Decision-making Capacity matters to whether a patient’s decision should determine her treatment. But why it matters in this way isn’t clear. The standard story is that dmc matters because autonomy matters. And this is thought to justify dmc as a gatekeeper for autonomy – whereby autonomy concerns arise if but only if a patient has dmc. But appeals to autonomy invoke two distinct concerns: concern for authenticity – concern that a choice is consistent with an individual’s commitments; and concern for (...) sovereignty – concern that an individual exercises control over that which is hers to control. Here, I argue, neither concern can alone explain why dmc matters. Instead, dmc matters because it indicates a harmony between the two concerns – the demands of each concern are more likely to agree if a patient has dmc. This vindicates the standard story, but also makes clear that dmc is an inappropriate gatekeeper for autonomy. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a Kantian framework for moral trust—trust in another person to only act with us in morally permissible ways. First, I derive an understanding of trustworthiness from Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative. I argue that trustworthiness embodies a moral imperative, guiding us to act in ways that are reliable and recognizable as conducive to engaging in trusting relations. However, this alone is not enough, as it doesn't provide a means to assess whether someone is (...) truly committed to the moral law and thus morally trustworthy. Therefore, in the second part, I explore a basis for assessing their moral conduct found in a local version of the Kingdom of Ends: given an ideal or archetype of a morally perfect interpersonal relationship, an archetype of the morally trustworthy agent allows us to comparatively assess the moral disposition of fellow agents. (shrink)

My students sometimes worry that if eternalism is true then they can’t have libertarian freedom. They aren’t alone, as this sentiment is also expressed, albeit typically briefly, by various philosophers. However, somewhat surprisingly, those working within the free will literature have largely had nothing to say about libertarianism’s relationship to time, with this also being similar in the case of those working in the philosophy of time, apart from some work which has mainly focused on nonlibertarian views of freedom. In (...) this short paper I note why I’m currently unconvinced that there’s an incompatibility between eternalism and libertarianism, and in doing so one will see why I think they are compatible. (shrink)

Religious tourism is as old as religion itself and consequently, it is the oldest form of tourism in the world. Most religions have holy places that people visit from time to time for several reasons. This work examines the Ababa carnival which involves faith- activities, but in a heightened form. It involves pilgrimages to the Ababa holy shrine in Esin Ufot Eyo-Abasi in Oron. This work identifies as a problem, the lack of basic infrastructures and non-patriotic and neglecting attitudes of (...) Nigerians towards their indigenous religious tourism development, as they are so much involved in faith-based activities and travels to Israel, Mecca, Rome among several others. It adopts the Phenomenological method in a Culture Area of Oron. As primary research, it will rely on oral interviews and secondary materials from the libraries and the internet. The findings indicate that the positive effects of indigenous faith-based religious tourism such as Ababa are yet to be used in developing Oron and Nigeria as found in other parts of the world such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Italy. This work concludes that traditional religious tourism can be used as a tool for National Development and unity of Nigeria. As a recommendation it calls on the government who sponsors individuals and particular religious groups on pilgrimages, to divert such funds and invest in infrastructural development in Oron to attract tourists to the area and as well develop traditional religious tourism of Nigeria, as this will reduce poverty and create employment opportunities. (shrink)

