ABSTRACT Rima Basu and I have offered separate accounts of wokeness as an anti-racist ethical concept. Our accounts endorse controversial doctrines in epistemology: doxastic wronging, doxastic voluntarism, and moral encroachment. Many philosophers deny these three views, favoring instead some ordinary standards for epistemic justification. I call this denial the standard view. In this paper, I offer an account of wokeness that is consistent with the standard view. I argue that wokeness is best understood as ‘group epistemic partiality’. The woke person (...) does extra epistemic work before forming a negative belief about a member of an oppressed social group. Just as we do extra epistemic work when forming belief about our friends, so the woke person does for members of oppressed social groups. I first outline the account. I then raise questions about the scope of wokeness and belief formation. After this, I demonstrate that the group partiality view is consistent with the standard view in epistemology. The partiality view, therefore, should appeal to epistemologists who have adopted the standard view because it is consistent with ordinary standards of justification. I conclude that wokeness as a concept in epistemology should not be controversial for those who endorse the standard view. (shrink)

For nearly two decades, ethicists have expressed concerns that the further development and use of memory modification technologies (MMTs)—techniques allowing to intentionally and selectively alter memories—may threaten the very foundations of who we are, our personal identity, and thus pose a threat to our well-being, or even undermine our “humaneness.” This paper examines the potential ramifications of memory-modifying interventions such as changing the valence of targeted memories and selective deactivation of a particular memory as these interventions appear to be at (...) the same time potentially both most promising clinically as well as menacing to identity. However, unlike previous works discussing the potential consequences of MMTs, this article analyzes them in the context of the narrative relational approach to personal identity and potential issues related to autonomy. I argue that such a perspective brings to light the ethical aspects and moral issues arising from the use of MMTs that have been hidden from previously adopted approaches. In particular, this perspective demonstrates how important the social context in which an individual lives is for the ethical evaluation of a given memory-modifying intervention. I conclude by suggesting that undertaking memory modifications without taking into account the social dimension of a person’s life creates the risk that she will not be able to meet one of the basic human needs—the autonomous construction and maintenance of personal identity. Based on this conclusion, I offer some reflections on the permissibility and advisability of MMTs and what these considerations suggest for the future. (shrink)

'Chains of Being' argues that there can be infinite chains of dependence or grounding. Cameron also defends the view that there can be circular relations of ontological dependence or grounding, and uses these claims to explore issues in logic and ontology.

This paper offers an overview of the ways agents might extend over time and the characteristic structure of extended human agency. Agency can extend in two distinct but combinable modes: the ontological, which gives rise to simple continuous agents; and the conceptual, which gives rise to agents who conceive of and care about distal times, and have minimal planning abilities. Our extended form of agency combines both. But we are still limited by the temporal locality in the operation of our (...) psychological and executive powers. To account for this locality, I introduce the notion of 'temporal selves,' as the loci of immediacy in the agent's determination of their psychology, conduct, and practical standpoint. I argue that the passage of time generates, by itself, the threat of temporal alienation from distant temporal selves. A genuinely extended agency requires temporal identification: the sharing, by separate temporal selves, of a temporally extended and integrated practical standpoint. This temporal identification cannot be produced simply by temporal identity as continuity. What is required is temporal identity in the mode of unity and integration. This identity does not precede temporal identification but is co-constituted with it. I offer a preliminary account of the structure of the units of integration for agents who aspire to persist in the mode of unity and integration. I close with a cautionary note: the complex structure of integration, although familiar in everyday life, is often missed by standard philosophical accounts, which tend to focus on simple models of extended agency. (shrink)

When an abortion is performed, someone dies. Are we killing a human person? Widespread disagreement exists. However, it is not necessary to establish personhood in order to establish the wrongness of abortion: a substantial chance of personhood is enough. We defend The Do Not Risk Homicide Argument: abortions are wrong after 10 weeks gestation because they substantially and unjustifiably risk homicide, the unjust killing of a human person. Why 10 weeks? Because the cumulative evidence establishes a substantial chance (a more (...) than one in five chance) that preborn human beings are persons after 10 weeks (if not before then). We submit evidence from our bad track record, widespread disagreement about personhood (after 10 weeks gestation), problems with theories of personhood, the similarity between preborn human beings and premature newborns, miscalculations of gestational age, and the common intuitive responses of women to their pregnancies and miscarriages. Our argument is cogent because it bypasses the stalemate over preborn personhood and rests on common ground rather than contentious metaphysics. It also strongly suggests that society must do more to protect preborn human beings. We briefly discuss its practical implications for fetal pain relief, social policy, and abortion law. (shrink)

