con particolare riferimento ai bias cognitivi e alle strutture comunitarie in cui si organizzano gli utenti dei social media (§2); infine, presentare una analisi originale della responsabilità epistemica dei consumatori di fake news (§3). (shrink)

A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic had been responsible for introducing the Vienna Circle’s ideas, developed within a Germanophone framework, to an Anglophone readership. Inevitably, this migration from one context to another resulted in the alteration of some of the concepts being transmitted. Such alterations have served to facilitate a number of false impressions of Logical Empiricism from which recent scholarship still tries to recover. In this paper, I will attempt to point to the ways in which LTL has (...) helped to foster the various mistaken stereotypes about Logical Empiricism which were combined into the received view. I will begin by examining Ayer’s all too brief presentation of an Anglocentric lineage for his ideas. This lineage, as we shall see, simply omits the major 19th century Germanophone influences on the rise of analytic philosophy. The Germanophone ideas he presents are selectively introduced into an Anglophone context, and directed towards various concerns that arose within that context. I will focus on the differences between Carnap’s version of the overcoming of metaphysics, and Ayer’s reconfiguration into what he calls the elimination of metaphysics. Having discussed the above, I will very briefly outline the consequences that Ayer’s radicalisation of the Vienna Circle’s doctrines had on the subsequent Anglophone reception of Logical Empiricism. (shrink)

Recent political developments have made the notion of 'post-truth' ubiquitous. Along with associated terms such as 'fake news' and 'alternative facts', it appears with regularity in coverage of and commentary on Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and the role – relative to these phenomena – of a half-despised, half-feared creature known as 'the public'. It has become commonplace to assert that we now inhabit, or are entering, a post-truth world. In this paper, I issue a sceptical challenge against the distinctiveness (...) and utility of the notion of post-truth. I argue, first, that the term fails to capture anything that is both real and novel. Moreover, post-truth discourse often has a not-fully-explicit political force and function: to ‘irrationalise’ political disaffection and to signal loyalty to a ‘pre-post-truth’ political status quo. The central insight of the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others – that saying is always also doing – is as indispensable for understanding the significance of much of what is labelled ‘post-truth’, I’ll argue, as it is for understanding the significance of that very act of labelling. Keywords: post-truth, speech acts, Trump, brexit, Austin. (shrink)

‘Fake news’ has become an increasingly common refrain in public discourse, though the term itself has several uses, at least one of which constitutes Frankfurtian bullshit. After examining what sorts of fake news appeals do and do not count as bullshit, I discuss strategies for overcoming our openness to such bullshit. I do so by drawing a parallel between openness to bullshit and naïve skepticism—one’s willingness to reject the concept of truth on unsupported or ill-considered grounds—and suggest that this parallel (...) indicates three principles for how we ought to combat our openness to fake news and other bullshit. First, the root causes of bullshit openness are not monolithic; we should adopt anti-bullshit strategies in recognition of this fact. Second, our efforts to overcome bullshit openness should be collaborative efforts to create an environment that allows for sustained interrogation of our bullshit openness, rather than a confrontational provision of contrary evidence, despite the fact that such strategies are more time-intensive. Third, social media is unlikely to be a fertile ground on which we will make meaningful progress in the fight against bullshit because of the inherent nature of social media platforms as spaces for short, declarative, confrontational claims. (shrink)

English summary: Provocative Public Philosophy In 2017, I argued that people with Down syndrome cannot live full lives. This sparked a heated debated in the Norwegian public sphere. This gave rise to a debate over what academics should and should not say in public. A certain form of public philosophy, what I will call provocative public philosophy, was criticized for being harmful, imperialistic, for eroding trust in philosophers, and for creating too much noise. In this article I will, in light (...) of the Down syndrome debate, defend provocative public philosophy against these allegations. -/- Norsk sammendrag: En uttalelse om at personer med Downs syndrom ikke kan leve fullverdige liv, satte i gang en stor og opphetet debatt i den norske offentligheten i 2017. Denne ga opphav til en mer overordnet debatt om hva akademikere bør og ikke bør si i offentligheten. En viss form for offentlig filosofi, det jeg vil kalle provokativ offentlig filosofi, er blitt utpekt som synder. I denne artikkelen vil jeg, med utgangspunkt i debatten om fullverdige liv, forsvare provokativ offentlig filosofi mot både epistemiske og etiske innvendinger. (shrink)

