This paper examines a recent argument in favour of strong precautionary action—possibly including working to hasten human extinction—on the basis of a decision-theoretic view that accommodates the risk-attitudes of all affected while giving more weight to the more risk-averse attitudes. First, we dispute the need to take into account other people’s attitudes towards risk at all. Second we argue that a version of the non-identity problem undermines the case for doing so in the context of future people. Lastly, we suggest (...) that we should not work to hasten human extinction, even if significant risk aversion is warranted. (shrink)

I argue that it’s quite comprehensible to get upset about metaethical nihilism, to indulge what I call nihilistic despair. When we lose the objective moral or normative point of view, we lose the promise of luck-immune guidance and categorical importance, things many of us hope for. This is all quite Williams-friendly, but I reject his puzzling but suggestive remarks that nihilistic despair must be a self-pitying muddle. Finally, I argue that internalism about reasons is even more depressing than outright nihilism, (...) in one way at least. (shrink)

When discussing the extinction of humanity, there does not seem to be any clear agreement about what ‘humanity’ really means. One aim of this paper is to show that it is a more slippery concept than it might at first seem. A second aim is to show the relationship between what constitutes or defines humanity and what gives it value. Often, whether and how we ought to prevent human extinction depends on what we take humanity to mean, which in turn (...) depends on what we value about humans. Finally, I will offer a definition of humanity that I argue offers a plausible account of when we might say humanity has gone extinct, and reflects what we value about humans, and relatedly, what many actually care about in terms of why we should be preserved. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is frequently billed as a remedy to the problems of deontological and consequentialist ethics that Bernard Williams identified in his critique of “the morality system.” But how far can virtue ethics be relied upon to avoid these problems? What does Williams’s critique of the morality system mean for virtue ethics? To answer this question, we offer a more principled characterisation of the defining features of the morality system in terms of its organising ambition—to shelter life against luck. This (...) reveals the system to be multiply realisable: the same function can be served by substantively different but functionally equivalent ideas. After identifying four requirements that ethical thought must meet to function as a morality system, we show that they can also be met by certain constellations of virtue-ethical ideas. We thereby demonstrate the possibility of virtue-ethical morality systems raising problems analogous to those besetting their deontological and consequentialist counterparts. This not only widens the scope of Williams’s critique and brings out the cautionary aspect of his legacy for virtue ethics. It also offers contemporary virtue ethicists a more principled understanding of the functional features that mark out morality systems and lie at the root of their problems, thereby helping them to avoid or overcome these problems. (shrink)

Bernard Williams articulated his later political philosophy notably in response to Ronald Dworkin, who, striving for coherence or integrity among our political concepts, sought to immunize the concepts of liberty and equality against conflict. Williams, doubtful that we either could or should eliminate the conflict, resisted the pursuit of conceptual integrity. Here, I reconstruct this Dworkin–Williams debate with an eye to drawing out ideas of ongoing philosophical and political importance. The debate not only exemplifies Williams's political realism and its connection (...) to his critique of the morality system. It also illustrates the virtues and hazards of contemporary efforts to ameliorate or engineer our concepts; it indicates what political philosophy might look to in appraising political concepts; it adverts to the different needs these concepts have to meet if they are to sustain a politics of pluralism, deal with polarization, and secure the consent of those who end up on the losing side of political decisions; and it presents us with two starkly contrasting conceptions of politics itself, of the place of political values within it, and of our prospects of reducing the uncomfortably conflictual character of those values through philosophy. (shrink)

Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 3, Page 181-193, September 2022.

