Delusions are deeply evidence-resistant. Patients with delusions are unmoved by evidence that is in direct conflict with the delusion, often responding to such evidence by offering obvious, and strange, confabulations. As a consequence, the standard view is that delusions are not evidence-responsive. This claim has been used as a key argumentative wedge in debates on the nature of delusions. Some have taken delusions to be beliefs and argued that this implies that belief is not constitutively evidence-responsive. Others hold fixed the (...) evidenceresponsiveness of belief and take this to show that delusions cannot be beliefs. Against this common assumption, I appeal to a large range of empirical evidence to argue that delusions are evidence-responsive in the sense that subjects have the capacity to respond to evidence on their delusion in rationally permissible ways. The extreme evidence-resistance of delusions is a consequence of powerful masking factors on these capacities, such as strange perceptual experiences, motivational factors, and cognitive biases. This view makes room for holding both that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive and that delusions are beliefs, and it has important implications for the study and treatment of delusions. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall’s moral theory explains moral obligation by appealing to a “second-person” standpoint where persons use second-person reasons to hold one another accountable for their moral behavior. However, Darwall claims obligations obtain if and only if hypothetical persons endorse them, despite tying the second-person standpoint to our real-world moral practices. Focus on hypothetical persons renders critical elements of his account obscure. I solve this problem by distinguishing two ideas quietly working in tandem, the hypothetical endorsement of moral norms and the (...) hypothetical recognition of these norms. Hypothetical endorsement is a plausible source of normativity; hypothetical recognition is not. A more plausible account of second-person normativity must combine hypothetical endorsement with actual recognition. I term these alternative conceptions justification and easy publication. To combine justification and easy publication in an account of moral obligation, second-person normativity should be applied first to rules. Following other moral philosophers, I introduce the concept of a “social-moral” rule into an account of moral obligation. Social-moral rules acquire normative force when they are justified for and easily published by the relevant moral community. I conclude that a rule-centric account of second-personality is superior to Darwall’s reason-centric account. (shrink)

Metasemantic security arguments aim to show, on metasemantic grounds, that even if we were to discover that determinism is true, that wouldn't give us reason to think that people never act freely. Flew's [1955] Paradigm Case Argument is one such argument; Heller's [1996] Putnamian argument is another. In this paper I introduce a third which uses a metasemantic picture on which meanings are settled as though by an ideal interpreter. Metasemantic security arguments are widely thought discredited by van Inwagen's [1983] (...) Martian Manipulation objection. I argue that van Inwagen's objection, if right, can be parodied to undercut metasemantic arguments which aim to show that deliverances of physics do not tell us that no objects are solid. A diagnosis of where the parody objection breaks down against the pro-solidity argument is then used to resist the objection as applied to the Ideal Interpreter Argument. I go on to defend the argument from the charge that it relies on a ham-fisted version of interpretivism. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to show that Pettit and Smith’s (1996) argument concerning the nature of free belief is importantly incomplete. I accept Pettit and Smith’s emphasis upon normative constraints governing responsible believing and desiring, and their claim that the responsibly believing agent needs to possess an ability to believe (or desire) otherwise when believing (desiring) wrongly. But I argue that their characterization of these constraints does not do justice to one crucial factor, namely, the presence of (...) an unreflective, sub-personally constituted, ability to spot the kind of situations in which the reflective critical abilities constitutive of responsible believing (and desiring) should be deployed. (shrink)

In this paper, we clarify, unpack, and ultimately resist what is perhaps the most prominent argument for the compatibility of free will and determinism: the epistemic argument for compatibilism. We focus on one such argument as articulated by David Lewis: (i) we know we are free, (ii) for all we know everything is predetermined, (iii) if we know we are free but for all we know everything is predetermined, then for all we know we are free but everything is predetermined, (...) (iv) if for all we know we are free but predetermined, then it is really possible that we are, so (v) compatibilism. We uncover how the crucial epistemic modality underlying (iv) must be understood, and contend that, understood this way, the libertarian can resist (iv). Importantly, however, resisting the argument does commit the libertarian to what has been called “flip-flopping”—but we argue that this is perfectly coherent. We conclude by articulating two crucially ways the libertarian can resist the argument, by saying that we can know that determinism is false "from the armchair". (shrink)