Apesar de ter florescido no século XII, a tradição do Graal, remonta ao século VI, com a história da “Destruição e Conquista da Bretanha”, escrita pelo clérigo Gildas, que não parece querer retratar mais do que fatos da época envolvendo líderes locais com status de Rei, lutas pelo poder, batalhas e assassinatos em família, todavia, se alguma tradição subterrânea (prática comum entre os judeus) havia, envolvendo esses personagens, sobre isso, Gildas, nada falou. -/- A memória desses homens guerreiros volta à (...) tona em meados do ano 828, em “A História dos Britânicos”, de Nennius, e mais tarde na “História dos Reis da Grã-Bretanha”, de Geoffrey of Monmouth, entre os anos de 1138 -1139. A tradição ressurge entre os anos de 1181 e 1190, com Chrétien de Troyes, que escreve “Perceval, a História do Graal”, que fica inacabada com sua morte. Poucos anos depois, entre 1191 e 1202, Robert de Boron escreve a “História do Graal ou José de Arimatéia”, onde introduz elementos cristãos, como o cálice da Última Ceia que recolheu o sangue do Cristo. No mito, José é preso, Cristo o visita e explica os mistérios do cálice. Após deixar a prisão, José viaja com seus sogros e outros seguidores para oeste, fundando uma dinastia de guardiões do Graal, de quem o rei Artur é descendente. Quase em seguida, surge “Parzival”, de Wolfram Schenbach, escrito entre os anos de 1195 – 1215, que, sem dúvida, é a obra mais robusta em simbolismos e que maior interesse desperta; o autor, por exemplo, não se refere ao Graal como “cálice sagrado”, mas o designa como “pedra”, expurgando, por assim dizer, o simbolismo cristão posto no romance por Robert de Boron e introduzindo o simbolismo judaico. -/- Agora, a questão da literatura arturiana parece estar ligada a algum tipo de tradição marginal que remonta aos primórdios do cristianismo, similarmente à queda da Judeia, já que absorve ambos os elementos. Chrétien de Troyes, que iniciou este novo ciclo da tradição, deixa a entender que escreveu sua história a pedido de Philip I, Conde de Flandres, da Casa de Alsace, isso por que o prólogo da obra (316) é dedicada a seu patrono com altos elogios, apresentando-o como o mais bravo dos homens do Império de Roma, dedicatória similar feita a uma obra anterior, encomendada por Maria de Champagne. Outro dado que chama a atenção, é a possibilidade de Chrétien ter sido um judeu convertido, hipótese fundamentada no fato de a cidade de Troyes ter sido um grande centro de comércio e ensino judaicos, mas também pela assinatura em um de seus poemas, “Philomena”, onde se refere como “Crestien li Gois” e o termo “Goy” implicaria um judeu convertido (317). -/- Logo a seguir à obra de Chrétien, Robert de Boron retoma a tradição acrescentando motivos cristãos e, tal como seu antecessor, a serviço de um nobre, Gautier de Montbéliard (318), da Casa de Montfaucon. Apesar de a obra de Robert ter se popularizado pelos elementos novos que introduziu, não é aquela que mais desperta interesse entre os estudiosos, no entanto, a adição de símbolos cristãos em uma tradição a princípio não cristã, pode referir-se a desvio de foco, mais que a qualquer outro objetivo, ideia que é reforçada quando entendemos que os autores escrevem a pedido de determinadas famílias nobres. Quase ao mesmo tempo, surge a obra capital do romance do Graal, escrita pelo alemão Wolfram Schenbach, que, não fugindo à regra, liga sua história à Casa de Anjou, na época, a família mais poderosa na Europa Ocidental e na Terra Santa, onde seus membros se revezavam como reis de Jerusalém. Um dado curioso é que Philip I, Conde de Flandres da Casa de Alsace, patrono da Chrétien de troyes era primo em primeiro grau do Rei Balduíno, de Jerusalém, da Casa de Anjou. -/- Wolfram Schenbach cita Kyot de Provence, identificado como Guiot de Provins, como sendo sua fonte (319). Historicamente, Guiot foi um autor renomado e popular em sua época, monge e porta voz dos Templários, que escreveu, desde canções de amor, a críticas à Igreja e também canções de adoração ao Templo, o que parece indicar uma origem judaica. Segundo Wolfram, kyot encontrou na cidade de Toledo (320) um antigo manuscrito escrito por Flegetanis, um judeu forçado ao batismo cristão, contendo a história “daquilo que era chamado Graal”, esse é um ponto importante quando entendemos que estamos lidando com uma tradição judaica e não cristã. Depois de ler o manuscrito, Kyot passa a investigar alguns dados nele contido, em vários centros da Europa, buscando principalmente as obras de escrita latina, encontrando finalmente, na França, nos anais da Casa de Anjou (321) ; a história de Mazadan e o registro de sua família (322). -/- O que essa informação quer nos dizer, nas entrelinhas, é que os registros familiares de Mazadan, foram reconhecidos como sendo os mesmos dos manuscritos de Flegetanis, no entanto, alguns estudiosos de “Parzival” dão como não confiável a referência ao personagem Kyot de Provence, não o identificando a Guiot de Provins (323), talvez porque Wolfram não faz qualquer referência ao poeta até o livro oito, para, abruptamente, citá-lo no livro nove, onde explica toda a história. Quero dizer que a referência feita no livro nove e não antes, como seria habitual, denota um antigo simbolismo judaico de utilizar o algarismo “nove” como expressão da verdade (324), veja, por exemplo, a fundação da Ordem do Templo por simbólicos “nove” cavaleiros, não mais, não menos. Das obras, portanto, sobre o romance do Graal, aquela que merece estudo e investigação é Parzival, se quisermos um motivo dentre tantos, a “coisa” que os outros autores chamam Graal, Wolfram não denomina “cálice”, mas “pedra”. -/- William: Lancio; pensei ter entendido quando você falou sobre o simbolismo do cálice associado ao romance do Graal. Mas agora estou confuso, quando diz que o cálice foi um motivo cristão adaptado a essa tradição e a que merece estudo e investigação é aquela em que o Graal não é simbolizado pelo cálice e sim por uma pedra. -/- Lancio: William, quando falamos ou escrevemos sobre simbolismo, o discurso ganha muitas e diferentes interpretações e todas estarão sempre em conformidade com a capacidade daqueles ou daquelas que nos ouvem ou nos leem, mas, todos aqueles que forem além da leitura ou do simples ouvir, questionarão e esses saberão mais. Quando me referi ao cálice como símbolo, associando-o à tradição do Graal, o fiz como ilustração simbólica a uma ritualística, nesse caso; o cálice é aquele que toma variadas formas, que é maleável a diversas leituras e interpretações, que é histórico e é judeu, não é fábula e por isso é também pedra. -/- William: desculpe, Lancio, eu continuo sem entender. A que cálice que também é pedra você se refere? -/- Lancio: o mesmo símbolo que sempre representou a tradição do Graal, não em Robert de Boron, mas em Wolfram Schenbach. Novamente, William, o cálice, antes de ser um símbolo cristão pela fábula de José de Arimatéia, é um símbolo judaico e quando discorri sobre esse simbolismo, era o cálice judaico ou o que se designou chamar de cálice, que Wolfram chamou de “pedra”, o símbolo em questão. -/- William: por maior esforço de memória, eu não consigo compreender a substituição de cálice por pedra dentro do mesmo simbolismo. Quando você deu o exemplo do coração como cálice, sim, é passível de entendimento, mas substituir o coração por pedra e manter o mesmo significado simbólico? -/- Lancio: a dúvida corajosa é a boa dúvida e isso em qualquer disciplina, por ser ela capaz de provocar perguntas capitais. Em poucas palavras, com o que já ouviu; você será capaz de entender o simbolismo do cálice. Primeiro devemos buscar, nas tradições judaicas, um ato ritualístico em que o cálice participe e não é difícil encontrá-lo, pois há no seio do judaísmo uma tradição em que o cálice ou vaso de ouro, como também é chamado, participa, refere-se ao sacrifício das frutas frescas, (omer), contudo, esse simbolismo em que está inscrito o cálice, nada diz à nossa investigação, é uma tradição judaica e nela se encerra, mas não podemos dizer o mesmo da sua representação nas moedas cunhadas pelos seguidores de Judas, o Galileu, quando estes tomaram Jerusalém e o Templo em 66 DC, dando início à primeira revolta contra Roma, proporcionando ao reino judeu, um breve período independência (326). Assim, torna-se ele, o cálice, símbolo daquela revolta e mais do que isso, torna-se o cálice um símbolo em si mesmo, capaz de servir à lembrança e à memória. Quando fiz referência ao simbolismo do cálice, era a esse simbolismo que me reportava e quanto à sua metamorfose em pedra, falarei agora. -/- Wolfram chama aquilo que representa o Graal, não de “cálice”, mas de “lapsit exiliis”, cuja tradução, apesar dos esforços de pesquisa e imaginação, definitivamente não está resolvida. -/- O nome “lapsit exillis” reúne assim como o nome “Lazalies”, “Mazadan” ou “Terdelaschoye”, um sentido propositadamente ambíguo, por isso há sempre dificuldade quanto a seu estudo (337), se é possível encontrar um tímido consenso sobre o significado da palavra lapsit, como sendo “pedra”, no que se refere à palavra composta, entretanto, não há consenso algum quanto ao significado, sendo muitas e corajosas, as interpretações que se tem buscado dar, inclusive com o sentido de “pedra do exílio” ou “pedra exilada”(338), que embora esteja no cesto das interpretações fantasiosas, devo dizer que não deveria, porque “pedra” é uma palavra largamente utilizada nos escritos judaicos com sentido além do literal, significando família, isso é possível devido a composição das palavras na língua hebraica, constituídas em sua maioria por duas ou mais palavras menores, assim pedra, “even”, soletrado, alef, beit, nun, é um acrônimo para av - ben, que significa “pai e filho”, representando a palavra pedra, esse conceito. -/- Esse simbolismo permeia toda a literatura judaica cristã (339). Quando, por exemplo, se diz em determinado versículo que Jacob pegou “pedras” e colocou sob sua cabeça como travesseiro e em outro versículo que Jacob ao acordar tirou a “pedra”, no singular, que tinha posto anteriormente sob sua cabeça; isso revela uma aparente discrepância, no entanto, isso significa, à luz dos intérpretes da Lei, que as “pedras”,no plural, significam os 12 filhos de Jacob, as 12 tribos de Israel que se fundiram em um só povo, uma só nação, uma só “pedra.”(340) Portanto, chamar o Graal por “lapsit exiliis” ou “pedra exilada” ou “pedra do exílio” ou ainda “pedra no exílio”, pelo simbolismo hebreu, significa o mesmo que dizer; família exilada, família do exílio ou família no exílio, termo aplicável ao povo judeu em geral e às famílias judias em particular, mas por ser o romance do Graal uma tradição relacionada a uma família específica, é a essa família que devemos buscar. (shrink)

