The first part of the paper (p. 10-21) tries to answer the first question of the title and describes a set of seven “knowledge-claims” made by Socrates: 1. There is a distinction between right opinion and knowledge. 2. Virtue is knowledge. 3. Nobody willingly does wrong. 4. To do injustice is the greatest evil for the wrongdoer himself. 5. An even greater evil is if the wrongdoer is not punished. 6. The just person is happy; (...) the unjust person is unhappy. 7. The pleasant is not the good. These claims seem to be the “few” (oliga) (Men. 98 b3) but “very important” (kallista) (Grg. 472 c8) things that Socrates claims to know. The second part (p. 22-39) tries to answer the second question and defends the thesis that the supposed “knowledge” of Socrates is dianoetic, but not noetic. The main new idea of this paperis the comparison of the Socratic knowledge-claims with the upper states of the mind symbolized in theDivided Line, noesis and dianoia (cf. R. 511 d7-e1). Posted. (shrink)

Within the United States, the most prominent justification for criminal punishment is retributivism. This retributivist justification for punishment maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason that she deserves something bad to happen to her just because she has knowingly done wrong—this could include pain, deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the basic desert attached to the criminal’s immoral action alone that provides the justification for punishment. This means that the retributivist position is not reducible (...) to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society or the moral improvement of those being punished. A number of sentencing guidelines in the U.S. have adopted desert as their distributive principle, and it is increasingly given deference in the “purposes” section of state criminal codes, where it can be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the code’s provisions. Indeed, the American Law Institute recently revised the Model Penal Code so as to set desert as the official dominate principle for sentencing. And courts have identified desert as the guiding principle in a variety of contexts, as with the Supreme Court’s enthroning retributivism as the “primary justification for the death penalty.” While retributivism provides one of the main sources of justification for punishment within the criminal justice system, there are good philosophical and practical reasons for rejecting it. One such reason is that it is unclear that agents truly deserve to suffer for the wrongs they have done in the sense required by retributivism. In the first section, I explore the retributivist justification of punishment and explain why it is inconsistent with free will skepticism. In the second section, I then argue that even if one is not convinced by the arguments for free will skepticism, there remains a strong epistemic argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that undermines both libertarian and compatibilist attempts to justify it. I maintain that this argument provides sufficient reason for rejecting the retributive justification of criminal punishment. I conclude in the third section by briefly sketching my public health-quarantine model, a non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behavior that draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. I argue that the model is not only consistent with free will skepticism and the epistemic argument against retributivism, it also provides the most justified, humane, and effective way of dealing with criminal behavior. (shrink)

I argue for three conclusions. First, responsibility skeptics are committed to the position that the criminal justice system should adopt a universal nonresponsibility excuse. Second, a universal nonresponsibility excuse would diminish some of our most deeply held values, further dehumanize criminals, exacerbate mass incarceration, and cause an even greater number of innocent people (nonwrongdoers) to be punished. Third, while Saul Smilansky's ‘illusionist’ response to responsibility skeptics – that even if responsibility skepticism is correct, society should maintain (...) a responsibility‐realist/retributivist criminal justice system – is generally compelling, it would not work if a majority of society were to convert, theoretically and psychologically, to responsibility skepticism. In this (highly improbable) scenario, and only in this (highly improbable) scenario, the criminal justice system would need to be reformed in such a way that it aligned with the majority's responsibility‐skeptical beliefs and attitudes. (shrink)

A surprisingly large number of scholars believe that (a) we are blameworthy, and therefore punishable, only for what we have control over; (b) we have control only over our actions and intentions, not the consequences of our actions; and therefore (c) if two agents perform the very same action (e.g., attempting to kill) with the very same intentions, then they are equally blameworthy and deserving of equal punishment – even if only one of them succeeds in killing. This paper (...) argues against these “equivalence theorists” that harmful consequences do make a moral difference, that the harm produced by the killer’s attempt retroactively makes her action more blameworthy, and therefore deserving of more punishment, than the failed attempter’s attempt. The primary argument for this “non-equivalence theory” is an analogy with gambling. Just as a gambler makes a deal with the casino to allow metaphysical luck to retroactively determine the “profit status” of her bet, so too the attempted killer makes a deal with “the casino of morality” to allow metaphysical luck to retroactively determine the moral status of her attempt. She makes the “moral deal” that if her attempt succeeds, her attempt was more blameworthy than if her attempt does not succeed. And it is the greater blameworthiness of the killer’s attempt that justifies our intuition that the killer should be punished more harshly than the failed attempter. (shrink)

Some philosophers (Duff, Hampton) conceive of punishment as a way of communicating a message to the punished and argue that this communicative function justifies the harm of punishment. I object to communicative theories because punishment seems intuitively justified in cases in which it fails as a method of communication. Punishment fails as communication when the punished ignores the intended message or fails to understand it. Among those most likely to ignore or fail to understand the message of punishment (...) are the most hardened criminals, whom we typically think are appropriate targets of punishment. I suggest that an alternative justificatory strategy, one that focuses not on the successful receipt of the message of punishment by the wrongdoer but on the expression of condemnation by the community, is not subject to the same worry. The norms of successful expression are more easily met than those of communication, so that expressing condemnation toward a criminal might be justified even if he is unreceptive in the face of the expression. (shrink)

Abstract: Of the five perspectives set forth in this essay, four of them specify obstacles that block experiential understandings of emotions. The obstacles in one way and another subvert the living body, whether presenting it as a mere face or as an ahistorical adult body, as an embodied phenomenon or as a brain unattached to a whole-body nervous system. Such accounts bypass the affective dynamics that move through bodies and move them to move. Being true to the truths of experience, (...) the fifth perspective, requires recognition of our infancy and even of our prenatal lives, both of which are tethered to developmental movement. It furthermore requires recognition of affective realties as subject-world relationships and recognition of the dynamic congruency of emotions and movement. In the end, the perspectives lead us to inquire about “the things themselves.” Keywords: Animate · Dynamic · Brain · Embodied · Infancy. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that there are limits to the ways we can permissibly treat people, even in the service of good ends. For example, we may not steal someone’s wallet, even if we plan to donate the contents to famine relief, or break a promise to help a colleague move, even if we encounter someone else on the way whose need is somewhat more urgent. In other words, we should observe certain constraints against mistreating people, where (...) a constraint is a moral principle that we should not violate, even when that is the only way to prevent further, similar violations or other, greater evils. But, despite its intuitive appeal, the view that there are constraints has drawn considerable criticism, and attempts to provide a rationale for constraints have been, at best, substantially incomplete. In this paper, I develop a novel rationale for constraints that fills important gaps left by views in the literature. The account helps make sense of constraints by identifying a morally significant relation that we bear to people when, and only when, we observe certain constraints against mistreating them. Put roughly, observing these constraints is a condition for being worthy of a form of trust that I call civic trust, and being worthy of such trust is an essential part of living with others in the sort of harmony that characterizes morally permissible interaction. By focusing, in ways other accounts do not, on the role that observing constraints plays in our psychological lives, this approach not only makes the structure of constraints more intelligible, but also helps us better appreciate the force of our reason to observe constraints, and better understand the kind of moral community to which we should aspire. (shrink)

The problem of evil poses a challenge for traditional theists by asking how they could rationally believe in the existence of an omnipotent and wholly good God given that the world is filled with evil manifested in such events as wars, crimes, and natural disasters. This is widely considered one of the most significant challenges to belief in God and has evoked many responses from traditional theists. However, it is not my aim in this book to propose another (...) response to the problem or to evaluate the effectiveness of existing responses at length. I deliberately refrain from such endeavours. Instead, I take a step back from the ongoing debate surrounding the problem and adopt a unique perspective which transcends the familiar perennial debate between traditional theists and atheists. The thesis that the problem of evil is a problem beyond traditional theism is radical enough. Yet, I argue for an even more radical thesis in this book: supernaturalist theists enjoy advantages that naturalist atheists/non-theists lack when responding to the problem of evil because there is greater hope that the problem can be solved when supernaturalist resources are in place. This thesis, I argue, entails an additional interesting thesis: the problem of evil is a more significant challenge for atheists/non-theists than for traditional theists. (shrink)