This article develops a research position that allows cultural sociologists to compare morality across sociohistorical cases. In order to do so, the article suggests focusing analytic attention on actions that fulfill the following criteria: (a) actions that define the actor as a certain kind of socially recognized person, both within and across fields; (b) actions that actors experience—or that they expect others to perceive—as defining the actor both intersituationally and to a greater extent than other available definitions of self; and (...) (c) actions to which actors either have themselves, or expect others to have, a predictable emotional reaction. Such a position avoids both a realist moral sociology and descriptive-relativism, and provides sociologists with criteria for comparing moral action in different cases while staying attuned to social and historical specificity. (shrink)

Despite the increasing amount of literature on the legal and political questions triggered by a commitment to liberty of conscience, an explanation of the normative significance of conscience remains elusive. We argue that the few attempts to address this fail to capture the reasons people have to respect the consciences of others. We offer an alternative account that utilizes the resources of the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy to explain why conscience matters.

A structural harm results from countless apparently innocuous interactions between a great many individuals in a social system, and not from any agent’s intentionally producing the harm. Iris Young has influentially articulated a model of individual moral responsibility for such harms, and several other philosophers have taken it as their starting point for dealing with the phenomenon of structural injustice. In this paper, I argue that this social connection model is far less realistic and socially effective than it aims to (...) be. This is because the model systematically neglects the key role played by the emotions in human moral life. (shrink)

Although philosophers have explored several connections between neuroscience and moral responsibility, the issue of how real-world neurological modifications, such as Deep Brain Stimulation, impact moral responsibility has received little attention. In this article, we draw on debates about the relevance of history and manipulation to moral responsibility to argue that certain kinds of neurological modification can diminish the responsibility of the agents so modified. We argue for a historicist position - a version of the history-sensitive reflection view - and defend (...) that account against a rival, relational view of responsibility. We conclude that DBS can, under certain conditions, diminish responsibility, and explore the circumstances under which this might be so. We conclude by suggesting that philosophical debates about moral responsibility, manipulation, and history have greater practical relevance than is sometimes thought, and that attention to practical cases can help inform and deepen this body of scholarship. (shrink)

This article aims to draw attention to the way in which a subset of reactive attitudes make us less free. Vasubandhu’s explanation of reactive attitudes shows us how they make us less free...

When a wrongdoing occurs, victims, barring special circumstance, can aptly forgive their wrongdoers, receive apologies, and be paid reparations. It is also uncontroversial, in the usual circumstances, that wronged parties can aptly blame their wrongdoer. But controversy arises when we consider blame from third-parties after the victim has forgiven. At times it seems that wronged parties can make blame inapt through forgiveness. If third parties blame anyway, it often appears the victim is justified in protesting. “But I forgave him!” In (...) other cases, however, forgiveness seems irrelevant: B can forgive A, but it can still seem that third parties can aptly blame A for the wrong against B. This perplexity adds a dimension to ongoing discussion regarding criteria for apt blame and the related issues of standing and fittingness. This paper explores the status of third party blame after forgiveness. I argue that while post forgiveness blame is often inapt, in many other cases forgiveness is irrelevant. This difference is explained by appeal to the various relationships third parties might have to wronged parties, and how these differences affect the ways we blame and thereby blame’s aptness. (shrink)

Freedom is sometimes cast as the psychological ideal that distinguishes human beings from other animals; sometimes as the ethical ideal that distinguishes some human beings from others; and sometimes as the political ideal that distinguishes some human societies from others. This paper is an attempt to put the three ideals in a common frame, revealing their mutual connections and differences.