Pragmatic genealogies seek to explain ideas by regarding them, primarily, not as answers to philosophical questions, but as practical solutions to practical problems. Here I argue that pragmatic genealogies can inform the formation of philosophical canons. But the rationale for resorting to genealogy in this connection is not the familiar one that genealogy renders the concepts of the present intelligible by relating them to the concerns of the past—the claim is rather the reverse one, that genealogy renders the concepts of (...) the past intelligible by relating them to the concerns of the present: past thinkers can be made to speak to us by revealing how their ideas tie in with our concerns, in the sense of helping us to remedy practical problems we still face in some form. (shrink)

If ethical reflection on which concepts to use has an avatar, it must be Nietzsche, who took more seriously than most the question of what concepts one should live by, and regarded many of our inherited concepts as deeply problematic. Moreover, his eschewal of traditional attempts to derive the one right set of concepts from timeless rational foundations renders his conceptual ethics strikingly modern, raising the prospect of a Nietzschean alternative to Wittgensteinian non-foundationalism. Yet Nietzsche appears to engage in two (...) seemingly contrary modes of concept evaluation: one looks to concepts’ effects, the other to what concepts express. I offer an account of the expressive character of concepts which unifies these two modes and accounts for Nietzsche’s seemingly bifurcating interests. His fundamental concern is with the effects concepts are likely to have going forward, and it is precisely this concern that motivates his preoccupation with what concepts express. He evaluates concepts by asking for whom they have a point, working back from a concept via the need it fills to the conditions that engender that need and thereby render the concept pointful. For a concept to be pointful is for it to serve the concerns of its users through its effects. But even when it is not pointful, a concept expresses the presuppositions of its pointfulness, which we can work back to by asking who would have need of such a concept. What emerges is a powerful approach to conceptual ethics that looks beyond the formal virtues and vices of concepts at the presuppositions we buy into by using them. (shrink)

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being ‘principally about how things are in moral philosophy’? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams’s solution (...) to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams’s philosophical concerns – with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world – to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition’s inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 937-947, December 2021.

The question of the basis of human equality has recently gained increasing attention. However, much of the literature has focused on whether persons—understood as fully competent adults—have equal moral status, while relatively less attention has been devoted to the analysis of what grounds the equal moral status of those human beings who are not fully competent adults. This paper contributes to this debate by addressing the question of the equality of moral status between adults and children. Specifically, this paper has (...) three aims. First, it provides a conceptual map of this complex issue. Second, it argues that the challenges that have been raised against standard accounts of persons’ equal moral status are even more forceful when applied to the question of adults and children’s moral equality. Finally, it examines what a commitment to adults and children’s moral _inequality_ entails and what it does not, thereby showing that the justificatory role of the principle of moral equality is not as far-reaching as commonly assumed. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 676-692, June 2022.

Is the idea of the voluntary important? Those who think so tend to regard it as an idea that can be metaphysically deepened through a theory about voluntary action, while those who think it a superficial idea that cannot coherently be deepened tend to neglect it as unimportant. Parting company with both camps, I argue that the idea of the voluntary is at once important and superficial—it is an essentially superficial notion that performs important functions, but can only perform them (...) if we refrain from deepening it. After elaborating the contrast between superficial and deepened ideas of the voluntary, I identify the important functions that the superficial idea performs in relation to demands for fairness and freedom. I then suggest that theories trying to deepen the idea exemplify a problematic moralization of psychology—they warp psychological ideas to ensure that moral demands can be met. I offer a three-tier model of the problematic dynamics this creates, and show why the pressure to deepen the idea should be resisted. On this basis, I take stock of what an idea of the voluntary worth having should look like, and what residual tensions with moral ideas this leaves us with. (shrink)

Interpreting Bernard Williams’s ethical philosophy is not easy. His style is deceptively conversational; apparently direct, yet argumentatively inexplicit and allusive. He is moreover committed to evading ready-made philosophical “-isms.” All this reinforces the already distinct impression that the structure of his philosophy is a web of interrelated commitments where none has unique priority. Against this impression, however, I will venture that the contours of his philosophy become clearest if one considers that there is a single, unchanging root conviction from which (...) his ethical philosophy grows. Despite the perpetual motion of his philosophical thought—its erudition, originality, range, and unceasing forward momentum—still, I contend, there is something unchanging at the heart of it. I will show this by reference to three signature theses: internal reasons, the relativism of distance, and the porous borders of philosophy and history. I will argue that the root conviction of which these are the fruits is the conviction that the constraints of universal rationality seriously underdetermine how one should live. This, I believe, is the vision of the human ethical condition that constitutes the largely inexplicit yet utterly fundamental presupposition beneath Williams’s ethical philosophy taken as a whole. I label the object of this root conviction ethical freedom, and thus portray Williams as a philosopher of ethical freedom. (shrink)