This chapter asks two questions about the ethics of expectations: one about the nature of expectations, and one about the wrongs of expectations. On the first question, expectations involve a rich constellation of attitudes ranging from beliefs to also include imaginings, hopes, fears, and dreams. As a result, sometimes expectations act like predictions, like your expectation of rain tomorrow, sometimes prescriptions, like the expectation that your students will do the reading, sometimes like proleptic reasons like the hope that your mentee (...) will flourish, and sometimes expectations are peremptory in that they carry the force of moral law. Turning to the second question, given the multiple roles played by expectations it shouldn’t be surprising that there are also multiple ways expectations can be wrong to hold. Sometimes they wrong as beliefs do, e.g., doxastic wronging, and sometimes they result in alienation because of who holds that expectation of us. The upshot of this chapter is that getting clear on these potential ways expectations can wrong not only delivers an ethics of expectations that mirrors familiar discussions of the ethics of belief, but an ethics of expectations further opens the door for taking seriously an ethics of mental attitudes more generally. (shrink)

The primary aim of this chapter is to outline the consensuses that have emerged in recent philosophical works tackling normative questions about responding to immoral artist’s art. While disagreement amongst philosophers is unavoidable, there is actually much agreement on the ethics of media consumption. How should we evaluate immoral artist’s art? Philosophers generally agree that we should not always separate the artist from the art. How should we engage with immoral artist’s art? Philosophers generally agree that we should not always (...) reflexively turn away from them. In turn, these responses reveal that moral value is not autonomous from aesthetic value, and neither dominates the other. The secondary aim of this chapter is to explore the ramifications of this revelation. I argue that, in addition to an ethics of media consumption, we need an aesthetics of media consumption that is fundamentally social rather than solitary. (shrink)

There are many good reasons to learn about the lives of people who have less social privilege than we do. We might want to understand their circumstances in order to have informed opinions on social policy, or to make our institutions more inclusive. We might also want to cultivate empathy for its own sake. Much of this knowledge is gained through social scientific or humanistic research into others' lives. The entitlement to theorize about or study the lives of marginalized others (...) is often granted under the presumption of academic freedom. This paper will not question whether academic freedom licenses us to do so in the first place ; instead, I will... (shrink)

Advancements in novel neurotechnologies, such as brain computer interfaces and neuromodulatory devices such as deep brain stimulators, will have profound implications for society and human rights. While these technologies are improving the diagnosis and treatment of mental and neurological diseases, they can also alter individual agency and estrange those using neurotechnologies from their sense of self, challenging basic notions of what it means to be human. As an international coalition of interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners, we examine these challenges and make (...) recommendations to mitigate negative consequences that could arise from the unregulated development or application of novel neurotechnologies. We explore potential ethical challenges in four key areas: identity and agency, privacy, bias, and enhancement. To address them, we propose democratic and inclusive summits to establish globally-coordinated ethical and societal guidelines for neurotechnology development and application, new measures, including “Neurorights,” for data privacy, security, and consent to empower neurotechnology users’ control over their data, new methods of identifying and preventing bias, and the adoption of public guidelines for safe and equitable distribution of neurotechnological devices. (shrink)

The broad spectrum revolution brought greater dependence on skill and knowledge, and more demanding, often social, choices. We adopt Sterelny's account of how cooperative foraging paid the costs associated with longer dependency, and transformed the problem of skill learning. Scaffolded learning can facilitate cognitive control including suppression, whereas scaffolded exchange and trade, including inter-temporal exchange, can help develop resolve.

We have a strong intuition that personal identity is a determinate relationship. Parfit famously challenged this intuition. In this paper I explain how narrative identity theories can face that challenge and defend that personal identity is determinate thanks to what I call the social narrativity thesis. This move will raise some concerns regarding the also strong intuition that personal identity is what matters when we care about our future existence. I address this concern to show that narrative identity theories can (...) account for both intuitions at the same time. (shrink)