Any complete account of morality should be able to account for its characteristic normativity; we show that enactivism is able to do so while doing justice to the situated and interactive nature of morality. Moral normativity primarily arises in interpersonal interaction and is characterized by agents’ possibility of irrevocably changing each other’s autonomies, that is, the possibility of harming or expanding each other’s autonomy. We defend that moral normativity, as opposed to social and other forms of normativity, regulates and, in (...) some cases, constitutes this very possibility. Agents are thus morally responsible for caring about their own and others’ autonomies in interaction. In our conception, moral normativity is embodied, situated, and deeply affective, and is constituted in social practices and maintained in interaction. We identify at least two necessary conditions for moral normativity to arise as a social practice. The first is our embodied constitution as living beings who are precarious and therefore vulnerable and in need of interaction with others and with the environment. The second is our sociolinguistic nature, which allows us to exponentially expand our possibilities for action and normatively distinguish among them. We finish by drawing a distinction between moral character and the moral content of interactions, which allows us to universally recognize the ethical dimensions of all human interaction while doing justice to the situated character of morals. (shrink)

In this paper I advance a constitutive argument for the authority of rational norms. Because accountability to reasons is constitutive of rational agency and rational norms are implicit in reasons for action and belief, the justification of rational norms is of a piece with the practice of reasoning. Peter Railton has objected that the constitutive view fails to defend the categorical authority of reason over agents. I respond to his objections, arguing that they presuppose a foundationalist conception of justification that (...) demands a ground for reason's authority outside of the practice of reasoning. (shrink)

In order to tackle the question of a meaningful life, the author is firstly concerned with how verbal expressions become meaningful. The meaning of a verbal expression consists in giving reasons for convictions, actions, and emotive attitudes. The giving and taking of reasons implies a permanent self-assurance of our own actions, our own convictions, and our own emotive attitudes. We assure ourselves of the meaning of life by weighing and exchanging reasons. Reasons never express merely subjective preferences or epistemic states. (...) Therefore, they always refer to something objective. (shrink)

Why and how do norms emerge? Which norms emerge and why these ones in particular? Such questions belong to the ‘problem of the emergence of norms’, which consists of an inquiry into the production of norms in social collectives. I address this question through the ethnographic study of the emergence of ‘norms against violence’ in the political collective Occupy Geneva. I do this, first, empirically, with the analysis of my field observations; and, second, theoretically, by discussing my findings. In consequence (...) of two episodes categorized as sexual assaults that occurred in their camp, the members of Occupy Geneva decided to tackle those issues in a general assembly. Their goal was to amend their first charter of good conduct in order to reform its norms and complete it with norms aiming to regulate ‘facts’ of ‘unjustified violence’. During a collective deliberation, new norms were devised, debated and consensually adopted. The writing of the new charter took place in a second general assembly during which the wording of the written norms was collectively decided. I show that indignation over the sexual assaults was the main motive that led to the collective deliberation, and that the entire process of the making of these norms was characterized by different collective emotions. Indeed, indignation, contempt and fear played major roles in the emergence of norms prohibiting violence, allowing punishment and exclusion of wrongdoers, and prescribing collective intervention against an aggressor to neutralize the threat represented. These findings prompt me to hypothesize that social norms emerge from emotions thanks to the latters’ internal structure; and that emotions provide causal and grounding explanations for this emergence. Thus, emotions allow us to answer the questions: ‘Why do norms emerge?’ and ‘Why do they have their specific forms?’ In short, I argue that social norms have emotional foundations. (shrink)

Deontic, as opposed to evaluative buck-passing theories seem to be easier to accept, since there appears to be an intimate connection between deontic properties, such as ‘ought’, ‘requirement’, and ‘permission’ on the one hand, and normative reasons on the other. However, it is far from obvious what, precisely, the connection consists in, and this topic has suffered from a paucity of discussion. This paper seeks to address that paucity by providing a novel deontic buck-passing view, one that avoids the pitfalls (...) both of the most straightforward view on the matter (what I call the “standard view”) as well as a recently articulated view, due to Matt Bedke. It does so by appealing first to the distinction between a reason for, and a reason against, and uses this distinction to clarify what are taken to be two fundamental, but distinct, deontic properties—ought and requirement. The resulting view allows us to capture these properties, the structural relations between them, and does so in a way that avoids making supererogation impossible. (shrink)

I am extremely grateful to Mikio Akagi, Nick Hughes, and Alison Springle for their insightful and challenging comments on Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds (Machery 2017). In this response, I wil...