This thesis problematises the bases of soft power, that is, causal mechanisms connecting the agent (A) and the subject (B) of a power relationship. As the literature review reveals, their underspecification by neoliberal IR scholars, the leading proponents of the soft power concept, has caused a great deal of scholarly confusion over such questions as how to clearly differentiate between hard and soft power, how attraction (soft power’s primary mechanism) works and what roles structural and relational forces play in hard/soft (...) power. In an effort to ascertain the bases, I address this issue not from the viewpoint of A’s policies or resources, like do IR neoliberal scholars, but in terms of B’s psychological perception of A. Employing social psychological accounts, I argue that attraction can be produced in three distinct ways, namely 1) through B’s identification with A (“emotional” attraction), 2) via B’s appreciation of A’s competence/knowledge in a particular field (“rational” attraction) and 3) by means of the activation of B’s internalised values which contextually prescribe B to act in A’s favour (“social” attraction). Importantly, depending upon the way attraction is produced, it is peculiar in a number of characteristics, the main of which are power scope, weight and durability. Insights from social psychology also show that unlike soft power, hard power requires not only B’s relevant perception of the A-B relationship (as coercive or rewarding), but also A’s capability to actualise a threat of punishment and/or a promise of reward. I argue this difference can be fairly treated as definitional rather than empirical, which implies that coercion and reward necessarily have both relational and structural dimensions, whereas for attraction, a structural one alone suffices, while a relational one may or may not be present. Having explicated the soft power bases, I illustrate each of them using three “most likely” case studies, namely Serbia’s policies towards Russia (emotional attraction), Kazakhstan’s approach to relations with the EU (rational attraction) and Germany’s policies vis-à-vis Israel (social attraction). (shrink)