Gegenstand dieses Beitrags ist eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Medizin. Den Leitfaden der Analyse bildet dabei ein jüngerer Ansatz in der analytischen Wissenschaftstheorie, wonach Systematizität als zentrales Kriterium von Wissenschaft anzusehen ist (Hoyningen-Huene 2013). Ich werde im Detail zeigen, dass die Medizin dieses mehrdimensionale Kriterium insgesamt erfüllt, dass aus der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Medizin aber gleichwohl normative Konsequenzen folgen, die beispielsweise zur Abgrenzung von der Homöopathie und einer kritischen Bewertung des biopsychosozialen Modells führen. Zudem resultieren der Anwendungscharakter der Medizin und (...) die zentrale Bedeutung des Arzt-Patienten-Verhältnisses nicht in einer Schwächung des Anspruchs der Medizin als Wissenschaft. (shrink)

_Background:_ Cognitive biases play an important role in the formation and maintenance of delusions. These biases are indicators of a weak reflective mind, or reduced engaging in reflective and deliberate reasoning. In three experiments, we tested whether a bias to accept non-sense statements as profound, treat metaphorical statements as literal, and suppress intuitive responses is related to psychotic-like experiences. _Methods:_ We tested deliberate reasoning and psychotic-like experiences in the general population and in patients with a former psychotic episode. Deliberate reasoning (...) was assessed with the bullshit receptivity scale, the ontological confabulation scale and the cognitive reflection test (CRT). We also measured algorithmic performance with the Berlin numeracy test and the wordsum test. Psychotic-like experiences were measured with the Community Assessment of Psychic Experience (CAPE-42) scale. _Results:_ Psychotic-like experiences were positively correlated with a larger receptivity toward bullshit, more ontological confabulations, and also a lower score on the CRT but not with algorithmic task performance. In the patient group higher psychotic-like experiences significantly correlated with higher bullshit receptivity. _Conclusion:_ Reduced deliberate reasoning may contribute to the formation of delusions, and be a general thinking bias largely independent of a person's general intelligence. Acceptance of bullshit may be facilitated the more positive symptoms a patient has, contributing to the maintenance of the delusions. (shrink)

Since 2016, there has been an explosion of academic work and journalism that fixes its subject matter using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. In this paper, I argue that this terminology is not up to scratch, and that academics and journalists ought to completely stop using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. I set out three arguments for abandonment. First, that ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ do not have stable public meanings, entailing that they are either nonsense, context-sensitive, or contested. (...) Secondly, that these terms are unnecessary, because we already have a rich vocabulary for thinking about epistemic dysfunction. Thirdly, I observe that ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ have propagandistic uses, meaning that using them legitimates anti-democratic propaganda, and runs the risk of smuggling bad ideology into conversations. (shrink)

This article argues that bullshit is not an offense against truth but against reason. It maintains that bullshit occurs when speakers intentionally assert vague premises to make listeners accept their conclusions. This redefinition, I suggest, has consequences on the moral appraisal of bullshit.

Recognizing that truth is socially constructed or that knowledge and power are related is hardly a novelty in the social sciences. In the twenty-first century, however, there appears to be a renewed concern regarding people’s relationship with the truth and the propensity for certain actors to undermine it. Organizations are highly implicated in this, given their central roles in knowledge management and production and their attempts to learn, although the entanglement of these epistemological issues with business ethics has not been (...) engaged as explicitly as it might be. Drawing on work from a virtue epistemology perspective, this paper outlines the idea of a set of epistemic vices permeating organizations, along with examples of unethical epistemic conduct by organizational actors. While existing organizational research has examined various epistemic virtues that make people and organizations effective and responsible epistemic agents, much less is known about the epistemic vices that make them ineffective and irresponsible ones. Accordingly, this paper introduces vice epistemology, a nascent but growing subfield of virtue epistemology which, to the best of our knowledge, has yet to be explicitly developed in terms of business ethics. The paper concludes by outlining a business ethics research agenda on epistemic vice, with implications for responding to epistemic vices and their illegitimacy in practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a conceptual analysis of fake news. In essence, I suggest analysing this notion as a species of Frankfurtian bullshit. This construal, I argue, allows us to distinguish it from similar phenomena like bad or biased journalism and satire. First, I introduce four test cases. The first three are, intuitively, not cases of fake news, while the fourth one is. A correct conceptual analysis should, hence, exclude the first three while including the fourth. Next, I go (...) through some factors that could explain the difference between the first three cases and the fourth one before I offer my explanation. After that, I propose an analysis of fake news and show that it matches our intuitions about the four test cases. Finally, I consider a possible objection to my proposal. (shrink)