Many accounts of the morality of abortion assume that early fetuses must all have or lack moral status in virtue of developmental features that they share. Our actual attitudes toward early fetuses don’t reflect this all-or-nothing assumption: early fetuses can elicit feelings of joy, love, indifference, or distress. If we start with the assumption that our attitudes toward fetuses reflect a real difference in their moral status, then we need an account of fetal moral status that can explain that difference. (...) I argue that we can have or lack relational obligations to early fetuses in light of our own activities or choices, independent of the fetus’s own features or properties. Those relational obligations make the early fetus morally considerable to the persons who stand in a moral relation to it. Pregnant persons (and other participants in the procreative process) can come to have relational obligations to an early fetus just in virtue of their own decision to create a person, either by intentionally getting pregnant or by deciding to continue a pregnancy. That decision not only makes it appropriate for them to care about the fetus, but it also generates obligations to the fetus that they didn’t have before that decision. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that morality might bear on belief in at least two conceptually distinct ways. The first is that morality might bear on belief by bearing on questions of justification. The claim that it does is the doctrine of moral encroachment. The second, is that morality might bear on belief given the central role belief plays in mediating and thereby constituting our relationships with one another. The claim that it does is the doctrine of doxastic wronging. Though (...) conceptually distinct, the two doctrines overlap in important ways. This paper provides clarification on the relationship between the two, providing reasons throughout that we should accept both. (shrink)

Bioethics has increasingly become a standard part of medical school education and the training of healthcare professionals more generally. This is a promising development, as it has the potential to help future practitioners become more attentive to moral concerns and, perhaps, better moral reasoners. At the same time, there is growing recognition within bioethics that nonideal theory can play an important role in formulating normative recommendations. In this chapter we discuss what this shift toward nonideal theory means for ethical curricula (...) within healthcare education. In particular, we contend that more attention to the particularities of historical and social context needs to be incorporated into bioethics training. To make this argument, we focus on two examples: teaching units on race and medicine and those that focus on stigma and coercion in mental health. For both, we show how a pedagogical approach in which educators focus on social injustice could influence how practitioners engage in ethics in the clinic. This chapter, then, demonstrates what a commitment to nonideal theory can mean practically when it comes to bioethics education. (shrink)

The topic of the self has long been salient in feminist philosophy, for it is pivotal to questions about personhood, identity, the body, and agency that feminism must address. In some respects, Simone de Beauvoir's trenchant observation, "He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other," sums up why the self is such an important issue for feminism. To be the Other is to be the non-subject, the non-person, the non-agent — in short, the mere body. (...) In law, in customary practice, and in cultural stereotypes, women's selfhood has been systematically subordinated, diminished, and belittled, when it has not been outright denied. Since women have been cast as lesser forms of the masculine individual, the paradigm of the self that has gained ascendancy in U.S. popular culture and in Western philosophy is derived from the experience of the predominantly white and heterosexual, mostly economically advantaged men who have wielded social, economic, and political power and who have dominated the arts, literature, the media, and scholarship. Responding to this state of affairs, feminist philosophical work on the self has taken three main tacks: (1) critique of established views of the self, (2) reclamation of women's selfhood, and (3) reconceptualization of the self to incorporate women's experience. This entry will survey feminist perspectives on the self from all three of these angles. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that standard psychological continuity theory does not account for an important feature of what is important in survival – having the property of personhood. I offer a theory that can account for this, and I explain how it avoids the implausible consequences of standard psychological continuity theory, as well as having certain other advantages over that theory.

Despite the growing attention to oppression and resistance in social and political philosophy as well as ethics, philosophers continue to struggle to describe and appropriately attribute agency under non-ideal circumstances of oppression and structural injustice. This chapter identifies some features of new accounts of non-ideal agency and then examines a particular problem for such theories, what Serene Khader has called the agency dilemma. Under the agency dilemma, attempts to articulate the agency of subjects living under oppression must on the one (...) hand avoid overemphasizing constraints on agency, and thereby producing paternalistic theories that “deny agency” for oppressed subjects, and on the other hand avoid failing to fully appreciate the effects of oppression on agency, thereby missing crucial features of how oppression unjustly shapes a person’s lived possibilities. This chapter traces this dilemma to a preoccupation with ascribing agency, which produces problematic descriptive and political effects for theorizing agency under oppression: what the author calls an asymmetry problem and a disenfranchisement problem. Finally, the chapter proposes that the agency dilemma might be ameliorated if theorists scrutinize more closely how moral, epistemic, and political agency interact and overlap in life under oppression. (shrink)

What is it to know someone? Epistemologists rarely take up this question, though recent developments make such inquiry possible and desirable. This paper advances an account of how such interpersonal knowledge goes beyond mere propositional and qualitative knowledge about someone, giving a central place to second-personal treatment. It examines what such knowledge requires, and what makes it distinctive within epistemology as well as socially. It assesses its theoretic value for several issues in moral psychology, epistemic injustice, and philosophy of mind. (...) And it offers an account of the complex content in play if interpersonal knowledge is to be understood in terms of its mental states and their functions. (shrink)

Referred to as “a foundational concept” of bioethics, personhood has long figured prominently in discussions of entities’ moral status and attendant rights and duties (Farah and Heberlein 2007, 39)...