Social and political concepts are indispensable yet historically and culturally variable in a way that poses a challenge: how can we reconcile confident commitment to them with awareness of their contingency? In this article, we argue that available responses to this problem—Foundationalism, Ironism, and Right Wittgensteinianism—are unsatisfactory. Instead, we draw on the work of Bernard Williams to tease out and develop a Left Wittgensteinian response. In present-day pluralistic and historically self-conscious societies, mere confidence in our concepts is not enough. For (...) modern individuals who are ineluctably aware of conceptual change, engaged concept-use requires reasonable confidence, and in the absence of rational foundations, the possibility of reasonable confidence is tied to the possibility of critically discriminating between conceptual practices worth endorsing and those worth rejecting. We show that Left Wittgensteinianism offers such a basis for critical discrimination through point-based explanations of conceptual practices which relate them to the needs of concept-users. We end by considering how Left Wittgensteinianism guides our understanding of how conceptual practices can be revised in the face of new needs. (shrink)

In situations where we ought to tolerate what we morally disapprove of we are faced with the following moral conflict: we ought to interfere with X, we ought to tolerate X, we can do either, but we cannot do both. And the aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship between toleration as a value commitment and value pluralist and value monist approaches to moral conflict. Firstly, value monists side-step the moral conflict at the heart of toleration. Nonetheless, secondly, (...) it is not the case that toleration as a value commitment is entailed by value pluralism. Rather, the value pluralist line of argument that can be defended is that toleration is simply one value among others, that there is no general rule showing that it has priority over other values, but also that it cannot be excluded altogether as a value. (shrink)

Bernard Williams argues that philosophy is in some deep way akin to history. This article is a novel exploration and defense of the Williams thesis —though in a way anathema to Williams himself. The key idea is to apply a central moral from what is sometimes called the analytic philosophy of history of the 1960s to the philosophy of philosophy of today, namely, the separation of explanation and laws. I suggest that an account of causal explanation offered by David Lewis (...) may be modified to bring out the way in which this moral applies to philosophy, and so to defend the Williams thesis. I discuss in detail the consequences of the thesis for the issue of philosophical progress and note also several further implications: for the larger context of contemporary metaphilosophy, for the relation of philosophy to other subjects, and for explaining, or explaining away, the belief that success in philosophy requires a field-specific ability or brilliance. (shrink)

This paper puts forward an account of blame combining two ideas that are usually set up against each other: that blame performs an important function, and that blame is justified by the moral reasons making people blameworthy rather than by its functionality. The paper argues that blame could not have developed in a purely instrumental form, and that its functionality itself demands that its functionality be effaced in favour of non-instrumental reasons for blame—its functionality is self-effacing. This notion is sharpened (...) and it is shown how it offers an alternative to instrumentalist or consequentialist accounts of blame which preserves their animating insight while avoiding their weaknesses by recasting that insight in an explanatory role. This not only allows one to do better justice to the authority and autonomy of non-instrumental reasons for blame, but also reveals that autonomy to be a precondition of blame’s functionality. Unlike rival accounts, it also avoids the “alienation effect” that renders blame unstable under reflection by undercutting the authority of the moral reasons which enable it to perform its function in the first place. It instead yields a vindicatory explanation that strengthens our confidence in those moral reasons. (shrink)

According to a tradition going back to Socrates, one should thoroughly examine the grounds of one’s judgments before settling on what one has reason to do or believe. According to contemporary metaethical constructivism, assumed in this essay, reflective scrutiny is also central to assessing a judgment’s claim to justification. This essay argues against the injunctions to thoroughly examine oneself and seek ultimate reasons for one’s normative judgments. In other words, the essay argues against the ideal of the philosophical way of (...) life. It shows that in most cases one does not have reason to question the practical conclusion of one’s initial deliberation. It is only under very limited conditions, specified in the essay, that one is justified in engaging in further reflection. Furthermore, the essay argues that if one does go for full self-examination, the consequences are most likely to be bad for oneself, given one’s practical interests. (shrink)