Modern philosophy's fascination with language - for the last century, its obsession- may illustrate the axiom that we love to talk about what we desire and we desire what we don't have. From the perspective of traditional Judaism, philosophic obsession with language reflects the modern philosopher's dislocation from those speech communities in which, alone, language has meaning. Natural speech communities, meaning those whose origins are either unknown or referred to an indefinite past, are characterized by inherent semiotic norms: rules for (...) transforming elements of the natural world into meaningful signs (morphology), for determining relations among those signs (syntax), for determining relations between signs and intended objects (semantics), and for determining relations between signs and the actual behavior which they recommend (what the American philosopher Charles Peirce calls pragmatics). For the traditional Jew, these norms are collected in what is called Torah: God's speech to Israel and the literary and behavioral history of Israel's attempts to interpret what that speech means. For this Jew, dislocation from the speech community of Israel would imply dislocation from Torah, and, thereby, from the possibility of meaningful speech and controlled behavior. Jewish philosophy is the attempt to find means of reintegrating dislocated persons into appropriate speech communities: in particular of reintegrating Jews into the speech community of Israel. On the following pages, I describe what modern philosophy looks like in terms set by Torah. Without apology, the Jewish philosopher first defines the non-problematic (the language of Torah), then the problematic (the enterprise of modern philosophy), then suggests means of placing the two in dialogue. (shrink)

This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...) that p; that, nonetheless, rational thinking is closed under entailment; that thinking does not supervene on credence; and that in many cases what one thinks on certain matters is, in a very literal sense, a choice. Finally, since there are strong reasons to believe that thinking just is believing, there are strong reasons to think that all this goes for belief as well. (shrink)

Apocalypse, it seems, is everywhere. Preachers with vast followings proclaim the world's end and apocalyptic fears grip even the non-religious amid climate change, pandemics, and threats of nuclear war. But as these ideas pervade popular discourse, grasping their logic remains elusive. Ben Jones argues that we can gain insight into apocalyptic thought through secular thinkers. He starts with a puzzle: Why would secular thinkers draw on Christian apocalyptic beliefs--often dismissed as bizarre--to interpret politics? The apocalyptic tradition proves appealing in part (...) because it theorizes a special relation between crisis and utopia. Apocalyptic thought points to crisis as the vehicle to bring the previously impossible within reach, thus offering apparent resources for navigating challenges in ideal theory, which tries to imagine the best and most just society. By examining apocalyptic thought's appeal and risks, this study arrives at new insights on the limits of ideal theory and utopian hope. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between belief-like imaginings and the establishment of imaginary worlds (often called fictional worlds). After outlining the various assumptions my argument is premised on, I argue that belief-like imaginings, in themselves, do not render their content true in the imaginary world to which they pertain. I show that this claim applies not only to imaginative projects in which we are instructed or intend to imagine certain propositions, but also to spontaneous imaginative projects. After arguing that, like (...) guided imaginative projects, spontaneous projects involve specific imaginary truths, I conclude that imaginative projects, whether spontaneous or deliberate, comprise not only imaginings, but also mental acts of determining such truths. (shrink)

Pietraszewski provides a compelling case that representations of certain interaction-types are the “cognitive primitives” that allow all tokens of group-in-conflict to be represented within the mind. Here, I argue that the folk concept GROUP encodes shared intentions and goals as more central than these interaction-types, and that providing a computational theory of social groups will be more difficult than Pietraszewski envisages.

An action is agentially perfect if and only if, if a person tries to perform it, they succeed, and, if a person performs it, they try to. We argue that trying itself is agentially perfect: if a person tries to try to do something, they try to do it; and, if a person tries to do something, they try to try to do it. We show how this claim sheds new light on questions about basic action, the logical structure of (...) intentional action, and the notion of "options" in decision theory. On the way to these central ideas, we argue that a person can try to do something even if they believe it is impossible that they will succeed, that a person can try to do something even if they do not want to succeed, and that a person can try to do something even if they do not intend to succeed. (shrink)

One prominent argument in international law and religious thought for abolishing capital punishment is that it violates individuals’ right to life. Notably, this _right-to-life argument_ emerged from normative and legal frameworks that recognize deadly force against aggressors as justified when necessary to stop their unjust threat of grave harm. Can capital punishment be necessary in this sense—and thus justified defensive killing? If so, the right-to-life argument would have to admit certain exceptions where executions are justified. Drawing on work by Hugo (...) Bedau, I identify a thought experiment where executions are justified defensive killing but explain why they cannot be in our world. A state’s obligations to its prisoners include the _obligation to use nonlethal incapacitation_ (ONI), which applies as long as prisoners pose no imminent threat. ONI precludes executions for reasons of future dangerousness. By subjecting the right-to-life argument to closer scrutiny, this article ultimately places it on firmer ground. (shrink)

This paper defends the simple view that in asserting that p, one lies iff one knows that p is false. Along the way it draws some morals about deception, knowledge, Gettier cases, belief, assertion, and the relationship between first- and higher-order norms.

This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present prima facie counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.