Sceptics vis-à-vis introspection often base their scepticism on ‘phenomenological disputes’, ‘introspective disagreement’, or ‘introspective disputes’ (Kriegel, 2007; Bayne and Spener, 2010; Schwitzgebel, 2011): introspectors massively diverge in their opinions about experiences, and there seems to be no method to resolve these issues. Sceptics take this to show that introspection lacks any epistemic merit. Here, I provide a list of paradigmatic examples, distill necessary and sufficient conditions for IDs, present the sceptical argument encouraged by IDs, and review the two main strategies (...) to reject such a scepticism. However, both types of strategies are unsatisfactory. In order to save introspection from the looming sceptical threat, I advocate a deflationary strategy, based on either an ‘Argument from Perceptual Kinship’ or an ‘Argument from Ownership’. In the end, there cannot be any genuine IDs, for nothing can fulfil the reasonable conditions for IDs. What looks like IDs may instead be indicators of phenomenal variation. Debates that look like IDs may then arise even if introspection were a perfect method to know one’s mind. Thus, scepticism vis-à-vis introspection based on IDs rests on shaky grounds. (shrink)

The multiple-choice video game Life is Strange was described by its French developers as a metaphor for the inner conflicts experienced by a teenager in trying to become an adult. In psychological work with adolescents, there is a stark similarity between what they experience and some concepts of existentialist philosophy. Sartre’s script for the movie Les Jeux Sont Faits (literally ‘‘games are made’’) uses the same narrative strategy as Life is Strange—the capacity for the main characters to travel back in (...) time to change their own existence—in order to stimulate philosophical, ethical, and political thinking and also to effectively simulate existential ‘‘limit situations.’’ This article is a dialogue between Sartre’s views and Life is Strange in order to examine to what extent questions such as what is freedom? what is choice? what is autonomy and responsibility? can be interpreted anew in hybrid digital–human—‘‘anthrobotic’’—environments. (shrink)

This paper refines a number of theoretical distinctions relevant to deceptive play, in particular the difference between merely misleading actions and types of simulation commonly considered beyond the pale, such as diving. To do so, I rely on work in the philosophy of language about conversational convention and implicature, the distinction between lying and misleading, and their relation to concepts of seduction and bullshit. The paper works through a number of possible solutions to the question of what is wrong with (...) simulation and its difference from strategic fouling, including the argument that games and their rules operate like contracts. I conclude that the wrongness lies in the injustice of unfair advantage gained through actions that silence opposition by resort to unanswerable play. (shrink)

This paper argues for a treatment of belief as essentially sensitive to certain features of context. The first part gives an argument that we must take belief to be context-sensitive in the same way that assertion is, if we are to preserve appealing principles tying belief to sincere assertion. In particular, whether an agent counts as believing that p in a context depends on the space of alternative possibilities the agent is considering in that context. One and the same doxastic (...) state may amount to belief that p in one context but not another. The second part of the paper gives a formal treatment of doxastic states, according to which belief is context-sensitive along just these lines. The model is applied to characterize (but not to refute) skeptical arguments. (shrink)

The traditional use of the expression 'pseudoproblem' is analysed in order to clarify the talk of pseudoproblems and related phenomena. The goal is to produce a philosophically serviceable terminology that stays true to its historical roots. This explicative study is inspired by and makes use of the method of logical reconstruction. Since pseudoproblems are usually expressed by pseudoquestions a formal language of questions is presented as a possible reconstruction language for alleged pseudoproblems. The study yields an informal theory of pseudoproblems (...) whose presuppositions are critically investigated right away. At least one result remains: Claims of pseudoproblemship and their refutations must not be voiced casually - they are to be relativized and need substantial interpretive effort. (shrink)

Robert H. Holden, in ‘The Public University's Unbearable Defiance of Being’ (2009, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41:5, pp. 575–591) argues that the public university ought to welcome the infusion of relevant beliefs, including religious ones, in carrying out its research and teaching responsibilities. In this paper, I examine whether he has shown that some opinions are suppressed, whether he has shown that other views are hegemonic, the central argument that lies behind his thinking, and then consider the educational consequences of (...) his position. (shrink)