Amplifying Bernard Williams’ critique of the Nietzschean project of a revaluation of values, this paper mounts a critique of the idea that whether values will help us to live can serve as a criterion for choosing which values to live by. I explore why it might not serve as a criterion and highlight a number of further difficulties faced by the Nietzschean project. I then come to Nietzsche's defence, arguing that if we distinguish valuations from values, there is at least (...) one form of the project which overcomes those difficulties. Finally, however, I show that even on this reading, the project must either fall prey to ‘Saint-Just's illusion’ or fall back into the problems it was supposed to escape. This highlights important difficulties faced by the Nietzschean project and its descendants while also explaining why Williams, who was so Nietzschean in other respects, remained wary of the revaluation of values as a project. (shrink)

When a novel scientific theory conflicts with otherwise plausible moral assumptions, we do not treat that as evidence against the theory. We may scrutinize the empirical data more keenly and take extra care over its interpretation, but science is in some core sense immune to moral refutation. Can the same be said of philosophical theories (or the non-ethical, ‘metaphysical’ ones at least)? If a position in the philosophy of mind, for example, is discovered to have eye-widening moral import, does that (...) count against it at all? Actual responses by philosophers to the question of whether unanticipated moral consequences of metaphysical theories have evidential force are scattered, implicit, divergent, under-argued, and sometimes even self-undermining. The present discussion is, most immediately, an attempt to sort out the confusion. Beyond that, it exploits the new perspective this question gives us on a familiar topic: the relation of philosophy to science. (shrink)

Reasons internalists claim that facts about normative reasons for action are facts about which actions would promote an agent’s goals and values. Reasons internalism is popular, even though paradigmatic versions have moral consequences many find unwelcome. This article reconstructs an influential but understudied argument for reasons internalism, the “if I were you” argument, which is due to Bernard Williams and Kate Manne. I raise an objection to the argument and argue that replying to it requires reasons internalists to accept controversial (...) metaethical or epistemological commitments with which their theory has not traditionally been associated. (shrink)

According to one influential view, requirements to elicit consent for medical interventions and other interactions gain their rationale from the respect we owe to each other as autonomous, or self-governing, rational agents. Yet the popular presumption that consent has a central role to play in legitimate intervention extends beyond the domain of cases where autonomous agency is present to cases where far from fully autonomous agents make choices that, as likely as not, are going to be against their own best (...) interest. The question how we should understand the rationale for eliciting consent in this range of ‘non-ideal’ cases is comparatively ill understood. In this paper, I explore the prospects of accounting for consent requirements in such ‘non-ideal’ cases by appealing to a set of agency-based interests; including an interest in playing a meaningful part in joint decisions affecting ourselves and others. (shrink)

We suffer from genealogical anxiety when we worry that the contingent origins of our representations, once revealed, will somehow undermine or cast doubt on those representations. Is such anxiety ever rational? Many have apparently thought so, from pre-Socratic critics of Greek theology to contemporary evolutionary debunkers of morality. One strategy for vindicating critical genealogies is to see them as undermining the epistemic standing of our representations—the justification of our beliefs, the aptness of our concepts, and so on. I argue that (...) this strategy is not as promising as it might first seem. Instead, I suggest that critical genealogies can wield a sort of meta-epistemic power; in so far as we wish to resist the genealogical critic, we are under pressure to see ourselves as the beneficiaries of a certain kind of good luck: what I call genealogical luck. But there is also a resolutely non-epistemic way of understanding the power of critical genealogies, one that is essential, I argue, for understanding the genealogical projects of various theorists, including Nietzsche and Catharine MacKinnon. For critical genealogies can reveal what it is that our representations do—and what we, in turn, might do with them. (shrink)