Philosophers have had surprisingly little to say about the concept of a victim although it is presupposed by the extensive philosophical literature on rights. Proceeding in four stages, I seek to remedy this deficiency and to offer an alternative to the two current paradigms that eliminates the Othering of victims. First, I analyze two victim paradigms that emerged in the late 20th century along with the initial iteration of the international human rights regime – the pathetic victim paradigm and the (...) heroic victim paradigm. Holocaust victims are quintessential instances of the pathetic victim paradigm. They are marked by passivity and innocence in the face of overpowering force and unspeakable humanly inflicted suffering. Aung San Suu Kyi is an exemplar of the heroic victim paradigm – prisoners of conscience, in Amnesty International’s terms. Because heroic victims face off against the repressive power of the state to fight injustice, they are by no means passive, but they must be innocent of wrongdoing – that is, they must use nonviolent means of dissent – to qualify as heroic victims. Second, I problematize the asymmetrical conceptions of innocence that underwrite the two victim paradigms. Whereas the pathetic victim paradigm identifies innocence with passivity, the heroic victim paradigm countenances agentic victims and adverts to a universalist, absolutist stance on the limits of the legitimate use of state power to ascribe innocence to heroic victims. Both conceptions of innocence are out of keeping with well established social and legal practices regarding what constitutes coercive force and innocent victimhood. Consequently, there is reason to be skeptical of the two victim paradigms. Third, I identify two kinds of human rights violations and two categories of victims that AI defends despite their failure to fit the two paradigms – women trafficked into sex work and prisoners on death row. In many cases, women forced to do sex work are not innocent girls who are ignorant of the trafficking system and who helplessly fall prey to smugglers. They are desperately poor women who for that reason are willing to take enormous risks to try to relieve their own and often their families’ deprivation and suffering. Although these women act nonviolently for irreproachable reasons, they lack the public political agendas that characterize heroic victims. Unless non-fulfillment of subsistence rights is recognized as a form of overpowering force that inflicts severe, avoidable suffering, these women do not qualify as pathetic victims either. The victim paradigms pose an even greater obstacle to recognizing that the death penalty is a human rights violation and that death row prisoners are victims. Because a jury concluded that these individuals committed heinous, violent crimes, they are excluded by the heroic victim paradigm. Only if death row prisoners can be proven (usually through DNA evidence) not to have committed the crimes for which they were convicted can these individuals qualify as pathetic victims. In the absence of any reason to believe that they are innocent and especially if they are unrepentant, they are widely regarded as brutal victimizers of others who deserve no sympathy for, let along relief from, the suffering they “brought on themselves.” Finally, I confront the Othering of victims that results from the two victim paradigms, which leads many victims to eschew the label, thereby opting out of human right discourse. I propose revisions in the victim paradigms that eliminate the real-world exclusions they sponsor as well as the Othering of victims of human rights abuses. In particular, I endorse greater attention to what people and the institutions they create do to other people, and I favor a presumption that unnecessary and severe humanly inflicted suffering is a human rights violation. Moreover, I reject the innocence criterion embedded in the two paradigms and urge that it be replaced by a burdened agency criterion. These modifications better align the concept of a victim with a realistic understanding of human subjectivity and agency and allow for a more capacious understanding of who is a bearer of human rights and under what conditions right-holders become victims of rights violations. (shrink)

Statements such as “X is beautiful but I don’t like how it looks” or “I like how X looks but it is not beautiful” sound contradictory. How contradictory they sound might however depend on the object X and on the aesthetic adjective being used (“beautiful”, “elegant”, “dynamic”, etc.). In our study, the first sentence was estimated to be more contradictory than the latter: If we describe something as beautiful, we often intend to evaluate its appearance, whereas it is less counterintuitive (...) to appreciate an appearance without finding it beautiful. Furthermore, statements including “beautiful” appeared more contradictory than those including “elegant” and “dynamic”, pointing to its greater evaluative component. When related to artworks, sentences could appear less contradictory due to readers’ consideration of the divergence between conventional beauty and art-related sensory pleasures that can even include negative valence. Such ambivalence might be more frequent in art-objects than in other artefacts. Indeed, in our study, sentences referring to artworks were estimated to be less contradictory compared to sentences referring to other artefacts. Meanwhile, an additional small group of graphic design students showed a less clear difference between art-related and non-art-related sentences. We discuss the potential influence of art experience and interest as well as theoretical and methodological challenges like the conceptualization of beauty. (shrink)

I argue against the claim that morally ignorant wrongdoers are open to blame only if they are culpable for their ignorance, and I argue against a version of skepticism about moral responsibility that depends on this claim being true. On the view I defend, the attitudes involved in blame are typically responses to the features of an action that make it objectionable or unjustifiable from the perspective of the one who issues the blame. One important way that an action (...) can appear objectionable to us is that it expresses a judgment with which we disagree about the significance of the interests of those affected by the action. A morally ignorant wrongdoer’s actions may express such judgments even if it is not her fault that she is unaware of the moral status of her behavior, and even if it would be unreasonable to expect her to be aware of its status. (shrink)

In the second edition Preface of Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason Kant responds to an anonymous review of the first edition. We present the first English translation of this obscure book review. Following our translation, we summarize the reviewer's main points and evaluate the adequacy of Kant's replies to five criticisms, including two replies that Kant provides in footnotes added in the second edition. A key issue is the reviewer's claim that Religion adopts an implied standpoint, described using (...) transcendental terminology. Kant could have avoided much confusion surrounding Religion, had he taken this review more seriously. We therefore respond to three objections that Kant failed to address: how the Wille–Willkür distinction enables the propensity to evil to be viewed as coexisting with freedom of choice; how moral improvement is possible, even though the propensity to evil is necessary and universal; and how a ‘deed’ can be regarded as ‘noumenal’.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The Implied Standpoint of Kant's Religion: An Assessment of Kant's Reply to an Early Book Review of Religion Within the Bounds of Bare ReasonVolume 18, Issue 1Stephen R. Palmquist and Steven Otterman DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000295Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The Implied Standpoint of Kant's Religion: An Assessment of Kant's Reply to an Early Book Review of Religion Within the Bounds of Bare ReasonVolume 18, Issue 1Stephen R. Palmquist and Steven Otterman DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000295Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The Implied Standpoint of Kant's Religion: An Assessment of Kant's Reply to an Early Book Review of Religion Within the Bounds of Bare ReasonVolume 18, Issue 1Stephen R. Palmquist and Steven Otterman DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000295Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

The recent explosion in the discovery of exoplanets and our incipient ability to detect atmospheric biomarkers recommend reflection on the conceptual implications of discovering – or not discovering – extrasolar life. I contend that evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life is evidence against the existence of God, because if there are intelligent extraterrestrials, there are likely to be evils in the universe even greater than those found on Earth. My reasoning is based on Richard Gott's Copernican Principle, which holds (...) that in the absence of information to the contrary, we should take ourselves to be typical observers. (shrink)

Much of the discussion surrounding the ethics of abortion has centered around the notion of personhood. This is because many philosophers hold that the morality of abortion is contingent on whether the fetus is a person - though, of course, some famous philosophers have rejected this thesis (e.g. Judith Thomson and Don Marquis). In this article, I construct a novel argument for the immorality of abortion based on the notion of impairment. This argument does not assume that the fetus is (...) a person - indeed, I concede (for the sake of argument) that the fetus is not a person - and hence the morality of abortion is not contingent on whether the fetus is a person. I finish by answering a plethora of objections to my argument, concluding that none of them are successful. (shrink)

James Sterba uses the Pauline Principle to argue that the occurrence of significant, horrendous evils is logically incompatible with the existence of a good God. The Pauline Principle states that (as a rule) one must never do evil so that good may come from it, and according to Sterba, this principle implies that God may not permit significant evils even if that permission would be necessary to secure other, greater goods. By contrast, I argue that the occurrence (...) of significant evils is logically compatible with the existence of a good God because victims of significant evils may themselves reasonably consent to their suffering. In particular, I argue that they may be able to accept their suffering if it turns out that there was no way for God to secure relevant greater goods (or prevent other, greater evils) except by way of allowing their suffering, and God also provides them with other compensating, heavenly comforts. After using this consent-based argument to address Sterba’s logical problem from evil, I briefly consider how this argument may also help address a related evidential problem from evil, which suggests that while it is possible that victims of significant evils would consent to their suffering, it is unlikely that they would do so. While I do not provide a definitive solution to this evidential problem of evil, I highlight one important example of a trade-off that God may need to make that would—along with the provision of compensating, heavenly comforts—potentially persuade victims of significant evils to consent to their suffering. Specifically, I argue that there may be a necessary trade-off that God needs to make between permitting significant evils (on the one hand) and protecting a certain, morally significant form of free will (on the other hand). (shrink)

According to an influential and intuitively appealing argument, morality is usually continuous, namely, a gradual change in one morally significant factor triggers a gradual change in another; the law should usually track morality; therefore, the law should often be continuous. This argument is illustrated by cases such as the following example: since the moral difference between a defensive action that is reasonable and one that is just short of being reasonable is small, the law should not impose a severe punishment (...) when the action is almost reasonable and no punishment at all when the action is reasonable. In this Article, I consider two doubts regarding this argument. First, the premise that morality is continuous in such cases is incompatible with the common view that the moral status of actions is not continuous since there is an important difference between actions that are permissible and actions that are wrong— even if this difference is due to a difference that is very small, such as the one between an action whose consequences are the best and an action whose consequences are just slightly less good. This view extends also to the overall moral status of agents given the common assumption that it depends on the moral status of their actions. This is an important challenge that the Continuity Argument should confront. However, I argue that the best account of morality is more scalar than the common view in these respects. Therefore, I conclude that the first premise of the Continuity Argument is correct in this regard, although it is based on a minority view. The second doubt concerns the scope of the second premise: since there are reasons both in favor and against legal continuity, and the applicability and force of these reasons depend not only on various moral propositions but also on contingent non-moral facts, we often lack the evidence to determine the degree to which the law, at a certain place and time, should be continuous, and specifically that it should often be continuous. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: “Evil is really only a privation.” This philosophical commonplace reflects an ancient solution to the problem of theodicy in one of its dimensions: is evil of such a nature that it must have God as its author? Stated in this particular way, it also reflects the commonplace identification of the real with natural being—the realm of what exists independently of human thought and perspectives—as opposed to all that is termed, by comparison, “merely subjective” and “unreal”. If we (...) stick with this way of construing the meaning of “reality”, then by the excellent arguments of the tradition we are also stuck with defending the sufficiency of privation as a response to what evil “really is”. -/- In this article, we argue against both ways of being stuck. We argue, first, that a one-sided focus upon the being of nature blocks an adequate understanding of the world we actually live in: the semiotically constituted lifeworld that is the proper locus of human realities, including moral evil. We argue, second, that the positivity of moral evil consists not only, nor even primarily, in the positivity of “action” as such, but in structures of objectivity engendered by creative reason that oppose the due end, and that involve a specific genus of pure object which we call a mystical daydream. Like any objects, these objects are communicable and formative in relation to the lifeworld, within which they in turn engender further interpretants for both those who do and those who suffer evil, thanks to the causality of signs. (shrink)