In her new article in the American Journal of Bioethics, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) provides at least three reasons that support her argument that the concept of personhood must be abandoned...

Is it time to ditch the concept of “person” from practical fields, like bioethics? Blumenthal-Barby (2024) answers in the affirmative. They urge leaving personhood out of practical debates at the f...

In her paper titled “The End of Personhood,” Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) takes a swipe at the functionalist account of personhood. The problem with the functionalist view of personhood is that...

In this chapter we analyse the nature and ethical implications of parasocial relationships. While this type of relationship has received significant attention in other interdisciplinary fields such as celebrity studies and fan studies, philosophers have so far had very little to say about them. Parasocial relationships are usually defined as asymmetrical, in which a media-user closely relates to a media-personality as if they were a friend or family member, and where this connection is mostly unreciprocated. We focus on the most (...) typical form of this kind of relationship, between fans and celebrities. We argue that a parasocial relationship between fan and celebrity is a distinct kind of personal relationship, constituted by three basic structural asymmetries: attention, communication, and epistemic. These asymmetries give rise to a more substantial asymmetry concerning the way in which celebrities and fans have ‘directive’ or ‘interpretative’ influence over each other’s identity. This can lead to a failure of recognition respect, and generates ethical responsibilities for both fans and celebrities. We conclude by noting that the structural asymmetries we find in parasocial relationships are present in many other types of relationship, especially those in which one person holds a position of power. As such, it is valuable to pay attention to the way in which asymmetries point to forms of parasociality in these other relationships, and the extent to which they give rise to distinct ethical responsibilities. (shrink)

Philosophers have started to theorize the concept of ‘affective injustice’ to make sense of certain ways in which people’s affective lives are significantly marked by injustice. This new research has offered important insights into people’s lived experiences under oppression. But it is not immediately clear how the concept ‘affective injustice’ picks out something different from the closely related phenomenon of ‘psychological oppression.’ This paper considers the question of why we might need new theories of affective injustice in light of the (...) well-established cross-disciplinary literature on psychological oppression. I suggest that, whereas psychological oppression is found in the hearts and minds of people who are oppressed, affective injustice is most fruitfully understood as a structural phenomenon. It operates primarily outside of us: in affective norms, practices, and relationships that are embedded in social conditions of injustice. The account I offer is tentative and incomplete. But my hope is that it will help show how theorizing affective injustice has the potential to enrich existing theories of justice and theories of psychological oppression. (shrink)

This chapter argues that for human, technological, and human-technological reasons, disagreement, critique, and counterspeech on social media fall squarely into the province of non-ideal theory. It concludes by suggesting a modest but challenging disposition that can help us when we are torn between opposing oppression and contributing to a flame war.

This article defends a relational account of personhood. I argue that the structure of personhood consists of dyadic relations between persons who can wrong or be wronged by one another, even if some of them lack moral competence. I draw on recent work on directed duties to outline the structure of moral communities of persons. The upshot is that we can construct an inclusive theory of personhood that can accommodate nonhuman persons based on shared community membership. I argue that, once (...) we unpack the internal relation between directed duties, moral status, and flourishing, relations can ground personhood and include nonhuman animals. (shrink)

This paper explores a phenomenon that we call “justified-but-misdirected anger,” in which one’s anger is grounded in or born from a genuine wrong or injustice but is directed towards an inappropriate target. In particular, we argue that oppressive ideologies that maintain systems of gender, race, and class encourage such misdirection and are thereby self-perpetuating. We engage with two particular examples of such misdirection. The first includes poor white voters who embrace racist and xenophobic politics; they are justified in being angry (...) about their own economic exploitation, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains capitalism (which is the appropriate target of their anger). The second includes so-called “incels” who embrace misogyny; they are justified in being angry about unrealistic and unhealthy standards of contemporary masculinity, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains patriarchy. One goal of exploring this type of justified-but-misdirected anger is to thread the needle between holding wrongdoers to account while also clearly identifying the oppressive ideologies that influence their actions. (shrink)