Non-naturalist realists are committed to the belief, famously voiced by Parfit, that if there are no non-natural facts then nothing matters. But it is morally objectionable to conditionalise all our moral commitments on the question of whether there are non-natural facts. Non-natural facts are causally inefficacious, and so make no difference to the world of our experience. And to be a realist about such facts is to hold that they are mind-independent. It is compatible with our experiences that there are (...) no non-natural facts, or that they are very different from what we think. As Nagel says, realism makes scepticism intelligible. So the non-naturalist must hold that you might be wrong that your partner matters, even if you are correct about every natural, causal fact about your history and relationship. But to hold that conditional attitude to your partner would be a moral betrayal. So believing non-naturalist realism involves doing something immoral. (shrink)

Why would philosophers interested in the points or functions of our conceptual practices bother with genealogical explanations if they can focus directly on paradigmatic examples of the practices we now have?? To answer this question, I compare the method of pragmatic genealogy advocated by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker—a method whose singular combination of fictionalising and historicising has met with suspicion—with the simpler method of paradigm-based explanation. Fricker herself has recently moved towards paradigm-based explanation, arguing that it is (...) a more perspicuous way of reaping the same explanatory pay-off as pragmatic genealogy while dispensing with its fictionalising and historicising. My aim is to determine when and why the reverse movement from paradigm-based explanation to pragmatic genealogy remains warranted. I argue that the fictionalising and historicising of pragmatic genealogy is well motivated, and I outline three ways in which the method earns its keep: by successfully handling historically inflected practices which paradigm-based explanation cannot handle; by revealing and arguing for connections to generic needs we might otherwise miss; and by providing comprehensive views of practices that place and relate the respects in which they serve both generic and local needs. (shrink)

This paper argues that Nietzsche is a critic of just the kind of genealogical debunking he is popularly associated with. We begin by showing that interpretations of Nietzsche which see him as engaging in genealogical debunking turn him into an advocate of nihilism, for on his own premises, any truthful genealogical inquiry into our values is going to uncover what most of his contemporaries deem objectionable origins and thus license global genealogical debunking. To escape nihilism and make room for naturalism (...) without indiscriminate subversion, we then argue, Nietzsche targets the way of thinking about values that permits genealogical debunking: far from trying to subvert values simply by uncovering their origins, Nietzsche is actively criticising genealogical debunking thus understood. Finally, we draw out the consequences of our reading for Nietzsche’s positive vision. (shrink)

Can genealogical explanations affect the space of reasons? Those who think so commonly face two objections. The first objection maintains that attempts to derive reasons from claims about the genesis of something commit the genetic fallacy—they conflate genesis and justification. One way for genealogies to side-step this objection is to focus on the functional origins of practices—to show that, given certain facts about us and our environment, certain conceptual practices are rational because apt responses. But this invites a second objection, (...) which maintains that attempts to derive current from original function suffer from continuity failure—the conditions in response to which something originated no longer obtain. This paper shows how normatively ambitious genealogies can steer clear of both problems. It first maps out various ways in which genealogies can involve non-fallacious genetic arguments before arguing that some genealogies do not invite the charge of the genetic fallacy if they are interpreted as revealing the original functions of conceptual practices. However, they then incur the burden of showing that the conditions relative to which practices function continuously obtain. Taking its cue from the genealogies of E. J. Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker, the paper shows how model-based genealogies can avoid continuity failures by identifying bases of continuity in the demands we face. (shrink)

The universe that surrounds us is vast, and we are so very small. When we reflect on the vastness of the universe, our humdrum cosmic location, and the inevitable future demise of humanity, our lives can seem utterly insignificant. Many philosophers assume that such worries about our significance reflect a banal metaethical confusion. They dismiss the very idea of cosmic significance. This, I argue, is a mistake. Worries about cosmic insignificance do not express metaethical worries about objectivity or nihilism, and (...) we can make good sense of the idea of cosmic significance and its absence. It is also possible to explain why the vastness of the universe can make us feel insignificant. This impression does turn out to be mistaken, but not for the reasons typically assumed. In fact, we might be of immense cosmic significance-though we cannot, at this point, tell whether this is the case. (shrink)