How should we punish criminal offenders? One prima facie attractive punishment is administering a mandatory neurointervention—interventions that exert a physical, chemical or biological effect on the brain in order to diminish the likelihood of some forms of criminal offending. While testosterone-lowering drugs have long been used in European and US jurisdictions on sex offenders, it has been suggested that advances in neuroscience raise the possibility of treating a broader range of offenders in the future. Neurointerventions could be a cheaper, and (...) more effective method of punishment. They could also be more humane. Nevertheless, in this paper we provide an argument against the use of mandatory neurointerventions on offenders. We argue that neurointerventions inflict a significant harm on an offender that render them a morally objectionable form of punishment in a respect that incarceration is not. Namely, it constitutes an objectionable interference with the offender’s mental states. However, it might be thought that incarceration also involves an equally objectionable interference with the offender’s mental states. We show that even if it were the case that the offender is harmed to the same extent in the same respect, it does not follow that the harms are morally equivalent. We argue that if one holds that intended harm is more difficult to justify than harm that is unintended but merely foreseen, this means neurointerventions could be morally objectionable in a significant respect that incarceration is not. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to advance a philosophically justifiable account of Artificial Moral Agency (AMA). Concerns about the moral status of Artificial Intelligence (AI) traditionally turn on questions of whether these systems are deserving of moral concern (i.e. if they are moral patients) or whether they can be sources of moral action (i.e. if they are moral agents). On the Organic View of Ethical Status, being a moral patient is a necessary condition for an entity to qualify as (...) a moral agent. This view claims that because artificial agents (AAs) lack sentience, they cannot be proper subjects of moral concern and hence cannot be considered to be moral agents. I raise conceptual and epistemic issues with regards to the sense of sentience employed on this view, and I argue that the Organic View does not succeed in showing that machines cannot be moral patients. Nevertheless, irrespective of this failure, I also argue that the entire project is misdirected in that moral patiency need not be a necessary condition for moral agency. Moreover, I claim that whereas machines may conceivably be moral patients in the future, there is a strong case to be made that they are (or will very soon be) moral agents. Whereas it is often argued that machines cannot be agents simpliciter, let alone moral agents, I claim that this argument is predicated on a conception of agency that makes unwarranted metaphysical assumptions even in the case of human agents. Once I have established the shortcomings of this “standard account”, I move to elaborate on other, more plausible, conceptions of agency, on which some machines clearly qualify as agents. Nevertheless, the argument is still often made that while some machines may be agents, they cannot be moral agents, given their ostensible lack of the requisite phenomenal states. Against this thesis, I argue that the requirement of internal states for moral agency is philosophically unsound, as it runs up against the problem of other minds. In place of such intentional accounts of moral agency, I provide a functionalist alternative, which makes conceptual room for the existence of AMAs. The implications of this thesis are that at some point in the future we may be faced with situations for which no human being is morally responsible, but a machine may be. Moreover, this responsibility holds, I claim, independently of whether the agent in question is “punishable” or not. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (‘PSR’), every fact has an explanation for why it obtains. If the PSR is true, there must be a sufficient reason for why God chose to create our world. But a sufficient reason for God’s choice plausibly necessitates that choice. It thus seems that God could not have done otherwise, and that our world exists necessarily. We therefore appear forced to pick between the PSR, and the contingency of creation and divine choice. I (...) show that a third option remains open, and thus that it is possible to preserve the contingency of creation and divine choice even while endorsing the PSR. My solution depends on the coherence of a restricted modal realism. On this modal realism, there is more than one possible morally optimal created world, and for each such world there is an existing possibility in which God creates that world. (shrink)

We contest the unsubstantiated assumption of both materialists and non-materialist that the ontological status they propose applies to all humans and that the competing claim is false for all - ie we reject both the claim of non-materialists that all humans share the same fundamental aspect of having a "non-material consciousness" (nmc), as well as the contrasting claim of materialists that none do (being fully material as according to eliminative materialists/reductive physicalists etc). Instead, the basic proposition of this paper, our (...) ‘ontological conecture’ (OC) - an updated version of our 1998 website article “Mindless Materialists” - is that the central tenets of proponents on both sides are true, but only regarding themselves. A signature feature of nmc is that brains associated to it are capable of knowing of its existence directly, and as a corollary we would propose that if a sophisticated brain does not know it is associated to nmc then most likely this is because it is in fact not so associated. Thus, in accordance with our OC we will consider a brain’s statements on this issue (that it does or does not possess nmc) as not merely its ‘philosophical position’ but as an authoritative statement, a reflection of an ontological fact. Furthermore, we propose that only those who possess nmc are capable of understanding what it is, so that although they are well-qualified to know directly that they themselves possess it, in contrast those who lack nmc and possess only material consciousness (mc) cannot even comprehend what non-materiality means - they will understandably tend to consider it a non-existent absurdity, which contention would be quite correct in a purely-material reality, such as they effectively inhabit. -/- Terminology reflecting ontological status: Since according to our OC those brains which categorize themselves as non-materialists are presumed to indeed be associated to nmc, for usefulness in phraseology we’ll refer to people whose brain is so associated as being nmc’s (not merely “espousing nmc”). Materialists say they are conscious but that theirs is a material consciousness (abbrev: “mc”) , and since according to our OC we accept this self-determination we will refer to them as being “mc’s” or being materialist (not merely “espousing materialism”). -/- Are materialists mindless or are non-materialists delusional? Notoriously, it is impossible to prove that one possesses nmc (which is a sort of corollary to the fact that it is directly self-known) - being non-material, nmc cannot be detected via the scientific method. However just as those with nmc cannot prove they possess it so too one cannot prove or determine via measurement that materialists do not possess it. Nevertheless we feel that our OC is the simplest solution to the conundrum of how there are materialists if a brain can directly sense its associated nmc. In sum, although of course it is impossible to prove that any particular person possesses or lacks nmc, given all the above our OC considers - as stated by the title of this paper - a brain’s self-identification as "materialist" or “non-materialist” (dualist, panpsychist, idealist etc) as reflecting the absence or presence of an associated real non-material awareness/consciousness, rather than merely as a statement of a philosophical stance. An alternative solution is implicit in the above - that all humans possess nmc just that materialists are those whose brains lack the awareness of theirs, or that the brain-aspect which communicates to others has no access to it. -/- Towards developing more constructive dialogue between mc’s/nmc’s, and greater self-confidence and independence among nmc’s in the face of materialist dominance of the intellectual-climate: A large part of the overall paper is devoted to not just pointing out the futility of communication of the sort usually engaged in - ie based on the erroneous underlying assumption that both sides of the debate are ontologically the same - but also suggesting ways to make the debate less frustrating by a recognition of the OC. Greater clarity in discussions can be achieved partly via a deeper understanding of the different meanings the same term might have to nmc’s/mc’s and suggestions relevant the construction of a sort of translation algorithm to utilize in discussions (as a simple example, substituting ‘higher-level cognitive material brain-processes’ for ‘mind’ when that term is used by an mc); by the frank statement by nmc’s engaged in dialogue with mc’s that the existence of nmc is not up for discussion; by learning how the existence of our nmc colors the meaning we give to certain terms in ways we were not aware of, meanings which are absent for mc’s; and in general via the recognition by the nmc that the dialogue is with a person lacking nmc. -/- Perhaps materialists are right: In the interest of ‘reciprocity’, the paper also offers an alternative/opposing view to the central proposition, to the effect that the materialist claim is correct, and it is a defect of brain wiring or structure which is the source of an active illusion of "self-awareness" underlying the philosophical claims of non-materialists. A prospective source of this illusion is offered - an analog of the sense of presence experienced during ‘sleep paralysis’. (shrink)