This article explores the concept of blame in organizations. Existing work suggests that ‘no-blame’ approaches may be conducive to organizational learning and may foster innovation. However, both the apparently strong public appetite for blaming, and research into no-blame approaches, suggest that wider application of ‘no-blame’ in organizations may not be straightforward. The article explores the contribution of the rich philosophical literature on blame to this debate, and considers the implications of philosophical ideas for the no-blame idea. In doing so, it (...) identifies conceptual and practical issues, sheds light on why the benefits of ‘no-blame’ may be difficult to realize, and offers the basis for an alternative approach. The article also contributes by providing foundations for future research, and identifies some fruitful lines of enquiry. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a view about machine autonomy grounded in the theoretical frameworks of 4E cognition and PF Strawson’s reactive attitudes. I begin with critical discussion of White, and conclude that his view is strongly committed to functionalism as it has developed in mainstream analytic philosophy since the 1950s. After suggesting that there is good reason to resist this view by appeal to developments in 4E cognition, I propose an alternative view of machine autonomy. Namely, machines count as (...) autonomous when we members of the moral community adopt reactive attitudes in response to their actions. I distinguish this view from White’s and suggest assets and liabilities of this approach. (shrink)

I argue for an account of the vulnerability of trust, as a product of our need for secure social attachments to individuals and to a group. This account seeks to explain why it is true that, when we trust or distrust someone, we are susceptible to being betrayed by them, rather than merely disappointed or frustrated in our goals. What we are concerned about in matters of trust is, at the basic level, whether we matter, in a non-instrumental way, to (...) that individual, or to the group of which they are a member. We have this concern as a result of a drive to form secure social attachments. This makes us vulnerable in the characteristic way of being susceptible to betrayal, because how the other acts in such matters can demonstrate our lack of worth to them, or to the group, thereby threatening the security of our attachment, and eliciting the reactive attitudes characteristic of betrayal. (shrink)

According to some philosophers, if moral agency is understood in behaviourist terms, robots could become moral agents that are as good as or even better than humans. Given the behaviourist conception, it is natural to think that there is no interesting moral difference between robots and humans in terms of moral agency (call it the _equivalence thesis_). However, such moral differences exist: based on Strawson’s account of participant reactive attitude and Scanlon’s relational account of blame, I argue that a distinct (...) kind of reason available to humans—call it _human-relative reason_—is not available to robots. The difference in moral reason entails that sometimes an action is morally permissible for humans, but not for robots. Therefore, when developing moral robots, we cannot consider only what humans can or cannot do. I use examples of paternalism to illustrate my argument. (shrink)

In a well-known passage from 'The Red Lily', Anatole France retorts ironically: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread”. The passage highlights the different burdens experienced by different people when deciding to act or not act in certain ways. This paper critically analyzes this problem; specifically, how we ought to allocate personal responsibility for actions performed by agents who each experience different (...) social, economic, political, and internal and external influences. First, the paper outlines some prevailing conceptions of personal responsibility in the literature. Second, it offers a critique of these views, arguing that they each suffer from a variety of conceptual and practical flaws. Third, a basic framework I call the continuum- threshold account of responsibility is proposed. The account distinguishes between responsibility and blameworthiness, addresses many of our objections against other prevailing conceptions of responsibility, and takes into account background structural conditions while retaining the scope for responsibility and moral agency. (shrink)

Epistemologists of testimony have focused almost exclusively on the epistemic dynamics of simple testimony. We do sometimes testify by ways of simple, single sentence assertions. But much of our testimony is narratively structured. I argue that narrative testimony gives rise to a form of epistemic dependence that is far richer and more far reaching than the epistemic dependence characteristic of simple testimony.

Philosophical tradition has long held that free will is necessary for moral responsibility. We report experimental results that show that the folk do not think free will is necessary for moral responsibility. Our results also suggest that experimental investigation of the relationship is ill served by a focus on incompatibilism versus compatibilism. We propose an alternative framework for empirical moral psychology in which judgments of free will and moral responsibility can vary independently in response to many factors. We also suggest (...) that, in response to some factors, the necessity relation may run from responsibility to free will. (shrink)

It is widely believed that we ought not to criticize others for wrongs that we ourselves have committed. The author draws out and challenges some of the background assumptions about the practice of criticism that underlie our attraction to this claim, such as the tendency to think of criticism either as a social sanction or as a didactic intervention. The author goes on to offer a taxonomy of cases in which the moral legitimacy of criticism is challenged on the grounds (...) that the critic him- or herself engages in the behavior that he or she criticizes in others. The author argues that, in each type of case, the would-be critics should not constrain their participation in moral discourse on the grounds that they are not themselves innocent of the wrongdoing they criticize in others. (shrink)