A book chapter (about 9,000 words, plus references) presenting an act-consequentialist approach to the ethics of climate change. It begins with an overview of act consequentialism, including a description of the view’s principle of rightness (an act is right if and only if it maximizes the good) and a conception of the good focusing on the well-being of sentient creatures and rejecting temporal discounting. Objections to act consequentialism, and replies, are also considered. Next, the chapter briefly suggests that act consequentialism (...) could reasonably be regarded as the default moral theory of climate change, in the sense that a broadly act-consequentialist framework often seems implicit in both scholarly and casual discussions of the ethics of climate change. The remainder of the chapter explores three possible responses to the threat of climate change: having fewer children to reduce the number of people emitting greenhouse gases; taxing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions (commonly called a “carbon tax”) to discourage GHG-emitting behavior; and reducing poverty to lessen personal, familial, and community vulnerability to the harms of climate change. (shrink)

A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the “paradox of dehumanization.” We address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think of their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. We do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dual character concept of humanity. Research has found that dual character concepts have two independent (...) sets of criteria for their application, one of which is descriptive and one of which is normative. Across four experiments, we found evidence that people deploy a descriptive criterion according to which being human is a matter of being a Homo sapiens; as well as a normative criterion according to which being human is a matter of possessing a deep-seated commitment to do the morally right thing. Importantly, we found that people are willing to affirm that someone is human in the descriptive sense, while denying that they are human in the normative sense, and vice versa. In addition to providing a solution to the paradox of dehumanization, these findings suggest that perceptions of moral character have a central role to play in driving dehumanization. (shrink)

There is a simple but powerful argument against the human practice of raising and killing animals for food (RKF for short). It goes like this: 1. RKF is extremely bad for animals. 2. RKF is only trivially good for human beings Therefore, 3. RKF should be stopped. While many consider this argument decisive, not everyone is convinced. There have been four main lines of objection to it. In this paper, I provide new responses to these four objections.

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology (e.g., Montmarquet 1993; Zagzebski 1996; Battaly 2006; Baehr 2011) – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr, 2013) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as (...) the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking (Scheffler 1989; Siegel 1988; 1997; 2017). In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education. (shrink)

A plausible principle about the felicitous use of indicative conditionals says that there is something strange about asserting an indicative conditional when you know whether its antecedent is true. But in most contexts there is nothing strange at all about asserting indicative conditionals like ‘If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then someone else did’. This paper argues that the only compelling explanation of these facts requires the resources of contextualism about knowledge.

This article identifies an argument in Hobbes’s writings often overlooked but relevant to current philosophical debates. Political philosophers tend to categorize his thought as representing consent or rescue theories of political authority. Though these interpretations have textual support and are understandable, they leave out one of his most compelling arguments – what we call the lesser evil argument for political authority, expressed most explicitly in Chapter 20 of Leviathan. Hobbes frankly admits the state’s evils but appeals to the significant disparity (...) between those evils and the greater evils outside the state as a basis for political authority. More than a passing observation, aspects of the lesser evil argument appear in each of his three major political works. In addition to outlining this argument, the article examines its significance both for Hobbes scholarship and recent philosophical debates on political authority. (shrink)

Pettigrew offers new axiomatic constraints on legitimate measures of inaccuracy. His axiom called ‘Decomposition’ stipulates that legitimate measures of inaccuracy evaluate a credence function in part based on its level of calibration at a world. I argue that if calibration is valuable, as Pettigrew claims, then this fact is an explanandum for accuracy-rst epistemologists, not an explanans, for three reasons. First, the intuitive case for the importance of calibration isn’t as strong as Pettigrew believes. Second, calibration is a perniciously global (...) property that both contravenes Pettigrew’s own views about the nature of credence functions themselves and undercuts the achievements and ambitions of accuracy-rst epistemology. Finally, Decomposition introduces a new kind of value compatible with but separate from accuracy-proper in violation of Pettigrew’s alethic monism. introduction. (shrink)

It is often thought that some version of what is generally called the publicity condition is a reasonable requirement to impose on moral theories. In this article, after formulating and distinguishing three versions of the publicity condition, I argue that the arguments typically used to defend them are unsuccessful and, moreover, that even in its most plausible version, the publicity condition ought to be rejected as both question-begging and unreasonably demanding.

Halakha consists of a variety of laws that determine the halakhic status of various actions. Halakhic laws, by their very nature, have a general aspect in that they apply to all similar actions under similar conditions. In this paper, I examine, from a philosophical-analytical point of view, the relationship between the general aspect of the halakhic laws and the fact that these laws apply to particular actions. After the introduction, this paper is divided into three parts. First, I distinguish between (...) two competing theses regarding the "metaphysical order" between the general aspect of halakhic law and its individual cases. The first one, I call 'Halakhic Generalism', according to which the general aspect of Halakhic law has essential precedence. The second one I refer to as 'Halakhic Particularism', according to which the general aspect of the halakhic law is nothing more than a generalization of all its individual cases. In the second part of the paper, I argue that the particularist position has the power to justify a unique and puzzling halakhic principle. According to this principle, in cases of normative over-determination where the same action is forbidden due to two different halakhic laws, then "a prohibition does not apply to a prohibition". Finally, I compare the reasoning I offer for this principle to alternative justifications of said principle. I argue that, compared to the alternatives, the particularist position provides the best explanation for the principle. (shrink)

This paper argues that two widely accepted principles about the indicative conditional jointly presuppose the falsity of one of the most prominent arguments against epistemological iteration principles. The first principle about the indicative conditional, which has close ties both to the Ramsey test and the “or‐to‐if” inference, says that knowing a material conditional suffices for knowing the corresponding indicative. The second principle says that conditional contradictions cannot be true when their antecedents are epistemically possible. Taken together, these principles entail that (...) it is impossible to be in a certain kind of epistemic state: namely, a state of ignorance about which of two partially overlapping bodies of knowledge corresponds to one's actual one. However, some of the more popular “margin for error” style arguments against epistemological iteration principles suggest that such states are not only possible, but commonplace. I argue that the tension between these views runs deep, arising just as much for non‐factive attitudes like belief, presupposition, and certainty. I also argue that this is worse news for those who accept the principles about the indicative conditional than it is for those who reject epistemological iteration principles. (shrink)