The possibility that nothing really matters can cause much anxiety, but what would it mean for that to be true? Since it couldn’t be bad that nothing matters, fearing nihilism makes little sense. However, the consequences of belief in nihilism will be far more dramatic than often thought. Many metaethicists assume that even if nothing matters, we should, and would, go on more or less as before. But if nihilism is true in an unqualified way, it can’t be the case (...) that we should go on as before. And given some plausible assumptions about our psychology, it’s also unlikely that we would go on as before: belief in nihilism will lead to loss of evaluative belief, and that will lead to loss or deflation of our corresponding subjective concerns. Now if nothing matters, then this consequence also wouldn’t matter. But this consequence will be extremely harmful if we believe in nihilism but things do matter, an asymmetry that gives us, in Pascalian fashion, pragmatic reasons not to believe in nihilism, and reasons not to try to find out whether it is really true. (shrink)

There are possible artificially intelligent beings who do not differ in any morally relevant respect from human beings. Such possible beings would deserve moral consideration similar to that of human beings. Our duties to them would not be appreciably reduced by the fact that they are non-human, nor by the fact that they owe their existence to us. Indeed, if they owe their existence to us, we would likely have additional moral obligations to them that we don’t ordinarily owe to (...) human strangers – obligations similar to those of parent to child or god to creature. Given our moral obligations to such AIs, two principles for ethical AI design recommend themselves: (1) design AIs that tend to provoke reactions from users that accurately reflect the AIs’ real moral status, and (2) avoid designing AIs whose moral status is unclear. Since human moral intuition and moral theory evolved and developed in contexts without AI, those intuitions and theories might break down or become destabilized when confronted with the wide range of weird minds that AI design might make possible. (shrink)

In this essay I focus on the idea of the univocity of being, championed by Duns Scotus and given prominence more recently by Deleuze. Although I am interested in how this idea can be established, my primary concern is with something more basic: how the idea can even be properly thought. In the course of exploring this issue, which I do partly by borrowing some ideas about logical syntax from Wittgenstein's Tractatus, I try to show how there can be dialogue (...) between analytic philosophers and those of other traditions. (shrink)

This article presents an argument for veganism, using a formal-axiomatic approach: a list of twenty axioms are explicitly stated. These axioms are all necessary conditions to derive the conclusion that veganism is a moral duty. The presented argument is a minimalist or core argument for veganism, because it is as parsimonious as possible, using the weakest conditions, the narrowest definitions, the most reliable empirical facts and the minimal assumptions necessary to reach the conclusion. If someone does not accept the conclusion, (...) logical consistency requires that s/he should be able to point at axiom on which s/he disagrees. The argument exposes hidden assumptions and provides a framework for an overview of the philosophical literature on animal rights and vegetarianism / veganism. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is a particular kind of fear. The danger to which it is a response is the possibility that the evaluative dimension of life from which we derive the values by which we live is arbitrary. If it were arbitrary, nothing we value would be valuable. There are strong reasons both for and against this kind of fear. I am concerned with understanding these reasons and judging their strengths and weaknesses.

¿Cómo pensar hoy la naturaleza y el valor de la reflexión filosófica? La influencia omnipresente del modelo del conocimiento experto parece exigir una autocomprensión de la filosofía como una disciplina entre las disciplinas. Este artículo propone que la filosofía debe resistirse a esta tentación. Defenderé, por tanto, una especie de "excepcionalismo" para la filosofía basado en la idea de que no puede pretender ser una disciplina. Sea o no cierto que hoy en día las actividades filosóficas estén legitimadas institucionalmente por (...) los principios de un Canon, voy a sugerir una estrategia de transgresión del Canon al rechazar cualquier asimilación de la filosofía a una disciplina, aunque fuera "anómala". La filosofía debe contribuir a la comprensión de nuestros diversos modos de conceptualizar y de transformar el mundo y dar sentido a la experiencia humana. La filosofía debe reclamar para sí una "estado de excepción" y abrir un espacio para cuestionar todo aquello que parece obvio e incuestionable. How to think today about the nature and value of the philosophical reflection? The pervasive influence of the model of expert knowledge seems to require a selfunderstanding of philosophy as a discipline among the disciplines. This paper argues that philosophy should resist this move. So I will defend a kind of "exceptionalism" for philosophy based on the idea that philosophy cannot pretend to be a discipline. Be true or not that philosophical activities are nowadays institutionally legitimized by the principles of a Canon, I will suggest a strategy of transgression of the Canon by rejecting any assimilation of philosophy to a discipline, even if an "anomalous" one. Philosophy must contribute to the understanding of our different ways of conceptualizing and transforming the world and to make sense of human experience. The thesis of this paper is that philosophy must claim a "state of emergency" for itself a open a space for freely questioning what it appears as obvious and unchallengeable. (shrink)