Philosophers discussing forgiveness have usually been split between those who think that forgiveness is typically virtuous, even when the wrongdoer doesn’t repent, and those who think that, for forgiveness to be virtuous, certain pre-conditions must be satisfied. I argue that Darwall’s second-personal account of morality offers significant theoretical support for the latter view. I argue that if, as Darwall claims, reactive attitudes issue a demand, this demand needs to be adequately answered for forgiveness to be warranted. It follows that we (...) should reject the thesis that unconditional forgiveness is appropriate in the absence of repentance. (shrink)

When we focus on asymmetries of power in our society, we find that blame and praise are unfairly distributed, partly due to cultural narratives that favour and exonerate the privileged. This paper provides a partial explanation for this skewed distribution of blame and praise. I draw on three analyses of disappearance narratives that erase and exonerate privileged perpetrators and therefore skew the responsibility system in their favour. Then I defend an emancipatory theory of responsibility that treats blame and praise as (...) communicative entities that can, and should, be used to debunk and dismantle these disappearance narratives, along with other oppressive ideologies. Blame and praise, on my emancipatory proposal, serve to identify and take a stand against agents of oppression and to recognize and celebrate resisters. (shrink)

Envy and resentment are generally thought to be unpleasant and unethical emotions which ought to be condemned. I argue that both envy and resentment, in some important forms, are moral emotions connected with concern for justice, understood in terms of desert and entitlement. They enable us to recognise injustice, work as a spur to acting against it and connect us to others. Thus, we should accept these emotions as part of the ethical life.

RESUMEN: En su Teoría de los Sentimientos Morales Adam Smith propone una ética que concilia dos paradigmas habitualmente considerados como incompatibles: una ética de virtudes, con normas orientativas e ideales de excelencia, y una ética con reglas universales que se aplican en todos los casos sin excepción. Smith lo hace cambiando el punto de vista desde el que se realiza el juicio moral, a una perspectiva que llamaré "simpatético-imparcial", y que corresponde a "los sentimientos simpatéticos de un espectador imparcial y (...) bien informado". Este novedoso punto de vista le permite introducir características modernas a la ética clásica de la virtud para dar una nueva justificación a las virtudes positivas, así como cambiar el modo de entender las "reglas o principios universales". De este modo, Smith construye una ética capaz de dar cuenta, dentro del mismo marco teórico, tanto de los ideales de excelencia propios de la virtud, como de los imperativos universales modernos. ABSTRACT: In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith reconciles two moral paradigms that are usually considered incompatible: an ethics of virtue, with general guidelines and ideals of excellence, and an ethics with universal rules, which must be applied to all cases without exceptions. Smith makes this possible by shifting the perspective from which moral judgments are assessed to what I call the 'sympathetic-impartial' perspective, which stands for "the sympathetic feelings of an impartial and well-informed spectator". From this new standpoint, Smith is able to introduce some modern features into classic virtue ethics and provide a different justification for positive virtues, as well as to change the way 'universal norms or principles' are understood. Accordingly, Smith's theory accounts simultaneously, and within the same theoretical framework, for both ancient-like virtues and their ideals of excellence and for modern-like universal imperatives. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the debate on whether we can have reason to do what we are unable to do. I take as my starting point two papers recently published in Philosophical Studies , by Bart Streumer and Ulrike Heuer, which defend the two dominant opposing positions on this issue. Briefly, whereas Streumer argues that we cannot have reason to do what we are unable to do, Heuer argues that we can have reason to do what we are unable to (...) do when we can get closer to success but cannot have reason to try to do what we are unable to do when we cannot get closer to success. In this paper, I reject both positions as they are presented, on the grounds that neither can accommodate an important category of reasons, which are the reasons to realise and to try to realise dimensions of value that lie at the boundary of what is realisable, specifically, genuinely valuable ideals. I defend a third view that we can have reason to do and to try to do what we are unable to do even when we cannot, in Heuer’s sense, get closer to success. Moreover, I argue that we can have reason to realise and to try to realise genuinely valuable ideals for their own sake and not simply for the sake of achieving mundane, realisable ends. (shrink)