Longtermism is the view that the most urgent global priorities, and those to which we should devote the largest portion of our resources, are those that focus on (i) ensuring a long future for humanity, and perhaps sentient or intelligent life more generally, and (ii) improving the quality of the lives that inhabit that long future. While it is by no means the only one, the argument most commonly given for this conclusion is that these interventions have greater expected (...) goodness per unit of resource devoted to them than each of the other available interventions, including those that focus on the health and well-being of the current population. In this paper, I argue that, even if we grant the consequentialist ethics upon which this argument depends, and even if we grant one of the axiologies that are typically paired with that ethics to give the argument, we are not morally required to choose an option that maximises expected utility; indeed, we might not even be permitted to do so. Instead, I will argue, if the argument's consequentialism is correct, we should choose using a decision theory that is sensitive to risk, and allows us to give greater weight to worse-case outcomes than expected utility theory does. And, I will show, such decision theories do not always recommend longtermist interventions. Indeed, sometimes, they recommend exactly the opposite: sometimes, they recommend hastening human extinction. Many, though not all, will take this as a reductio of the consequentialism or the axiology of the argument. I remain agnostic on the conclusion we should draw. (shrink)

Cognitive science is ready for a major reconceptualization. This is not at all because efforts by its practitioners have failed, but rather because so much progress has been made. The need for reconceptualization arises from the fact that this progress has come at greater cost than necessary, largely because of more or less philosophical (at least metatheoretical) straightjackets still worn - whether wittingly or not - by those doing the work. These bonds are extremely hard to break. Even (...) some of those who have directed powerful arguments against them have failed entirely to shake them off. The bonds are often attributed to the work of René Descartes, but they are really much older than that. If even in the present effort, I fail entirely to remove the straightjacket myself (even though I am making every attempt to get it off), this will testify to its tight grip. The straightjacket I am thinking about, of course, is the vague picture of the human situation that imagines centralized, internal minds in control of bodily machines. While almost no one in the contemporary cognitive science arena imagines minds to be the kind of thing Descartes took them to be - instantiations of a unique, fully non-material substance - there is nevertheless a deep resistance, even among the most fervent professed "materialists," to giving up this picture. In what follows, I shall try to offer an approach which on the one hand capitalizes on the excellent progress that has been made in cognitive science in the last few decades, and which on the other hand offers a general approach that may help at some level in the attempt to shake "Cartesian" bonds. The approach, as the alert reader already knows from the title of the essay, is an "ecological" approach. (shrink)

Nagasawa has argued that the suffering associated with evolution presents a greater challenge to atheism than to theism because that evil is incompatible with ‘existential optimism’ about the world – with seeing the world as an overall good place, and being thankful that we exist. I argue that even if atheism was incompatible with existential optimism in this way, this presents no threat to atheism. Moreover, it is unclear how the suffering associated with evolution could on its (...) own undermine existential optimism. Links between Nagasawa's argument and the current debate about the axiology of theism are also explored. (shrink)

Forgiveness as a positive response to wrongdoing is a widespread phenomenon that plays a role in the moral lives of most persons. Surprisingly, Kant has very little to say on the matter. Although Kant dedicates considerable space to discussing punishment, wrongdoing and grace, he addresses the issues of human forgiveness directly only in some short passages in the Lectures on Ethics and in one passage of the Metaphysics of Morals. As noted by Sussman, the TL passage, however, betrays some ambivalence. (...) Kant establishes a duty of virtue to be forgiving (TL, 6:460), yet he immediately warns against its excess: meek toleration of recurrent wrongs could manifest a lack of self-respect and a violation of a duty to oneself (TL, 6:461). Sussman claims that this ambivalence ultimately arises from the fact that forgiveness sits uncomfortably in Kant’s moral thought. First, forgiveness has an ‘ineluctably elective aspect’ that makes it, to a certain extent, arbitrary and dependent on particular features of the forgiver’s psychology and, as such, in tension with Kant’s central claims that human beings are autonomous agents capable of determining their own moral status. Second, according to Sussman, Kant’s moral retributivism, i.e. ‘the particular moral position that every moral wrong against another deserves punishment of the wrongdoer’ seems to be in tension with the possibility of a ‘truly redemptive forgiveness’. Moreover, forgiveness also seems to be in tension with a passage of the Religion in which Kant argues that the moral guilt from our original evil disposition cannot be understood as a debt or liability that can be compensated, erased, transferred or otherwise wiped out by others (Rel, 6:72). Thus, to the extent that forgiveness might be thought to involve the forgoing of moral guilt, it seems incompatible with Kant’s views on culpability and punishment. This chapter seeks to clarify Kant’s views on forgiveness in order to show that, although not often appreciated, personal forgiveness plays an important role in the lives of ordinary human agents as understood by Kant. In particular, I aim to show there is a conception of forgiveness available to Kant that is not incompatible with Kant’s views of punishment and culpability. In Section 1, I argue that, for Kant, far from being merely ‘elective,’ forgiveness is, under certain conditions, morally required. I provide a brief summary of an interpretation of Kant’s theory of forgiveness that I have defended in recently published work , in order to argue that Kant’s duty to be forgiving should be understood as an imperfect duty of virtue which is conditional on repentance. Kant is not ambivalent about this duty because he maintains that when the relevant conditions are not met, we have a perfect duty to ourselves not to forgive unrepentant wrongdoers. The TL passage thus identifies two different duties. In Section 2, I show that forgiveness, as conceptualised by Kant, does not require the forgoing of punishment or the overcoming of moral guilt and that this could, in fact, be seen as an attractive feature of Kant’s position. I end by offering a very brief assessment of Kant’s views. (shrink)

A man, carrying a gun in his waistband, robs a food vendor. In making his escape, the gun discharges, critically injuring the robber. About such instances, it is common to think, “he got what he deserved.” This Article seeks to explore cases like that—cases of “natural punishment.” Natural punishment occurs when a wrongdoer faces serious harm that results from her wrongdoing and not from anyone seeking retribution against her. The Article proposes that U.S. courts follow their peers and recognize natural (...) punishment as genuine punishment for legal, specifically constitutional, purposes. Were U.S. courts to do so, they would need to reduce the amount of punishment they would otherwise bestow on wrongdoers upon conviction if a natural punishment has occurred or foreseeably will occur. A handful of foreign jurisdictions already accept something like this Article’s proposal, but natural punishment has no formal legal recognition in the United States. The goal of this Article is twofold: first, it offers a rigorous and defensible definition of natural punishment by distinguishing it from nearby notions and dispelling any association with supernatural ideas; second, it demonstrates that recognizing natural punishment as genuine punishment will not much disturb existing American legal institutions and understandings. -/- As an added bonus, the concept of natural punishment can be employed to solve a longstanding problem in criminal law theory, the Mystery of Credit for Time Served. The Mystery surrounds the common practice of giving prisoners credit toward their prison sentences for their time served in jail awaiting trial. The Mystery poses a dilemma about whether the detention time was punishment: If it was punishment, then the detainee was punished before trial in violation of Due Process; however, if the time was not punishment, there is no reason to discount the prison sentence. Seeing the time in detention as an instance of natural punishment resolves the Mystery. (shrink)

There is an ethics of blaming the person who deserves blame. The Christian scriptures imply the following no-vengeance condition: a person should not vengefully overtly blame a wrongdoer even if she gives the wrongdoer the exact negative treatment that he deserves. I explicate and defend this novel condition and argue that it demands a revolution in our blaming practices. First, I explain the no-vengeance condition. Second, I argue that the no-vengeance condition is often violated. The most common species of (...) blame involves anger; anger conceptually includes a desire for vengeance; and there are many pleasures in payback. Third, I clarify that it is possible to blame non-vengefully in anger and highlight three good uses for anger in non-vengeful blame. Fourth, I offer two reasons that justify the divine command prohibiting vengeance, and I note that the Christian God is merely sufficient to make non-vengeance morally obligatory. Fifth, I defend the no-vengeance condition against four biblical objections. (shrink)

I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer from (...) this conclusion that they must also lack criminal responsibility and therefore that our continuing to punish psychopaths for their crimes is unjust. My response is that this inference is entirely fallacious. -/- Criminal responsibility turns out to be quite distinct from moral responsibility. The two kinds of responsibility require very different conditions to be satisfied. In particular, criminal responsibility, unlike moral responsibility, does not require an agent be able to grasp and follow moral reasons; it requires only that the individual be able to grasp and follow criminal laws. Once this point is recognized, it becomes much easier to accept my thesis: while the subset of psychopaths who commit crimes are not morally responsible for their criminal behavior because they cannot understand moral reasons, they are still criminally responsible because they can understand what the consequences will be if they get caught. For this reason, even though I concede that psychopaths are not morally responsible for the crimes that they commit, our practice of punishing them for these crimes is still just. -/- Second, I argue that psychopathy is a mental illness and should be recognized as such. One reason that it should be recognized as a mental illness is simply because it is; it satisfies the main criteria for inclusion in the DSM-IV, the “bible” of mental disorders. The other reason is more practical than conceptual. It starts with two facts: the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the preventive detention of any individual who is not a criminal suspect is not constitutional unless the individual is not only dangerous but also mentally ill; and psychopathy is not currently considered to be a mental illness. So, as things now stand, we cannot preventively commit dangerous psychopaths – that is, psychopaths who have clearly indicated that they will be committing serious crimes. Instead, we must wait for them to commit the crimes before we can lock them up. Unfortunately, this incarceration always comes too late for the victims. It would therefore be better if we could lock them up before they actually inflict any harm. Once again, then, I propose that the legal and psychological communities classify psychopathy as a mental illness. (shrink)