In his recent article, titled ‘Royaumont Revisited’, Overgaard challenges Dummett's view that one needs to go as far back as the late nineteenth century in order to discover examples of genuine dialogue between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy. Instead, Overgaard argues that in the 1958 Royaumont colloquium, generally judged as a failed attempt at communication between the two camps, one can find some elements which may be utilized towards re-establishing a dialogue between these two sides. Yet, emphasising this image of Royaumont (...) as a kind of battleground between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy obscures the plurality of philosophical approaches involved. Royaumont was the meeting point of more than two philosophical traditions, as can be shown by the divergent interests of its participants. Thus, though the potential for rapprochement between Oxford ‘linguistic philosophy’ and a certain strand of phenomenological thought may indeed be found among the discussions that took place during the colloquium, one should keep in mind that such rapprochement took place in the context of a meeting between, among others: continental ‘analytics’, Anglophone non-‘analytics’, French historians of philosophy, ‘analytic’ opponents of Oxford philosophy, Franciscan phenomenologists, and Oxonians who called their work ‘phenomenology’. (shrink)

The questions that I address are: ‘What ought to become of Religious Education (RE)?’ and ‘To what extent do non-religious beliefs belong in RE?’ I will argue that there are compelling reasons for studying religious and non-religious views alongside each other, but that there are serious objections to doing this in the context of any subject called ‘religious education’ and that a new compulsory, national curriculum subject called Ethics would be an appropriate context for such study.

Mill’s aim in chapter 3 of Utilitarianism is to show that his revisionary moral theory can preserve the kind of authority typically and traditionally associated with moral demands. One of his main targets is the idea that if people come to believe that morality is rooted in human sentiment then they will feel less bound by moral obligation. Chapter 3 emphasizes two claims: (1) The main motivation to ethical action comes from feelings and not from beliefs and (2) Ethical feelings (...) are highly malleable. I provide a critical examination of Mill’s use of these claims to support his argument that Utilitarianism can preserve morality’s authority. I show how the two claims, intended to form a significant rebuttal to the worry about Utilitarianism, can in fact be combined to raise powerful skeptical concerns. I explain how Mill evades the skepticism, and why contemporary philosophers who lack Millian optimism about human nature find it harder to avoid the skeptical outcome. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ philosophy is shaped by a distinctive and abiding interest in the borderlands between Philosophy and History. He famously considers moral philosophy, and particularly moral theory, to over‐step the border that marks the real ‘limits’ of the discipline, and in his later work he explicitly advances the idea of doing ‘impure’ philosophy, by which he meant philosophy that mixed itself with history. By examining the complex impression left on Williams’ historical self‐consciousness by his engagements with two very different figures (...) in the history of philosophy, namely Descartes and Wittgenstein, I will explore a number of ways in which philosophy and history are closely intertwined for Williams. This will draw out the positive vision he modelled for us of ‘impure’ philosophy—a philosophical style he took to contribute to nurturing philosophy as a humanistic discipline. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the method of genealogy in moral philosophy, with a focus on evaluating the credibility of moral progress judgments. Despite genealogy becoming a new trend in this field, I critique three types of defective grand narrative genealogies represented by the works of Peter Railton, Michael Huemer, and Nicholas Smyth. I argue that their genealogies fail to be adequate for evaluating moral progress judgments’ credibility. Railton’s genealogy lacks specificity regarding the relatum of the causal story he presents, (...) Huemer’s fails to withstand the scrutiny of historical evidence, and Smyth’s gives no clear verdict on the credibility of the moral progress judgments it explains. These failures, I argue, stem from grand narratives’ neglect of the particularities in each case of moral belief emergence. The disregard for details renders grand narratives generally inadequate for credibility evaluation. Instead, I propose a case study approach that takes into account four types of particulars in each case. I argue that this approach is more methodologically adequate in evaluating the credibility of moral progress judgments since these case-specific details are essential in determining the credibility of a moral belief. (shrink)