Persuasive design draws on our basic psychological makeup to build products that make our engagement with them habitual. It uses variable rewards, creates Fear of Missing Out, and leverages social approval to incrementally increase and maintain user engagement. Social media and networking platforms, video games, and slot machines are all examples of persuasive technologies. Recent attention has focused on the dangers of PD: It can deceptively prod users into forming habits that help the company’s bottom line but not the user’s (...) wellbeing. But PD is not inherently immoral. We can take advantage of our psychological biases to make beneficial changes in ways that enhance our agency rather than limit it. Knowing that a tool is persuasively designed is a consideration in favor of using it when we are trying to break bad habits, such as smoking. How are we to conceptually distinguish between ethical and unethical uses of PD? In this paper, I argue that unethical uses of PD betray or erode our trust. Annette Baier offers a moral test for trust: If gaining knowledge about what other parties do with our trust in them would lead us to stop trusting, then that trusting relationship is immoral. I apply this test to the case of PD. Using trust as a litmus test for ferreting out unethical PD has several advantages, one of which is that it reveals how the harm of unethical PD extends beyond the individual to her wider social network. I close the paper by investigating these cascading effects. (shrink)

Trust is critical for social life, and yet it is alarmingly fragile. It is easily damaged and difficult to repair. Philosophers studying trust have often noted that basic kind of trust needs to be in place in order for social life to be possible. Although philosophers have suggested that basic trust must exist, they have not tried to describe in explicit terms what this basic trust looks like, or how it comes to be. In this article I will identify and (...) describe a basic form of trust that I call recognition trust. It is a latent expectation we have in others to respect our moral status as persons. By conceptualizing recognition trust, I can explain why trust is not just a useful tool for social cooperation: having our personhood recognized is necessary for living a minimally decent human life, and trust is a necessary element of recognition. First, I motivate the need for conceptualizing a basic form of trust by looking at cases of moral injury and our inherent vulnerability. Such injuries involve the betrayal of an expectation we have in others to recognize us as persons with moral status. Second, I dig deeper into this basic human need of recognition that is thwarted in moral injuries. I argue that fulfilling this basic need requires a particular kind of trust that others will not morally injure us. Third, I give shape to recognition trust by describing its core features, showing why it is a candidate for basic trust. Finally, I defend my concept of recognition trust against a pair of objections. (shrink)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s book Never Let Me Go is a thoughtful and provocative exploration of what it means to be human. Drawing on insights from the hermeneutic-phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, I argue that the movement of Ishiguro’s story can be understood in terms of actualising the human potential for autonomous action. Liberal theories take autonomy to be concerned with analytically and ethically isolatable social units directing their lives in accordance with self-interested preferences, arrived at by means of rational calculation. However, I (...) argue that such theories are simplistic abstractions from our human-life world, distorting the fundamental embodied, embedded, and relational nature of autonomy. When we attend closely to our concrete, lived existence we see instead that autonomy is about responding appropriately to others with whom we share a world. As we follow the path of Ishiguro’s central character Kathy H., we are shown how an awareness and acceptance of our existential finitude as precarious and fallible creatures is necessary for guiding such appropriate interactions. As Kathy grows and is affirmed into her life-world, which grounds and supports her Being, she moves from heteronomy to autonomy; from being moved by external laws to embodying those laws, thereby becoming autonomous. This is exemplified by her appropriation of the carer role, through which she responds in a fitting way to those with whom she shares her world, bearing the weight of and dwelling responsibly within our human condition. (shrink)