Classical Greek philosophy in its struggle to grasp the material world from its very beginning has been marked by the – sometimes undercurrent, some others overt and even intense, but never idle – juxtaposition between the mind and the senses, logos and perception or, if the anachronism is allowed, between realism and idealism. Parmenides is reportedly the first philosopher to insistently assert that thought and being are the same by his famous aphorism τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστί τε καὶ (...) εἶναι, and that the “way of truth”, as opposed to the “way of opinion”, only runs through the intellect, since the truth is unattainable by the illusory senses. Thus, true may be only what our intellect can firmly grasp, and – by an easy, though not equally sound step – vice versa: that which our intellect can firmly grasp is necessarily true. In this paper I intend to set off Parmenides’ apparent influence on Anselm with regard to the latter’s celebrated ontological argument concerning the existence of God, and the influence of both on Spinoza’s Ethica, which is founded on the key tenet that not only does God necessarily exist – since God is intellectually conceivable –, but that God also by necessity is an utterly good one. (shrink)

It is frequently claimed that an all-loving and good God cannot permit anyone to end up in hell. In this book, the author shows that this issue of God’s permission of hell has an intimate connection with age-old questions regarding why God would permit sin. Indeed, focus on why an all-loving and good God would permit hell is the best lens through which to explain sin. -/- Many arguments against the possibility of hell require affirming that God permits sin because (...) God could not achieve goods for us without allowing sin. The author argues that we have independent philosophical reasons to reject that sin is necessary for us in any way, and, further, we have similar reasons to hold that hell is necessarily possible if the God of classical theism exists. In the end, understanding why an all-loving and good God would permit hell reveals that there is always hope for us, even when things appear most hopeless. -/- The book will appeal to those working in metaphysics, theology, philosophy of religion, and medieval philosophy. (shrink)

Lee Archie argued that if any truth-values are consistently assigned to a natural language conditional, where modus ponens and modus tollens are valid argument forms, and affirming the consequent is invalid, this conditional will have the same truth-conditions as a material implication. This argument is simple and requires few and relatively uncontroversial assumptions. We show that it is possible to extend Archie’s argument to three- and five-valued logics and vindicate a slightly weaker conclusion, but one that is still important: (...) class='Hi'>Even if you do not believe in bivalence and the classical negation operator, you would still have good reasons to accept that natural language conditionals and the material implication share truth-conditions. (shrink)

[Note: articles 1-5 are in English; Intro, Discussion, and Conclusion are in Portuguese.] Responsibility practices that are part of our daily lives involve, among other things, standards about how one should praise, blame, or punish people for their actions, as well as particular acts that follow those standards to a greater or lesser extent. A classical question in philosophy asks whether human beings can actually be morally responsible for what they do. This dissertation argues that addressing this classical question (...) is insufficient if one wants the investigation of moral responsibility to serve the goal of improving ordinary responsibility practices. As an alternative, I offer directions for an interdisciplinary investigation that I take to be in a better position to promote that goal. My argument is developed in five articles and a discussion section. The first four articles describe limitations of skeptical views, which deny the existence of moral responsibility. The first article assesses a skeptical argument based on results from neuroscience that intends to show that there is no free will. I argue that a premise in the argument—which says that choices are determined by events in the brain—is not supported by the available results. The second article argues that, despite the fact that existent results do not show that choices are determined by brain events, further studies in neuroscience could in principle do that. The third article begins the discussion of limitations that concern the implementability of some of the changes in responsibility practices recommended in skeptical approaches. Specifically, I describe challenges that attempts to reduce the severity of legal punishment are likely to face due to psychological facts about belief in free will and desire to punish. The forth article presents results from an original experiment that sought to test a hypothesis about the workings of belief in free will and the desire to punish, namely the hypothesis that the desire to punish causally affects beliefs about free will. Results failed to support the hypothesis. Finally, the fifth article presents what I call the enhancement model, i.e., a proposal about how to structure an interdisciplinary investigation that can promote the enhancement of ordinary responsibility practices. The final discussion section shows how the enhancement model overcomes some of the limitations of recent discussions about the existence of moral responsibility, which includes not just the skeptical views considered in earlier articles, but also views that affirm the existence of moral responsibility and free will. The central claim of this dissertation, therefore, is that the investigation of moral responsibility can be rearranged so as to further the goal of improving ordinary responsibility practices. (shrink)

Plea bargains are the stock-in-trade of the modern American prosecutor’s office. The basic scenario, wherein a defendant agrees to plea guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence, is familiar to viewers of police procedurals. In an equally famous variation on the theme, the prosecutor requests something more than an admission of guilt: leniency will only be forthcoming if the defendant is willing to cooperate with the prosecutor in securing the conviction of another suspect. In some of these cases, the defendant (...) is a low-level criminal who has information on a high-level malefactor who is of more interest to the police. In others, the defendant and the person she is asked to testify against are of the same criminal rank, but evidentiary weaknesses induce the prosecutor to seek the aid of one suspect in order to convict the other. In this latter version, the classic tactic of film detectives is to offer the bargain to both defendants in the hopes that one will crack and agree to reveal what he knows about the other. The defendants could either be in custody for different crimes or be accomplices in the same offense. -/- The last variation (involving accomplices) is the subject of this Article. I take issue with the prosecutorial tactics in these cases because of the risk they create of punishing the comparatively virtuous person more than the comparatively vicious one for the same acts. As I will argue, it is the less honest person who is more likely to accept the prosecutor’s deal, leading the more honest person, who resisted temptation, to suffer greater penalties. -/- I contend that this scenario offends distributive justice, runs counter to the idea (accepted by some) that a proper goal of the state is the cultivation of good character in the citizenry, and is perverse insofar as a person will suffer more from the prosecutor's dilemma insofar as she is more or less a person of conscience. These negative considerations notwithstanding, I do not call for the abolition of accomplice plea bargaining but argue that the problems I raise should be considered when weighing its pros and cons. -/- This article was published in the company of a strong critical response by Guha Krishnamurthi, whose contribution I greatly appreciate. (shrink)

The most astonishing by-product of the events of 9-11 is undoubtedly the renewed legitimacy, in the eyes of many, of some forms of torture. Since many centuries, the most brutal dictators have felt the need to lie and deceive about their torture prac-tices, and now we have political and intellectual leaders of the free world openly arguing in favor of the use of torture in certain cases. The most commonly cited of these cases is the one described in the so-called (...) "ticking bomb argument" (hence-forth TBA). -/- The kind of torture that is supposedly justified by this argument can be characte-rized as benevolent torture, well-intentioned torture, or even moral torture because it is different from torture as it is commonly used by certain oppressive or authori-tarian governments. "Ticking bomb torture" is not a method of terrorizing and sub-jugating a population, and neither is it a form of criminal punishment or a means of establishing innocence or guilt. On the contrary, its declared purpose is to protect the population and to avoid a terrorist attack on civilian targets. It is benevolent tor-ture because its objective is not fear or punishment, but safety and security. It is moral torture because reluctance to engage in it would endanger the lives of inno-cent civilians, and would therefore be immoral. "A society that elects to favor the interests of wrongdoers over those of the innocent, when a choice must be made be-tween the two, is in need of serious ethical rewiring". -/- Proponents of the TBA readily agree that they discuss an exceptional case which is unrepresentative of torture in general - most real cases of torture have absolutely nothing to do with the example given in the TBA or fail to conform to the hypo-theses present in the TBA - and which in no way justifies torture that has other, and less benevolent purposes. Yet they believe that this exceptional nature of the case does not render it insignificant or irrelevant. In the setting of a "war on terrorism", it can be extremely important to agree on the soundness of the TBA because no matter how exceptional the case may be, when it occurs it has important conse-quences. A clear agreement on the TBA is necessary in order to save many lives in exceptional cases. -/- I will argue in this paper that the TBA is fundamentally flawed because it is based on a number of untenable assumptions. Moreover, I argue that the TBA, when thought through until its logical conclusions, ends up condoning torture of a much less exceptional and benevolent nature than the torture it started with. In other words, the TBA proves too much. It would not only put us on a "slippery slope" towards ever increasing levels of torture, but also destroy our democracy and free-dom. It is, in the words of the title of this paper, the little door to hell. The TBA tries to force a small opening into an area of human activity that is shielded by a very strong, and perhaps even absolute moral and legal taboo, and then finds that it has allowed this activity to take over civilization. (shrink)

Within the United States, the most prominent justification for criminal punishment is retributivism. This retributivist justification for punishment maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason that she deserves something bad to happen to her just because she has knowingly done wrong—this could include pain, deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the basic desert attached to the criminal’s immoral action alone that provides the justification for punishment. This means that the retributivist position is not reducible (...) to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society or the moral improvement of those being punished. A number of sentencing guidelines in the U.S. have adopted desert as their distributive principle, and it is increasingly given deference in the “purposes” section of state criminal codes, where it can be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the code’s provisions. Indeed, the American Law Institute recently revised the Model Penal Code so as to set desert as the official dominate principle for sentencing. And courts have identified desert as the guiding principle in a variety of contexts, as with the Supreme Court’s enthroning retributivism as the “primary justification for the death penalty.” While retributivism provides one of the main sources of justification for punishment within the criminal justice system, there are good philosophical and practical reasons for rejecting it. One such reason is that it is unclear that agents truly deserve to suffer for the wrongs they have done in the sense required by retributivism. In the first section, I explore the retributivist justification of punishment and explain why it is inconsistent with free will skepticism. In the second section, I then argue that even if one is not convinced by the arguments for free will skepticism, there remains a strong epistemic argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that undermines both libertarian and compatibilist attempts to justify it. I maintain that this argument provides sufficient reason for rejecting the retributive justification of criminal punishment. I conclude in the third section by briefly sketching my public health-quarantine model, a non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behavior that draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. I argue that the model is not only consistent with free will skepticism and the epistemic argument against retributivism, it also provides the most justified, humane, and effective way of dealing with criminal behavior. (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)