In their extensive overview of various concepts of presumption Godden and Walton recognise “the heterogeneous picture of presumptions that exists in argumentation theory today”. I argue that this heterogeneity results from an epiphenomenal character of the notion of presumption. To this end, I first distinguish between three main classes of presumptions. Framework presumptions define the basic conditions of linguistic understanding and meaningful conversation. The “presumption of veracity” is their paradigm case. I argue that such presumptions are satisfactorily covered by the (...) Principle of Charity, or else Gricean maxims or satisfaction conditions for speech acts. Formal presumptions are general presumptive rules of argument, theorised as topoi or acceptable inference warrants, including institutional warrants. Material presumptions are acceptable outcomes of nested or outsourced arguments, which entitles arguers to use them as acceptable premises or opinions in further arguments without the typical burden of proof. If this is correct, then the study of presumption always collapses into the study of other, likely more fundamental, concepts. Does it render presumptions, by Occam’s Razor, altogether redundant in argumentation theory? I tentatively answer this question from a consistently conversational perspective on argumentation; I argue that the pragmatic grounds for presumptions are to be found in the conditions for speech act performance in the institutional social world, as developed by Searle. (shrink)

Moral grandstanding is a pervasive feature of public discourse. Many of us can likely recognize that we have engaged in grandstanding at one time or another. While there is nothing new about the phenomenon of grandstanding, we think that it has not received the philosophical attention it deserves. In this essay, we provide an account of moral grandstanding as the use of public discourse for moral self-promotion. We then show that our account, with support from some standard theses of social (...) psychology, explains the characteristic ways that grandstanding is manifested in public moral discourse. We conclude by arguing that there are good reasons to think that moral grandstanding is typically morally bad and should be avoided. (shrink)

New technologies are the source of uncertainties about the applicability of moral and morally connotated concepts. These uncertainties sometimes call for conceptual engineering, but it is not often recognized when this is the case. We take this to be a missed opportunity, as a recognition that different researchers are working on the same kind of project can help solve methodological questions that one is likely to encounter. In this paper, we present three case studies where philosophers of technology implicitly engage (...) in conceptual engineering (without naming it as such). We subsequently reflect on the case studies to find out how these illustrate conceptual engineering as an appropriate method to deal with pressing concerns in the philosophy of technology. We have two main goals. We first want to contribute to the literature on conceptual engineering by presenting concrete examples of conceptual engineering in the philosophy of technology. This is especially relevant, because the technologies that are designed based on the conceptual work done by philosophers of technology potentially have crucial moral and social implications. Secondly, we want to make explicit what choices are made when doing this conceptual work. Making explicit that some of the implicit assumptions are, in fact, debated in the literature allows for reflection on these questions. Ultimately, our hope is that conscious reflection leads to an improvement of the conceptual work done. (shrink)

In a recent paper, José Ángel Gascón extends the Frankfurtian notion of bullshit to the sphere of argumentation. On Frankfurt’s view, the hallmark of bullshit is a lack of concern for the truth of an utterance on the part of the bullshitter. Similarly, Gascón argues, the hallmark of argumentative bullshit should be viewed as a lack of concern for whether the reasons that are adduced for a claim genuinely support that claim. Gascón deserves credit for drawing attention to the idea (...) of argumentative bullshit. Nevertheless, we argue, his treatment leaves room for further refinement as he fails to clarify important points and misidentifies several features of argumentative bullshit. In particular, Gascón’s account fails to accommodate non-Frankfurtian forms of argumentative bullshit. This paper aims to amend and extend his proposal and proposes a general account that can encompass both Frankfurtian and non-Frankfurtian forms of argumentative bullshit. (shrink)