Adaptive preference formation is the unconscious altering of our preferences in light of the options we have available. Jon Elster has argued that this is bad because it undermines our autonomy. I agree, but think that Elster's explanation of why is lacking. So, I draw on a richer account of autonomy to give the following answer. Preferences formed through adaptation are characterized by covert influence (that is, explanations of which an agent herself is necessarily unaware), and covert influence undermines our (...) autonomy because it undermines the extent to which an agent's preferences are ones that she has decided upon for herself. This answer fills the lacuna in Elster's argument. It also allows us to draw a principled distinction between adaptive preference formation and the closely related phenomenon of character planning. (shrink)

Several philosophers of religion have used contemporary work on the metaphysics of space to dismantle objections to Christian doctrine. In this paper I shall also make use of work in the metaphysics of space to explore a topic in Christian thought that has received little attention by philosophers, namely inaugurated eschatology. My aim will be to take the conclusions of some biblical scholars who have written on this topic, and then begin to provide some metaphysical models of this doctrine, so (...) as to overcome objections against inaugurated eschatology based on metaphysical concerns. (shrink)

The metaphor of “gene editing” has been employed widely in popular discussions of CRISPR technology. The editing metaphor obscures the physical mechanism of action in CRISPR techniques, and understates the present frequency of off-target effects. However, the editing metaphor may be a useful means to think about approaches to regulating the future use of CRISPR. Conceiving of CRISPR as an information technology recalls the highly computational, information-oriented context of genomic research in which CRISPR has emerged. More importantly, the editing metaphor, (...) while currently inaccurate, anticipates a future moment when CRISPR technology will be ubiquitous and extremely reliable. Contemporary deliberations about the regulation of CRISPR should keep in mind that the technology may become more powerful—and more susceptible to misuse—as the overall state of genomic science advances and applications of CRISPR become less expensive and more refined. (shrink)

My question in the chapter is this: could (and should) the role of the physician be construed as that of a friend to the patient? I begin by briefly discussing the “friendship model” of the physician-patient relationship—according to which physicians and patients could, and perhaps should, be friends—as well as its history and limitations. Given these limitations, I focus on the more one-sided idea that the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient (a “physician-qua-friend model” of (...) the physician-patient relationship). I show that given recent developments in our understanding of the physician-patient relationship, this idea is far from asinine. I then make the case that the most plausible conception of the physician-qua-friend model incorporates the following components: (a) a common goal, that is, one that physician and patient share; (b) certain forms of equality between physician and patient; (c) an ideal of a caring physician. Finally, I show how the model can be instantiated in a certain type of physician-patient interaction, namely, in physician-assisted dying. (shrink)

When philosophers consider factors compromising autonomy in consent, they often focus solely on the consent-giver’s agential capacities, overlooking the impact of the consent-receiver’s conduct on the consensual character of the activity. In this paper, I argue that valid consent requires justified trust in the consent-receiver to act only within the scope of consent. I call this the Trust Condition (TC), drawing on Katherine Hawley’s commitment account of trust. TC constitutes a belief that the consent-receiver is capable and willing to act (...) as we expect from them. If such trust is not warranted, I argue, consent lacks the appropriate normative grounds. After establishing TC, I explore its application in the sexual arena, asserting that due to the non-contractual dimensions of sexual activity — such as the dynamic nature of sexual desires and the absence of external factors effectively binding sexual partners to the terms of consent—trust is warranted in sexual consent by means of care. I define care as a special sensitivity and attention toward the partner’s will and discuss how this approach leads to safer intimate relationships in practice. (shrink)

The devastating impact of the COVID‐19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic is prompting renewed scrutiny of practices that heighten the risk of infectious disease. One such practice is refusing available vaccines known to be effective at preventing dangerous communicable diseases. For reasons of preventing individual harm, avoiding complicity in collective harm, and fairness, there is a growing consensus among ethicists that individuals have a duty to get vaccinated. I argue that these same grounds establish an analogous duty to avoid buying and (...) eating most meat sold today, based solely on a concern for human welfare. Meat consumption is a leading driver of infectious disease. Wildlife sales at wet markets, bushmeat hunting, and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are all exceptionally risky activities that facilitate disease spread and impose immense harms on human populations. If there is a moral duty to vaccinate, we also should recognize a moral duty to avoid most meat. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this duty for policy. (shrink)

The philosophical study of well-being concerns what makes lives good for their subjects. It is now standard among philosophers to distinguish between two kinds of well-being: - lifetime well-being, i.e., how good a person's life was for him or her considered as a whole, and - temporal well-being, i.e., how well off someone was, or how they fared, at a particular moment in time or over a period of time longer than a moment but shorter than a whole life, say, (...) a day, month, year, or chapter of a life. Many theories have been offered of each of these kinds of well-being. A common view is that lifetime well-being is in some way constructed out of temporal well-being. This book argues that much of this literature is premised on a mistake. Lifetime well-being cannot be constructed out of temporal well-being, because there is no such thing as temporal well-being. The only genuine kind of well-being is lifetime well-being. The Passing of Temporal Well-Being will prove essential reading for professional philosophers, especially in moral and political philosophy. It will also be of interest to welfare economists and policy-makers who appeal to well-being. (shrink)

Social experimental research commonly employs media to elicit responses from research subjects. This use of media is broadly protected under fair use exemptions to copyright, and creators of content used in experiments are generally not afforded any formal consideration or protections in existing research ethics frameworks. Online social networking sites are an emerging and important setting for social experiments, and in this context the material used to elicit responses is often content produced by other users. This article argues that users (...) may have a reasonable interest in controlling the use of their content in experiments conducted in online social networks. Matters of risk and autonomy in research ethics are explored by analogy to active debates in law over adhesion contracts, moral rights, and the right to be forgotten. The article concludes by considering practical difficulties in identifying and protecting the interests of creators. (shrink)

Criticism and recommendations are very much welcome. Please don't hesitate to contact me with them. -/- .