In the United States, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has proposed deliberative democracy as an approach for dealing with ethical issues surrounding synthetic biology. Deliberative democracy might similarly help us as we update the regulation of human subjects research. This paper considers how the values that deliberative democratic engagement aims to realize can be realized in a human subjects research context. Deliberative democracy is characterized by an ongoing exchange of ideas between participants, and an effort to (...) justify decisions that bind participants by appeal to reasons that the participants can understand and share. Even when unanimous agreement is not reached, the active participation of everyone along with the requirement that reasons be made accessible enhances the legitimacy of the ultimate outcome. Importantly, deliberative democratic structures avoid strict hierarchies and place participants, as much as possible, in the position of equals. Human subjects research has some features that may make deliberative democratic principles seem initially unappealing. For one, there are asymmetries in knowledge between expert researchers conducting the research and participants in the research process. For another, statistical validity is made easiest by research paradigms that produce standardized, quantitative data, which can be difficult to achieve if research participants are given the power to deliberatively reshape the research design as it progresses. These and other problems have tended to produce a human subjects research process where subjects do not actively participate in shaping research, but rather consent to a predefined set of interventions designed by expert researchers and vetted by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). In this paper, I suggest some ways in which human subjects research could do more to realize deliberative democratic values, and, in particular, how a revised Common Rule might help to realize these values. First, research participants could be treated not as passive subjects but instead involved in research design, ethical review, and the ongoing conduct and dissemination of research. Such participation might involve, for instance, including people who have served as research subjects on IRBs, or replacing IRB oversight for certain forms of research exempted from IRB oversight under a revised Common Rule with oversight by a body of community members or research subjects. It might also involve having the oversight of research that uses more participatory models be more participatory and less hierarchical in nature. I also raise questions about the exemption of research on public benefit programs from any research-level oversight and from consent requirements. While IRBs are likely not the correct overseers, there may be good reason to view such research with a critical eye, because of its potential for long-range impacts on the lives of participants. By giving research subjects a greater voice in research that aims at fine-tuning public benefit programs on which subjects rely, a deliberative oversight process has the potential to recast research participation as a form of active democratic participation and to address a “democratic deficit” in public health. Numerous proposals regarding health care have called for greater participation by laypeople and a more nonhierarchical approach to setting health priorities. Involving lay research subjects in the conduct of public benefits research and other forms of public health research may help to further these goals. (shrink)

The debate on compatibility of fate with human responsibility lasted for five hundred years of the Stoic school and it is still with us in terms of contemporary discussions of the compatibility of determinism and free will. Chrysippus was confronted with the standard objection: It would be unjust to punish criminals “if human beings do not do evils voluntarily but are dragged by fate.” Chrysippus uses the famous illustration of the cylinder and cone, which cannot start moving without being pushed. (...) However, when this has happened, from then on the cylinder rolls and the cone spins by their own nature. I explore the cylinder analogy and its modern relevance from the perspective of thought experiments. I argue that it helps us isolate the main causal factor (the locus of responsibility and agency) and insulate this factor from the rest of the causal history and causal background. The cylinder/cone analogy is a compatibilistic tool, a kind of “mental distillation” in which we separate in imagination those aspects (causal factors) which are relevant for moral responsibility from those which are not. I suggest, somehow anachronistically, but in line both with contemporary compatibilism and Chrysippian views on causal structure of agency that the actions of an agent are “fated” from the theoretical point of view, but they are up to her from the practical point of view. (shrink)

In a world of more than 7 billion people, 80% live on less than $10 per day. Five (5) percent of global income is generated by the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population; while the wealthiest 20% of the population generates 75 percent of world income. Economics attempts to define or describe behavior and it ventures into the realm of predicting. Economics should therefore accept responsibility for controlling/directing realities. If we can understand, define and predict behavior, we should accept (...) the responsibility for changing behavior, and as economists, bring that to bear on material upliftment of the greater majority of the earth’s populace. . Since 1847, numerous role-players have debated and worked tirelessly to promote the welfare of those who are marginalised from mainstream society. To what avail? Exactly one hundred and fifty eight years later, one of the iconic statesmen of the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela, stated: “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our time – times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accommodation – that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils” (as quoted in Green 2009:2).Clearly, significant progress in addressing the issue has not been made. A concerted drive by the United Nations led to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in September 2000, and was endorsed by 189 world leaders. Some progress has been made during the past decade, but it is apparent that many countries are not going to be able to reach their goals. Hence, in order to address poverty at its root, attention is increasingly focused on the contribution of the informal sector and small, medium and micro enterprises. This paper explores such and offers alternatives to combat the spectres of structural unemployment and poverty. (shrink)

In light of technology that may reveal the content of a person’s innermost thoughts, I address the question of whether there is a right to ‘brain privacy’—a right not to have one’s inner thoughts revealed to others–even if exposing these thoughts might be beneficial to society. I draw on a conception of privacy as the ability to control who has access to information about oneself and to an account that connects one’s interest in privacy to one’s interests in autonomy (...) and associated reputational interests, and preserving one’s dignity. Focusing on the controversial case of Gilberto Valle, known as the ‘cannibal cop’, who faced legal punishment and moral reproach for deeply disturbing thoughts of doing violence to women, thoughts he claimed were mere fantasies, I argue that Valle has a right to brain privacy if he has a legitimate privacy interest that is not outweighed by competing societal interests in avoiding harm. Our weighing of competing privacy and societal interests will depend on the magnitude of the privacy interests in autonomy and dignity, and on how reliable the technology used to expose inner thoughts is in predicting future harmful behavior and identifying true threats. (shrink)

The impermanence of human affairs is a major theme in Spinoza’s discussions of political histories, and from our present-day perspective it is both intriguing and ironic to see how this very theme has played out in the evolving fate of Spinoza’s association with atheism. While Spinoza’s contemporaries charged him with atheism in order to impugn his philosophy (and sometimes his character), in our times many lay readers and some scholars portray Spinoza as an atheist in order to commemorate his role (...) as a founder of modern secularism. In this paper, I will argue that Spinoza deserves neither vilification nor praise for being an atheist, for the simple reason that he was not one (unless one employs the term ‘atheism’ in a very peculiar sense). I have chosen the current topic as my contribution to a volume focused on the TTP, the Ethics, and their interrelations because it is precisely these two books which brought about the common reactionary accusation of atheism by Spinoza’s contemporaries. Addressing Spinoza’s 1663 book, Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, Bayle writes: “Spinoza appears as orthodox in that book about the nature of God.” As we shall shortly see, Descartes too was accused of atheism by some of his contemporaries (though not so by Bayle). The latter designates his target quite explicitly: “[Spinoza’s] Tractatus Theologico Politicus, printed in Amsterdam, in the year 1670, is a pernicious and execrable book which contains all the seeds of the Atheism he plainly discovered in his Opera Posthuma.” François Lamy, in his 1696 Le nouvel athéisme renversé, also focused on the Ethics and the TTP in his attack on Spinoza’s atheism. Bayle’s reference to the Opera Posthuma is ostensibly targeting the Ethics at least primarily, if not uniquely. Even the most suspicious and distrustful mind would have to labor hard in order to find atheism in the Hebrew Grammar, or even in the Tractatus Politicus where Spinoza argues that it is not within the power, and hence right, of the commonwealth to induce people to adopt utterly absurd beliefs, such as “that the whole is greater than its part or that God does not exist.” The TTP and the Ethics are the works where Spinoza launches his merciless attack on anthropocentric thinking and anthropomorphic religion. Spinoza’s panentheism (“quicquid est, in Deo est”) constitutes the metaphysical foundation of the Ethics, and it is repeatedly and clearly alluded to in the TTP. Since it is these two elements – (1) Spinoza’s open assertions of panentheism and (2) his critique of andromorphic conceptions of God – which are the historical grounds for the atheism charge, it seems natural that the merit of this charge should be decided primarily by examination of these two foundational works. I will proceed in the following manner. In the first part of the paper, we will make our first acquaintance with the imputation of atheism by Spinoza’s contemporaries and Spinoza’s response to the charge (or lack thereof). In the second part, I discuss three broad strategies, or hermeneutic avenues, that have been pursued to impute atheism to Spinoza. The first of the three was dominant in Spinoza’s time, while the latter two were employed more recently. These strategies are not mutually exclusive and we can find occasionally various combinations of different shades of these three strategies. In this part, I will also raise some preliminary questions about the cogency of the hermeneutics employed by each strategy. In the third and fourth parts of the paper, I will discuss a small selection of key texts from the Ethics and the TTP, respectively, and argue that the atheist readings fail to make sense of these key passages (unless one adopts an extreme hermeneutics of suspicion which could allegedly find any view harbored in any text). Let me stress that this selection of passages is far from comprehensive, and that dozens of other passages can be adduced to establish the very same point. I hope by the end of the fourth part to convince the reader of the deep problems besetting the atheist readings. In the fifth and last part, I show that both panentheism and the critique of anthropomorphic religion and anthropomorphic conceptions of providence were quite common within rabbinic discourse. Thus, I will argue that if we are not in the business of announcing that both Maimonides and the Kabbalists were atheists, we should avoid the same imputation to Spinoza. Underlying my argument in this final part is the claim that at least some perceptions of Spinoza as an atheist are instances of what could be termed conceptual colonialism, i.e. the enforcement of the categories of a hegemonic culture (in this case, Western Christianity ) on minority cultures (in the current case, rabbinic Judaism). To be clear, this attitude need not be motivated by ill intentions or racism. It is always tempting and easy to explain the unfamiliar through the familiar, but conceptual stagnation and insistence on imposing the categories of the familiar on other cultures may quickly lead to deep distortion and blindness, despite one’s best intentions. Unless one is exceedingly careful to avoid the – completely natural – temptation to impose one’s own categories on a foreign culture (and to look for the coin only under the street light), one is likely to end up with distorted conceptions of the relevant alien culture, despite one’s best intentions. (shrink)