In the luck egalitarian literature, one influential formulation of luck egalitarianism does not specify whether equalities that do not reflect people’s equivalent exercises of responsibility are bad with regard to inequality. This equivocation gives rise to two competing versions of luck egalitarianism: asymmetrical and symmetrical luck egalitarianism. According to the former, while inequalities due to luck are unjust, equalities due to luck are not necessarily so. The latter view, by contrast, affirms the undesirability of equalities as well as inequalities insofar (...) as they are due to luck. The symmetrical view, we argue, is by far the more compelling, both by internal luck egalitarian standards and in light of the external rightist emphasis on choice and responsibility to which luck egalitarianism may partly be seen as a response. Our main case for the symmetrical view is that when some people, against a background of equal opportunities, do not exercise their responsibility to the same degree as others, they cannot justifiably call for equalizing measures to be put in place. Indeed, such measures would be positively unfair. The symmetrical view, accordingly, rejects compensation in such cases, whereas the asymmetrical view, implausibly, enjoins it. We also examine two objections to this argument. First, that this view fails to qualify as genuinely egalitarian, instead collapsing the notion of equality into the notion of desert. Second, that the opposing asymmetrical view, in contrast to the symmetrical view, can draw support from its compatibility with sufficientarian concerns. Both objections are rebutted. We conclude that luck egalitarians are best served by endorsing the symmetrical, luck-neutralizing stance. (shrink)

The acquisition of genetic information (GI) confronts both the affected individuals and healthcare providers with difficult, ambivalent decisions. Genetic responsibility (GR) has become a key concept in both ethical and socioempirical literature addressing how and by whom decision-making with respect to the morality of GI is approached. However, despite its prominence, the precise meaning of the concept of GR remains vague. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on the usage of the concept of GR in qualitative, socioempirical studies, to (...) identify the main interpretations and to provide conceptual clarification. The review identified 75 studies with primarily an Anglo-American setting. The studies focused on several agents: the individual, the family, the parent, the healthcare professional, and the institution and refer to the concept of GR on the basis of either a rational/principle-oriented approach or an affective/relational approach. A subtype of the rational/principle-oriented approach is the reactive approach. The review shows how the concept of GR is useful for analyzing and theorizing about socioempirical findings within qualitative socioempirical studies and also reveals conceptual deficits in terms of insufficient theoretical accuracy and heterogeneity, and in the rarity of reflection on cultural variance. The vagueness and multiplicity of meanings for GR in socioempirical studies can be avoided by more normative-theoretical explication of the underlying premises. This would provide a higher degree of differentiation of empirical findings. Thereby, the complex findings associated with the individual and social implications of genetic testing in empirical studies can be better addressed from a theoretical point of view and can subsequently have a stronger impact on normative and policy debates. (shrink)

This thesis is about what a normative reason is and how reasons relate to oughts. I argue that normative reasons are to be understood as relational properties of favouring or disfavouring. I then examine the question: What is the relation between reasons, so understood, and what we ought to do, believe, or feel? I argue that the relation is an explanatory one. We should explain what we ought to do in terms of reasons, and not the other way around. This (...) view faces a number of difficulties, in particular in accounting for supererogatory acts and the distinction between an action being required and an action being recommended. The analysis that I provide explains how we can solve these problems. In providing such an analysis, this thesis aims to be a contribution to the discussion of how we might elucidate the structure of what is sometimes called normativity. (shrink)

When we think about what others believe and want, we are usually affected by what we know about their attitudes. If I’m aware that another person believes something, I have an opportunity to agree or disagree with it. If I think that another person wants something, I can endorse or disapprove of her desire. The importance of such reactions to attributed beliefs and desires has thus far been overlooked in philosophy of mind where the focus has been on explanatory and (...) predictive roles of attitude attribution. The primary goal of this thesis is to fill this lacuna and to articulate the indispensability of such reactions – agreement/disagreement and endorsement/disapproval – for social cognition. In the process of doing it I also show how these initial reactions ground certain further possible responses in intersubjective communication: manipulation, negotiation or adoption of attributed attitudes. The second aim of this thesis is to explicate what is it about belief and desire attributions that makes the responses I’ve described possible. Because one can agree or disagree both with beliefs and assertions and endorse or disapprove both desires and requests, I argue that we should understand belief attributions in terms of assertions and desire attributions in terms of requests. When we think what someone believes and wants, we treat her as a conversation partner because her attitudes call for the same responses as speech acts do, even if she hasn’t made any explicit assertion or request herself. In short, beliefs and desires have communicative significance. Given such significance, we can also see what one needs to take into consideration when attributing these attitudes to another. My answer in the thesis is that belief and desire attributions have to be grounded in facts about the behaviour and well-being of attributees and that these facts also constitute the nature of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