On the view that Nicholas Adams advocates in ‘Alternatives to Moral Common Ground’, ethics is complicit in undermining the commitments that constitute our moral lives, because by forcing us to articulate those commitments they lose their hold on us. In this paper I take Adams’ views as a starting point to explore the idea that ethics might be complicit in undermining our moral lives. Aiming to shed light on the relation between reflection and commitment, I will do two things. First, (...) I try to explain why ethics, as a reflective enterprise, undermines the unspoken hold our commitments have on us. Second, I will explore the idea that reflection is destructive in the sense that it falsifies our pre-reflective commitments. (shrink)

Political realists have devoted much effort to clarifying the methodological specificity of realist theorising and defending its consistency as an approach to political reasoning. Yet the question of how to justify the realist approach has not received the same attention. In this article, I offer a prudential justification of political realism. To do so, I first characterise realism as anti-moralism. I then outline three possible arguments for the realist approach by availing myself of recent inquiries into the metatheoretical basis of (...) realism: The metaethical, the ethical and the prudential arguments. I explain that the prudential argument offers the most solid basis for political realism because it relies on the least controversial premises. Still, I delve into the metaethical and ethical arguments for two reasons: The prudential argument takes advantage of the theses defended by the rival arguments and elaborating the other arguments shows the comparative strengths of the prudential argument. (shrink)

I argue that Kathleen Stock omits crucial information in her 2021 book Material Girls, when she debates with Thomas Laqueur, information which enables readers to appreciate the excitement in relation to his historical discovery. I argue further that this is more than just a communicational problem. I then present a reason for rejecting the theory Laqueur uncovers: the initially strange theory that there is just one sex. But I argue that the one sex theory is unlikely to be killed off (...) by this reason. I also raise a concern about Stock’s interpretation of Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford. The writing style here is influenced by an essay by a medic. (shrink)

One type of soft-line reply to manipulation arguments, which I call ‘the another-agent reply’, focuses on the existence of some controlling agent and how this can undermine the actor's moral responsibility. A well-known challenge to this type of reply is the so-called ‘machine induction’ case. This paper provides an argument for why ‘machine induction’ presents no real challenge to the another-agent reply. It further argues that any soft-liner who does not leave room for the existence of some controlling agent in (...) their explanation of why manipulation undermines responsibility will face a dilemma. Thus, instead of presenting a challenge to the another-agent reply, ‘machine induction’ actually presents a reason in support of it. (shrink)

The term “speciesism” has played a key role in debates about the moral consideration of nonhuman animals, yet little work has been dedicated to clarifying its meaning. Consequently, the concept remains poorly understood and is often employed in ways that might display a speciesist bias themselves. To address this problem, this article develops a definition of speciesism in terms of discrimination and argues in favor of its advantages over alternative accounts. After discussing the key desiderata for a definition of discrimination (...) in general and speciesism in particular, a wide and evaluative account of speciesism is presented. According to it, speciesism is unjustified consideration or treatment of those who are not classified as belonging to a certain species. The article then discusses rival accounts, namely narrow and descriptive definitions of speciesism. The article argues that such accounts are problematic as they overly restrict the scope of phenomena that can be identified as speciesist and disrupt the continuity with other forms of discrimination such as racism and sexism. (shrink)

The ethics of biological procreation has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet, as I show in this paper, much of what has come to be called procreative ethics is conducted in a strangely abstract, impersonal mode, one which stands little chance of speaking to the practical perspectives of any prospective parent. In short, the field appears to be flirting with a strange sort of practical irrelevance, wherein its verdicts are answers to questions that no-one is asking. (...) I go on to articulate a theory of what I call existential grounding, a notion which explains the role that prospective children play in the lives of many would-be parents. Procreative ethicists who want their work to have real practical relevance must, I claim, start to engage with this markedly first-personal kind of practical consideration. (shrink)