"Translating Key Terms Terms in Lu Cheng's Records in the Chuan xi lu: Some Preliminary Considerations" Draft paper for the 2024 Conference on [Wang] Yangming's Learning of Mind, Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Updated October 4, 2024. The final version will appear in the conference volume. -/- Criticism and suggestions welcome. Please do email.

Philosophers of logic are particularly interested in understanding the aims, epistemology, and methodology of logic. This raises the question of how the philosophy of logic should go about these enquires. According to the practice-based approach, the most reliable method we have to investigate the methodology and epistemology of a research field is by considering in detail the activities of its practitioners. This holds just as true for logic as it does for the recognised empirical and abstract sciences. If we wish (...) to systematically understand the aims and epistemology of logic, we are best placed achieving this by looking at what logicians do, rather than reflecting upon the nature of logic itself. In this entry, we outline the motivations for a practice-based approach towards the philosophy of logic and highlight its advantages over more “top-down” approaches, which attempt to infer conclusions about the nature of logic and its methodology on the basis of traditional assumptions about knowledge, metaphysics, or logic itself. We end by addressing several prominent concerns raised against the practice-based approach. (shrink)

There is significant controversy over whether patients have a ‘right not to know’ information relevant to their health. Some arguments for limiting such a right appeal to potential burdens on others that a patient’s avoidable ignorance might generate. This paper develops this argument by extending it to cases where refusal of relevant information may generate greater demands on a publicly funded healthcare system. In such cases, patients may have an ‘obligation to know’. However, we cannot infer from the fact that (...) a patient has an obligation to know that she does not also have a right not to know. The right not to know is held against medical professionals at a formal institutional level. We have reason to protect patients’ control over the information that they receive, even if in individual instances patients exercise this control in ways that violate obligations. (shrink)

I introduce a distinction between health need and medical need, and raise several questions about their interaction. Health needs are needs that relate directly to our health condition. Medical needs are needs which bear some relation to medical institutions or processes. I suggest that the question of whether medical insurance or public care should cover medical needs, health needs, or only needs which fit both categories is a political question that cannot be resolved definitionally. I also argue against an overly (...) strict definition of medical need on the grounds that this presupposes, wrongly, that medical intervention should always be a last resort. (shrink)

This article explains and defends a novel idea about how people can be misled by a discussion topic, even if the discussion itself does not explicitly involve the making of false claims. The crucial aspect of this idea is that people are liable to infer, from the fact that a particular topic is being discussed, that this topic is important. As a result, they may then be led to accept certain beliefs about the state of the world they consider necessary (...) for the topic’s importance. What the article calls “importance misrepresentation” occurs when these beliefs about the state of the world are false or otherwise mistaken. The article explores different ways in which importance misrepresentation can occur, and it uses this idea to help clarify and strengthen some well‐known criticisms of the topic choices of academic philosophers. (shrink)

An overview (about 8,000 words) of act utilitarianism, covering the basic idea of the theory, historical examples, how it differs from rule utilitarianism and motive utilitarianism, supporting arguments, and standard objections. A closing section provides a brief introduction to indirect utilitarianism (i.e., a Hare- or Railton-style view distinguishing between a decision procedure and a criterion of rightness).

There is an ongoing increase in the use of mobile health technologies that patients can use to monitor health-related outcomes and behaviours. While the dominant narrative around mHealth focuses on patient empowerment, there is potential for mHealth to fit into a growing push for patients to take personal responsibility for their health. I call the first of these uses ‘medical monitoring’, and the second ‘personal health surveillance’. After outlining two problems which the use of mHealth might seem to enable us (...) to overcome—fairness of burdens and reliance on self-reporting—I note that these problems would only really be solved by unacceptably comprehensive forms of personal health surveillance which applies to all of us at all times. A more plausible model is to use personal health surveillance as a last resort for patients who would otherwise independently qualify for responsibility-based penalties. However, I note that there are still a number of ethical and practical problems that such a policy would need to overcome. The prospects of mHealth enabling a fair, genuinely cost-saving policy of patient responsibility are slim. (shrink)

It’s a platitude – which only a philosopher would dream of denying – that whereas words are connected to what they represent merely by arbitrary conventions, pictures are connected to what they represent by resemblance. The most important difference between my portrait and my name, for example, is that whereas my portrait and I are connected by my portrait’s resemblance to me, my name and I are connected merely by an arbitrary convention. The first aim of this book is to (...) defend this platitude from the apparently compelling objections raised against it, by analysing depiction in a way which reveals how it is mediated by resemblance. -/- It’s natural to contrast the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance, which emphasises the differences between depictive and descriptive representation, with an extremely close analogy between depiction and description, which emphasises the similarities between depictive and descriptive representation. Whereas the platitude emphasises that the connection between my portrait and me is natural in a way the connection between my name and me is not, the analogy emphasises the contingency of the connection between my portrait and me. Nevertheless, the second aim of this book is to defend an extremely close analogy between depiction and description. -/- The strategy of the book is to argue that the apparently compelling objections raised against the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance are manifestations of more general problems, which are familiar from the philosophy of language. These problems, it argues, can be resolved by answers analogous to their counterparts in the philosophy of language, without rejecting the platitude. So the combination of the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance with a close analogy between depiction and description turns out to be a compelling theory of depiction, which combines the virtues of common sense with the insights of its detractors. (shrink)