如果機器人的發展要能如科幻想像一般，在沒有人類監督下自動地工作，就必須確定機器人不會做出道德上錯誤的行為。 根據行為主義式的道德主體觀，若就外顯行為來看，機器人在道德上的表現跟人類一般，機器人就可被視為道德主體。從這很自然地引伸出機器人的道德擬人主義：凡適用於人類的道德規則就適用於機器人。我反對道德擬人主義 ，藉由史特勞森對於人際關係與反應態度的洞見，並以家長主義行為為例，我論述由於機器人缺乏人格性，無法參與人際關係，因此在關於家長主義行為上，機器人應該比人類受到更嚴格的限制。.

In this dissertation I develop a pluralist theory of actual causation. I argue that we need to distinguish between total, path-changing, and contributing actual causation. The pluralist theory accounts for a set of example cases that have raised problems for extant unified theories and it is supported by considerations about the various functions of causal concepts. The dissertation also analyses the context-sensitivity of actual causation. I show that principled accounts of causal reasoning in legal inquiry face limitations and I argue (...) that the context-sensitivity of actual causation is best represented by a distinction between default and deviant states in causal models. (shrink)

Current sentencing practice in England and Wales is incoherent. This stems from the combination of conflicting philosophies of punishment, with no clear method adopted by sentencers in choosing between them. This presents a significant challenge as sentencing can have a profound impact on an offender’s life, as well as having wider implications for family members. Therefore, a coherent decision-making process is essential in order to limit arbitrary sentencing and support the legitimacy of the penal system. This thesis argues that Restorative (...) Justice might offer a more coherent decision-making process. Restorative Justice is hypothesised to operate as a kind of mediation process between the philosophies of punishment and understandings of justice held by participants. Their voluntarily agreed outcome should therefore represent the best possible compromise between participants’ ideas of justice and philosophies of punishment. Analysis of existing empirical research has been undertaken, involving the examination of existing studies of Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland, England and Wales, Australia and New Zealand. This empirical research has explored problems which can arise in practice for the theoretical conception of Restorative Justice as a mediation process between ideas. The thesis concludes that Restorative Justice can in theory offer a more coherent process of sentencing, but that there are a number of obstacles to realising this in practice. (shrink)

This paper aims to address possible psychoanalytical explanations for the heinous acts in which terrorists, particularly ISIS, engage. It focuses on Harold D. Lasswell’s principles of the id, ego, and superego as well as Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory. Within the framework of these two theories, relevant psychological and social psychological theories are discussed in order to explore a possible connection between the psyche of violent perpetrators and their actions. By exploring these connections, I find that there may be (...) more nuanced psychological explanations for these violent acts, which could lead to new methods of weakening perceived biases, intergroup conflicts, and extremist behavior. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce que l’indignation ? Cette émotion est souvent conçue comme une émotion morale qu’une tierce-partie éprouve vis-à-vis des injustices qu’un agent inflige à un patient. L’indignation aurait ainsi trait aux injustices et serait éprouvée par des individus qui n’en seraient eux-mêmes pas victimes. Cette émotion motiverait la tierce-partie indignée à tenter de réguler l’injustice en l’annulant et en punissant son auteur. Cet article entreprend de montrer que cette conception de l’indignation n’est que partielle. En effet, l’indignation ne porte pas que (...) sur les injustices, mais plus généralement sur les torts injustifiés. Ce faisant, l’indignation peut être une émotion morale, mais aussi une émotion conventionnelle ou esthétique. De plus, elle peut être éprouvée par les individus victime des torts : elle n’est pas uniquement éprouvée par des tierces-parties. De la sorte, les individus indignés qui subissent les torts peuvent eux-mêmes chercher à les annuler et à punir leurs auteurs. Puisqu’elle peut être éprouvée tant par des spectateurs que par les personnes qui subissent les torts et qu’elle incline ceux qui l’éprouvent à faire appel à d’autres personnes pour réguler ces torts, l’indignation vécue individuellement est partageable : elle peut devenir une émotion collective jouant un rôle fondamental dans la régulation sociale en contribuant au renforcement de normes sociales existantes ou à l’émergence de nouvelles normes sociales associées aux idées du juste prévalant dans la société considérée. (shrink)