Open Access: What if it doesn’t get better? Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such (...) heavy knowledge, which I call an ‘Imperfectionist Ethic,’ could include resisting evils, improving the lives of victims, and even enjoying ourselves. Better conceptions of the objects of hope, and the good life, inform a praxis-centered, nonideal ethic, supportive of sustained moral motivation, resilience, and even cheer. I connect elements of stoic and pessimistic philosophy in order to outline some normative recommendations for living with evils. A praxis-centered ethic would helpfully adjust our expectations from changing an uncontrollable future, to developing better skills for living in a world that exceeds our control. (shrink)

During the current financial crisis, the need for an alternative to a laissez-faire ethics of capitalism (the Milton Friedman view) becomes clear. I argue that we need an order ethics which employs economics as a key theoretical resource and which focuses on institutions for implementing moral norms. -/- I will point to some aspects of order ethics which highlight the importance of rules, e.g. global rules for the financial markets. In this regard, order ethics (“Ordnungsethik”) is the complement of the (...) German conception of “Ordnungspolitik” which also stresses the importance of a regulatory framework. This framework is needed not to tame the market, but to make it more profitable in the long run. -/- The conception of order ethics relies heavily on contractarianism, especially on James Buchanan’s work. Unlike many other conceptions of ethics, it does not start with an aim to achieve, but rather with an account of what the social world – in which ethical norms have to be implemented – is like. Our social world is different from the pre-modern one. Pre-modern societies played zero-sum games in which people could only gain significantly at the expense of others. And the types of ethics that we are still used to today have been developed within these pre-modern societies. -/- Modern societies, by contrast, can be characterised – by economists and other social theorists alike – as societies with continuous growth. This growth has only been made possible by the modern competitive market economy which enables everyone to pursue his own interests within a carefully devised institutional system. In this system, positive sum games are played, which makes it in principle possible to improve the position of every individual at the same time. Most kinds of ethics, however, resulting from the conditions of pre-modern societies, ignore the possibility of win-win-situations and instead require us to be moderate, to share, to sacrifice, as this would have been functional in zero-sum games. These conceptions distinguish – in more or less strict ways – between self-interest and altruistic motivation. Self-interest, more often than not, is ultimately seen as something evil. -/- Such an ethics cannot be functional in modern societies. Ethical concepts lag behind. Within zero-sum games, it was necessary to call for temperance, for moderate profits, or for a condemnation of lending money at interest. Within positive-sum games, however, the morally desired result of a social process cannot be brought about by changes in motivation, by switching from ‘egoistic’ to ‘altruistic’ motivation. The second theoretical element introduced by order ethics is the distinction between actions and rules, which was already mentioned. Traditional ethics concerns actions: It calls directly for changes in behaviour. This is a consequence of pre-modern conditions as reconstructed before: People in the pre-modern world were only able to control their actions, not so much however the conditions of their actions. In particular, rules like laws, constitutions, social structures, the market order, and also ethical norms have remained stable for centuries. In modern societies, this situation has changed entirely. The rules governing our actions have increasingly come under our control. -/- In this situation, ethics has to focus on rules. Morality must be incorporated in incentive-compatible rules. Direct calls for changes in behaviour without changes in the rules lead only to an erosion of compliance with moral norms. Individuals that continue to behave ‘morally’ will be singled out, because the incentives have not been changed. Moral norms which are to be justified cannot require people to abstain from pursuing their own advantage. People abstain from taking ‘immoral’ advantages only if adherence to ethical norms yields greater benefits over the planned sequence of actions than defection in the single case. Thus ‘abstaining’ is not abstaining in the long run, it is rather an investment in expectations of long-term benefits. By adhering to ethical norms, I become a reliable partner for interactions. The norms do indeed constrain my actions, but they simultaneously expand my options in interactions. And people consent to rules only if these rules hold greater advantages for them, at least in the long run. -/- In general, ethics cannot require people to abandon their individual calculation of advantages. However, it may suggest improving one’s calculation, by calculating in the long run rather than in the short run, and by taking into account the interests of our fellows, as we depend on their acceptance for reaching an optimal level of well-being, especially in a globalized world full of interdependence. -/- The problem of implementation can now be placed at the beginning of a conception of order ethics, justified with reference to the conditions of modern societies I have sketched. Under the conditions of pre-modern societies, an ethics of temperance had evolved that posed simultaneously the problems of implementation and justification. The implementation of well-justified norms or standards could then be regarded as unproblematic, because the social structures allowed for a direct face-to-face enforcement of norms. Pre-modern societies not only favored an ethics of temperance, they also had the instrument of face-to-face-sanctions within their smaller and non-anonymous communities. This instrument is no longer functional in modern anonymous societies, and so we have to face up to the problem of implementation right at the start of our ethical conception. Simultaneously, an order ethics relies on the implementation of sanctions for enforcing incentive-compatible rules. In modern societies, rules and institutions, to a large extent, must fulfil the tasks that were, in pre-modern times, fulfilled by moral norms, which in turn were sanctioned by face-to-face sanctions. Norm implementation in modern societies thus works by setting adequate incentives in order to prevent the erosion of moral norms, which would happen if ‘moral’ actors were systematically threatened with exploitation by other, less ‘moral’ actors. -/- This conception of order ethics is then elaborated further in the area of business ethics. -/- . (shrink)

This Article argues that just as the act of forcing sex upon a rapist is itself rape, the execution of a murderer is itself murder. Part I clears the way by defeating three simple, but common, arguments that capital punishment is not murder. Part II shows that despite moral theorists' best attempts to show otherwise, executions seem to instantiate all the morally relevant properties of murder. Part III notes a lacuna in the literature on capital punishment: Even if there (...) is a good moral reason to execute murderers, the distinction between capital punishment and murder requires a plausible account of the state's right to execute citizens. We have no such account. (shrink)

Tolerance is not a virtue or a moral species in and of itself, rather tolerance exists with its contrary of intolerance. If we reduce tolerance and intolerance to its bare acts, we find that tolerance involves an act of indifference, and intolerance involves an act of intervention. Some may find that it is problematic with associating tolerance with indifference, but for it to be practiced as a virtue as such, those are the acts that must be performed. Additionally, not only (...) must acts of indifference and intervention be involved for tolerance in general to be a moral virtue, the level of indifference and intervention must be appropriate for the circumstance as its relevant guiding cardinal virtue dictates. Lastly, as all things good, there exists an evil form of tolerance and intolerance known as virtue signaling which meets the criteria of false prudence and should not be tolerated. -/- . (shrink)

The simulation hypothesis is a view of the nature of reality, suggesting that our world is likely a computer simulation created by an advanced civilization. In contrast, illusionism is a theory about the nature of phenomenal consciousness, arguing that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion and can be fully explained in physical terms. I argue that if our world is a simulated construct, illusionism could be incorrect. Specifically, even if our phenomenal experiences can be explained as illusionism suggests, advanced civilizations (...) could still create subjectively indistinguishable experiences by constructing a psychological system external to our world. Since we cannot determine which scenario we belong to, the illusionist explanation is not universally valid. Furthermore, I argue that even if the simulation hypothesis is impossible, illusionism remains flawed. Consequently, while the simulation hypothesis may function as a mere assumption, it exposes the inherent limitations of both illusionism and physicalism. (shrink)

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven. That is, heaven is an imaginable world in a similar way that logically possible scenarios in any fiction are imaginable. However, like some of (...) the imaginable stories in fiction where we are asked to envision an immoral act as a moral one, we resist. I will employ the works of Tamar Gendler on imaginative resistance and Keith Buhler’s Virtue Ethics approach to moral imaginative resistance and apply them to the conception of heaven and the problem of evil. While we can imagine God as an omnibenevolent parent permitting evil to allow for morally significant freedom and the rewards in heaven or punishments in hell (both possible worlds), we should not. This paper is not intended to be a refutation of particular theodicies; rather it provides a very general groundwork connecting issues of horrendous suffering and imaginative resistance to heaven as a possible world. (shrink)