The title of my thesis is Time, Truth and Accountability in Information Control and Dissemination. The central argument of the thesis is that accountability is an illusion. We take accountability to mean being liable for actions and answerable to some body, but then we encounter the opacity of ‘liable in what particular respect?’ and ‘answerable to whom?’ Accountability is muddled with other concepts which we take to be implicit in its meaning. We appeal to ‘transparency’, but transparency is never absolute, (...) and how would we know if it were? To make all processes and all information transparent to everyone who needs to know, wants to know, or claims to have an interest, would be a stifling endeavour. I will show that ‘accountability’ is a term much used but rarely understood, and that this can have tragic consequences not only for individuals but for society as a whole. Using Plato’s allegory of the cave as a structure for the thesis, I will develop the argument by following the prisoner’s journey through changing contexts, towards self-awareness and the understanding that our knowledge is always open to revision. Within accountability and audit culture, I will explore the entangled notions of transparency, truth, trust, freedom of information, justice and democracy, considering how our interpretation of concepts is context-dependent and how this affects communication, our understanding of our experience, ourselves and our world. The thesis is essentially phenomenological in style and approach. Integral to my inquiry is an examination of how our experience influences our understanding. Over time and in the process of everyday living, we accumulate experience and we interpret this experience. Our conclusions change, are constantly open to revision and are dependent on both our individual perspective and the wider context; our perspective and context are themselves subject to change with the passage of time. Awareness of this variability is fundamental to effective human communication because it allows us to move across different domains, maintaining some level of mutual understanding even as it is transformed by context. Yet, not withstanding this awareness, there is also the potential for intentional and non-intentional misuse of terms, resulting in misunderstandings and a failure of intelligibility and communication. If concealed and exploited rather than acknowledged and disclosed, this failure can alter the course of events irrevocably, and with disastrous consequences. This breakdown results in an erosion of trust on all scales, international, national, corporate, and individual, and once lost, this trust is hard to re-establish. Paradoxically, even when we discover the fragility of trust, we are drawn to trust again, sometimes with little choice, but the consequences of a continuing implicit trust can be serious, and I will elaborate on this idea with reference to several high profile examples. Finally, I will argue that we often seek security in our illusions, like Plato’s prisoner we can be dazzled by them and pained when they are dispelled, yet even when we are disabused of our illusions, we are never entirely free of them. We can never escape the Cave for we must trust in the potential for accountability of those responsible to us. I suggest then that we must move away from the rituals of accountability and towards an honest accountability where our common project is to seek truth, however painful that might be. (shrink)

A philosophical assessment of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, exposing some errors of reasoning that undermine part of the foundation of his atheism. Distinctions between theism, atheism and agnosticism are also provided and explored for their significance to Dawkins’ argument.

Literature in the epistemology of disagreement has focused on peer disagreement: disagreement between those with shared evidence and equal cognitive abilities. Additional literature focuses on the perspective of amateurs who disagree with experts. However, the appropriate epistemic reaction from superiors who disagree with inferiors remains underexplored. Prima facie, this may seem an uninteresting set of affairs. If A is B’s superior, and A has good reason to believe she is B’s superior, A appears free to dismiss B’s disagreement. However, a (...) closer look will show otherwise. I first distinguish competent from incompetent inferiors and then argue that disagreement from the former often gives superiors reason to adjust credence and reevaluate belief. In other words, epistemic inferiority alone is insufficient grounds for dismissing opinion. More nuanced difficulties arise with incompetent inferiors. When superiors disagree with incompetents, this might provide evidence to bolster belief credence; however, agreement from incompetents can defeat justification. In either instance, inferior opinion carries epistemic weight. Yet, this fails to cover all ground; at times, superiors learn nothing from inferior disagreement. I finish by exploring these uninformative disagreements, how to distinguish them from the informative cases, and the proper epistemic reactions thereof. (shrink)

Judith Shklar, David Runciman, and others argue against what they see as excessive criticism of political hypocrisy. Such arguments often assume that communicating in an authentic manner is an impossible political ideal. This article challenges the characterization of authenticity as an unrealistic ideal and makes the case that its value can be grounded in a certain political realism sensitive to the threats posed by representative democracy. First, by analyzing authenticity’s demands for political discourse, I show that authenticity has greater flexibility (...) than many assume in accommodating practices common to politics, such as deception, concealment, and persuasion through rhetoric. Second, I argue that a concern for authenticity in political discourse represents a virtue, not a distraction, for representative democracy. Authenticity takes on heightened importance when the public seeks information on how representatives will act in contexts where the public is absent and unable to influence decisions. Furthermore, given the psychological mechanisms behind hypocrisy, public criticism is a sensible response for trying to limit political hypocrisy. From the perspective of democratic theory and psychology, the public has compelling reasons to value authenticity in political discourse. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it is inappropriate for us to blame others if it is not reasonable for us to believe that they are morally responsible for their actions. The argument for this claim relies on two controversial claims: first, that assertion is governed by the epistemic norm of reasonable belief, and second, that the epistemic norm of implicatures is relevantly similar to the norm of assertion. I defend these claims, and I conclude by briefly suggesting how this (...) putative norm of blame can serve as the basis for general norms of interpersonal generosity. (shrink)