This paper argues that common social narratives about unhealthy eaters can cause significant damage to agency. I identify and analyze a narrative that combines a “control model” of eating agency with the healthist assumption that health is the ultimate end of eating. I argue that this narrative produces and enables four types of damage to the agency of those identified as unhealthy eaters. Due to uncertainty about what counts as healthy eating and various forms of prejudice, the unhealthy eater label (...) and its harms to agency are more likely to stick to some people than others and may reinforce patterns of oppression. I argue that fat people are especially vulnerable to this identification and the damage it can do. I then consider possible “counterstories” about unhealthy eaters, alternative narratives that might be less damaging to agency than the control narrative. I identify one promising counterstory but suggest that it may be limited when it comes to repairing damage to the agency of fat people. Overall, this paper illustrates some of the complex ways that healthism about eating affects agency, and emphasizes the ethical importance of the ways we think about and discuss eating and eaters. (shrink)

It is often held that people have a moral right to believe and say whatever they want. For instance, one might claim that they have a right to believe racist things as long as they keep those thoughts to themselves. Or, one might claim that they have a right to pursue any philosophical question they want as long as they do so with a civil tone. In this paper I object to those claims and argue that no one has such (...) unlimited moral rights. In Part 1 I explore the value of the freedoms of thought and expression. In Part 2 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free expression, focusing in particular on the special obligations and moral constraints that obtain for academics. In Part 3 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free thought. (shrink)

Although “you are what you eat” is a well-worn cliché, personal identity does not figure prominently in many debates about the ethics of eating interventions. This paper contributes to a growing philosophical literature theorizing the connection between eating and identity and exploring its implications for eating interventions. I explore how “identity-policing,” a key mechanism for the social constitution and maintenance of identity, applies to eating and trace its ethical implications for eating interventions. I argue that identity policing can be harmful (...) and that eating interventions can subject people to these harms by invoking identity policing qua intervention strategy or by encouraging people to eat in ways that subject them to policing from others. While these harms may be outweighed by the benefits of the intervention being promoted, they should nonetheless be acknowledged and accounted for. To aid in these evaluations, I consider factors that modulate the presence and severity of identity-policing and discuss strategies for developing less harmful eating interventions. I conclude by considering the relationship between identity-policing and identity loss caused by long-term diet change. This paper contributes to the centering of identity in food ethics and to a more comprehensive picture of identity’s ethical importance for eating interventions. (shrink)

En este artículo argumento a favor de dos tesis. Primero, defiendo que las teorías narrativas de la identidad personal deben comprometerse con la intuición de que la identidad es una relación determinada. Segundo, muestro cómo las teorías narrativas pueden ser exitosas en este empeño dando cabida a la dimensión social de nuestra existencia en tanto personas. Para organizar mi exposición me centro en uno de los casos más conflictivos para las teorías de la identidad personal: los casos de duplicación. Ante (...) estos casos, las únicas opciones disponibles parecen ser bien aceptar que la identidad personal es indeterminada, o bien dar una respuesta arbitraria que permita conservar la determinación de la identidad a costa de vaciar la relación de identidad de toda su importancia práctica. Argumentaré por qué las teorías narrativas pueden escapar de ese dilema mediante una tercera vía. (shrink)

As the “War on Terror” continues, the national myth of veteran-as-hero has given way to a narrative shorthand of veteran-as-villain. Films and television shows depicting the reintegration of veterans tend to focus on the struggle and alienation from the homefront that veterans feel upon their return. In contrast, comedy television portrayals such as One Day at a Time and You’re the Worst, both of which slowly but successfully reintegrate their central veteran characters, do so narratively by shifting their characters’ veteran (...) status from their defining feature to one aspect of their past. Ultimately, I argue that the process of reintegration is one paralleled in the rehumanization that these comedy television portrayals permit, ultimately offering hope that reintegration, while not easy, is possible. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom disagrees with P.F. Strawson that abandoning the reactive attitudes associated with praise and blame would come at the price of exiting our personal relationships. According to Pereboom, we can contain or modify our attitudes in ways that preserve, and perhaps even enrich interpersonal relationships. In a recent article, Seth Shabo defends “the inseparability thesis” in order to undermine Pereboom’s containment policy. Drawing on David Goldman’s work on non-antagonistic responses to wrongdoing, we defend Pereboom from Shabo’s critique.