According to the Standard View, a doctor who withdraws life-sustaining treatment does not kill the patient but rather allows the patient to die—an important distinction, according to some. I argue that killing can be understood in either of two ways, and given the relevant understanding, the Standard View is insulated from typical criticisms. I conclude by noting several problems for the Standard View that remain to be fully addressed.

Counterfactuals are context-sensitive. However, we argue that various debates and doctrines in metaphysics and the philosophy of science are premised on ignoring the full extent of counterfactual context-sensitivity. Our focus is on the prominent "miracle" versus "no-miracle" debate about counterfactuals under the assumption that our laws of nature are deterministic. But we also discuss doctrines that employ counterfactuals in theories of rational decision, as well as doctrines that explain what it is to be a law of nature in terms of (...) counterfactuals. We conclude by drawing some morals about the use of counterfactuals in philosophical theorizing more generally. (shrink)

It is natural to think that there is a tight connection between whether someone is responsible for some outcome and whether it is appropriate to hold her accountable for that outcome. And this natural thought naturally extends to health: if someone is responsible for her health, then, all else being equal, she is accountable for it. Given this, some have thought that responsibility for health has an important role to play in distributing the benefits and burdens of healthcare. But there (...) is a reason for caution. That health is influenced by social, economic, and environmental factors is a matter of consensus. And some have argued that in light of these social determinants of health, individuals are not typically responsible for their health, rendering inappropriate policies that employ a responsibility‐for‐health criterion. This debate implicates a number of overlapping concepts and questions that are often difficult to pull apart. And I worry that those who maintain that social determinants undermine responsibility for health have latched on to the wrong target. The social determinants of health are relevant to such policies, but, I argue, not by globally undermining responsibility. Rather, social determinants are sometimes responsibility‐undermining, sometimes responsibility‐preserving, and often relevant to whether we should hold individuals accountable for their health regardless of their responsibility. This calls for a more nuanced appraisal of the ways in which the social determinants of health are relevant to such policies. And here I attempt to provide one. (shrink)

The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief (...) in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a subset of preferences in which a person desires the fulfillment of a choice they have made, even if it involves the violation of their desires, as in rape fantasies. I argue that such cases provide us with a unique insight into personal autonomy from a proceduralist standpoint. In its first part, I analyze some examples in light of Frankfurt's endorsement theory and argue that even when we cannot endorse a practical decision that involves being (...) violated, we nonetheless regard those cases as instances of autonomy. Therefore, autonomy does not necessarily require endorsement. Instead, I propose that the nature of the relevant highest-order volition dictates the procedure that should be established in one’s desire structure for its fulfillment. In the second part, I discuss how an agent may effectively consent to the violation of their decision by another person. Ordinary consent typically refers to actions but fails to communicate one's higher-order desires or commitments. To address this limitation, I propose a practical tool that accomplishes this by signaling shifts in the normative context where the agents are interacting. (shrink)

Nie Bao 聶豹 (1487–1563) was a Neo-Confucian philosopher and scholar-official of sixteenthcentury Ming China. In his Ming ru xue an 明儒學案 (Case studies of Ming Confucians), Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 placed him in the Jiangxi (Jiangyou 江右) group of Wang Yangming followers. Nie Bao met the influential founder of the Ming School of Mind in 1526 and was inspired by his teaching of the innate knowing (liangzhi 良知). However, he differed from other followers in his quietist approach to realizing and extending (...) this knowledge. While developing his ideas over the course of two decades, as a holder of the highest civil service examination degree, Nie Bao also held a series of impactful official positions, and earned a reputation for effectiveness and integrity. However, he was also the unwitting victim of factionalism at the Ming court, which led to his imprisonment in 1548. The goal of this article is to provide a sketch of Nie Bao’s political trajectory and intellectual development from his early years until his imprisonment, as well as translation of significant passages pertaining to that trajectory and development. By the time of his imprisonment, Nie Bao had articulated the essential elements of his philosophy of returning to the root (by which he meant silence), and attaining centeredness and, with that, his unique interpretation of his teacher’s central tenet. (shrink)

There is an objection to divine timelessness which claims that timelessness shouldn’t be adopted since on this view evil is never “destroyed,” “vanquished,” “eradicated” or defeated. By contrast, some divine temporalists think that presentism is the key that allows evil to be destroyed/vanquished/eradicated/defeated. However, since presentism is often considered to be inconsistent with timelessness, it is thought that the presentist solution is not available for defenders of timelessness. In this paper I first show how divine timelessness is consistent with a (...) presentist view of time and then how defenders of Presentist-Timelessness can adopt the presentist solution to the removal of evil. After this, I conclude the paper by showing that it’s far from clear that the presentist solution is successful and that unless one weakens what is meant by the destruction/vanquishing/eradication/defeat of evil, one can only make the presentist solution work by adopting a number of additional assumptions that many will find unattractive. (shrink)