Kant begins his Lectures on Pedagogy by stating, “[t]he human being is the only creature that must be educated” (Kant, 2007, 9:441), and he argues that it is through education that we can transform our initial “animal nature into human nature” (ibid. 2007, 9:441). Kant understands education as involving an ordered process of care, discipline, instruction and formation through enculturating, civilizing and moralizing (Formosa 2011). Further, Kant envisages that we should pursue as a species the “moral perfection” that is the (...) “final destiny of the human race” through education (Collins, 1997, 27:470; see Dean, 2014). However, to engage in this pursuit Kant believes that, through education and social change, we have to regulate our “animal nature” and counter the moral corruption of our species, which he calls the “radical innate evil in human nature (not any the less brought upon us by ourselves)” (Kant, 1998, 6:32). If humanity is to pursue its final destiny of moral perfection, then education will need to respond responsibly to the propensity to evil that is deeply rooted in us as finite and imperfect rational beings living in imperfect and at times even in morally corrupted social conditions. This paper outlines some of the relevant issues. (shrink)

Techne and Truth. The problem of techne in the dispute between Gorgias and Plato -/- The source of the problem matter of the book is the Plato’s dialogue „Gorgias”. One of the main subjects of the discussion carried out in this multi-aspect work is the issue of the art of rhetoric. In the dialogue the contemporary form of the art of rhetoric, represented by Gorgias, Polos and Callicles, is confronted with Plato’s proposal of rhetoric and concept of art (techne). The (...) ingenuous and dramatic structure of the dialogue composed of three acts, in each of which Socrates’ consecutive interlocutors emerge, is difficult to interpret. It seems, however, that even though the first conversation between Socrates and Gorgias constitutes a small part of the dialogue, it forms the foundations for the discussion. This part, dealing with such important issues as the subject of art, knowledge, power and relation between art and good, is the starting point for the conversations which follow. What do the differences between the Gorgias’ and Plato’s concepts of art consist in? Any attempt to answer the question requires presentation of the background for the discussion taking place in Plato’s work as well as the reconstruction of Gorgias’ vision of the art of rhetoric and art in general, defining the relation between art and knowledge. The latter may be undertaken on the basis of two paraphrases of the treatise “On Non-existence”, two epideictic speeches entitled “Helen” and “Palamedes” and some smaller fragments which have been preserved from Gorgias’ creative output. The treatise “On Non–existence”, very paradoxical in its philosophical meaning, testifies to new, sophistic thinking represented by Gorgias of Leontinoi. The treatise is the polemic and attack on Eleatism based on certain principles and methods elaborated by the Eleatics themselves. It also shows that Gorgias – using traditional Eleatic schemes – is opposed to this tradition. Even though the treatise does not discuss the problem of art directly, it anticipates the considerations from epideictic speeches. “Helen” and “Palamedes” constitute further stages in the development of Gorgias’ thought and concept of art combining typically epideictic elements with some philosophical convictions. Gorgias refers to the Eleatic theme considering the issues of truth, knowledge and belief, yet defining them in the empirical spirit. Solutions in the cognitive sphere determine the horizon of Gorgias’ rhetoric. The word is separated from the existence. Human cognition is limited and therefore the word and visual images affect the belief. This promotes the great importance of rhetoric, painting and sculpture, i.e. the areas which influence in a specific way – creating the “delusion” (ἀπάτη). Through idealization art provides pleasure, which is its objective. Therefore the task of art is to create delusion. The rhetor of Leontinoi discusses the issue of “how?” to use the word ‘rhetoric’. Gorgias is aware that rhetoric may be used to talk about what is unknown and that technical correctness of a rhetoric statement is not identical with the truthfulness of the proclaimed message. Mentioning it, Gorgias shows his respect to the truth as a value which should be respected in speech on the one hand, and on the other emphasizes that the truth in itself has no persuasive power. For this reason it is not enough to proclaim the truth, but, to convince the listeners, the orator should possess the skill of speaking. What is then the relation between truth and art emerging from epideictic speeches? Gorgias undoubtedly emphasizes the formal aspect of speech, as rhetoric is art, thus an ability based on certain principles. According to Gorgias, the truth is the value which should be respected in speeches. Rhetoric is able to create a fictive world, as a great range of reality remains outside direct human experience. Rhetoric does not oppose the truth but discussing not only what is directly given concerns the area outside the sphere of direct experience. This concept of rhetoric is the basis of the discussion about art carried out in the dialogue “Gorgias”. Even though the first of the discussions in the dialogue – the conversation between Socrates and Gorgias – is directly concerned with rhetoric itself, numerous remarks testify to its much wider character. This is best exemplified by the way of carrying out the conversation by Socrates, who, asking questions about rhetoric practised by Gorgias, throughout the whole conversation compares it with other skills. Additionally, the manner and the structure of the conversation prove that Plato considers the issue of rhetoric from a wider perspective determined by the issue of art. The specific feature of the conversation is ordering it around main issues – such notions as πρᾶγμα, ἐπιστήμη, δύναμις, each of which has its own meaning in Plato. In the first part of Gorgias Plato presents the principles previously occurring in other dialogues in a certain order, thus constructing the structure of the conversation with Gorgias. The notions are not novum in Plato but the fact that he clearly wants to systematise them and present a certain concept of art is a new and significant aspect. This tendency is of paramount importance for the discussion because Gorgias’ answers are evaluated by Plato from the perspective of this clearly set concept consisting of not only established notions but also certain principles. The discussion between Socrates and Gorgias introduces a theme which is crucial for the dialogue: the relation between art and good, i.e. the technical and ethical spheres. The issue is introduced by Gorgias, who mentions that rhetoric may be used for evil purposes. On this basis Socrates proves that if rhetoricians can use rhetoric for evil purposes, they have no knowledge concerning the subject of their art – justice, because one who knows what is just, always acts justly. Thus the relation between the technical and ethical spheres transpires to be the main point of contention. The question is whether a technician following the principles of the art he practices may act against good. This paradoxical statement based on the well-known Socrates’ principle "nemo sua sponte peccat" acquires philosophical foundations in the dialogue. In its remaining two parts Plato presents a justification, placing the principle within the framework of a certain concept of art, as a result of which not only rhetoric but also many other skills are criticised. The notions on which the conversation with Gorgias focuses are more precisely defined in the subsequent parts of the dialogue. Additionally, Plato presents twice the conditions which art should fulfill. They oblige the “technicians” to know the nature and purpose of the art and to know the causes of undertaken activities and to be able to justify them. These conditions determine the relation between the two spheres – technical and ethical. According to Plato, art may not act against good because it should be the objective of its activities. Certain concepts of good and knowledge outlined in the dialogue are the guarantees of “technicality”. Good, which should be respected by every art, is understood objectively and is contrasted with subjective pleasure. Knowledge, which should be the basis of art, opposes experience, which uses observation and recollection. Additionally, the definition of knowledge, significance of order in the world assuming the form of “geometrical equality”, significance of mathematics becoming the ideal of exactness indicate that Plato’s concept of knowledge is formed in Gorgias. These conclusions render it impossible that the results of any activity deserving the name of art should oppose good. And this is Plato’s main reproach of Gorgias’ concept, who wrote about false speeches possessing the power of conviction because they were written according to the principles proof of art or who defined tragedy as “a deceit, where he who cheats is more just than he who does not and the cheated is wiser than he who was not cheated”. Such determination of the relation between the technical and ethical sphere resulted from Gorgias’ concept of the world and fundamental philosophical principles. The whole concept of art described by Plato in the dialogue opposes the view presented by Gorgias. According to Plato, every technical activity has a defined object (ἔργον), is based on knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and is always aimed at the good of human soul or body. The danger revealed and presented in the dialogue by Plato exists in the very concept of art presented by Gorgias, i.e. in its empirical foundations and the resulting understanding of the relation between art and good. Gorgias’ concept of art based on empirical cognition, which concerns the world of phenomena and rejects the possibility of perfect knowledge, leads, according to Plato, to a dangerous falsification of the relation between art and good. Plato proves that this weakness of Gorgias’ concept is revealed when confronted with these representatives of “the magnificent art” who are not protected against radicalism by the adherence to the moral tradition. The comparison of two, completely contrasting concepts of art based on different philosophical understanding of knowledge and good is decisive for the criticism of rhetoric in Gorgias. The concept presented by Plato criticises contemporary rhetoric and sophistry but determines the direction of research of the real art of rhetoric. (shrink)

When pessimists claim that human life is meaningless, they often also assert that the universe is “blind to good and evil” and “indifferent to us”. How, if it all, is the indifference of the universe relevant to whether life is meaningful? To answer this question, and to know whether we should be concerned that the universe is indifferent, we need a clearer and deeper understanding of the concept of “cosmic indifference”, which I will seek to provide. I will argue (...) that the lives of many individuals are meaningful and that human life, in general, is somewhat meaningful, despite the indifference of the universe. Furthermore, I will seek to demonstrate that even if the universe cared about us, or had preferences for how we live our lives, that this likely would not enhance the quality of our lives. (shrink)