In this chapter, I juxtapose the mindshaping research program with the literature on the metaphysics of social construction. I suggest that these research programs are remarkably congenial. The practices of interest to mindshaping theorists are more or less straightforward instances of the processes that are taken to be essential to social construction. As such, a constructionist metaphysics of psychological kinds is readily available. I discuss some recent constructionist treatments of particular psychological kinds against this backdrop, before considering how the constructionist (...) outlook interacts with more orthodox viewpoints in the metaphysics of mind. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss various hard cases that an account of moral ignorance should be able to deal with: ancient slave holders, Susan Wolf’s JoJo, psychopaths such as Robert Harris, and finally, moral outliers. All these agents are ignorant, but it is not at all clear that they are blameless on account of their ignorance. I argue that the discussion of this issue in recent literature has missed the complexities of these cases by focusing on the question of epistemic (...) fault. It is not clear that all blameworthy morally ignorant agents have committed an epistemic fault. There are other important issues that pull us in various directions: moral capacity, bad will, and formative circumstances. I argue that bad will is what is crucial, and moral ignorance itself can be a form of bad will. I argue that we should distinguish between two sorts of bad will, and correspondingly, two sorts of blameworthiness. Ordinary blameworthiness, requires moral knowledge, and is based on akratic action. The other kind of blameworthiness, objective blameworthiness, applies when the agent is morally ignorant, and when this indicates bad will. Objective blameworthiness can be undermined by unfortunate formative circumstances. (shrink)

Many recent philosophers have been tempted by epistemic partialism. They hold that epistemic norms and those of friendship constitutively conflict. In this paper, I suggest that underpinning this claim is the assumption that friendship is not an epistemically rich state, an assumption that even opponents of epistemic partiality have not questioned. I argue that there is good reason to question this assumption, and instead regard friendship as essentially involving knowledge of the other. If we accept this account of friendship, the (...) possibility of epistemic partialism does not arise. (shrink)

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)

What’s so good about John Ames? The narrator of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead has been much admired, but it’s far from obvious why. His life is quiet and unassuming, and has for the most part been uneventful in the extreme. In this chapter I draw on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy to explain the moral arc of the novel, and suggest that the novel in turn can shed light on Murdoch’s key ethical ideas. What is so notable about John Ames, I suggest, (...) is his commitment to seeing the world justly and lovingly—a commitment which for Murdoch is at the heart of virtuous agency. (shrink)

Two doxastically significant demands of friendship have been discussed in recent literature, a demand to be epistemically partial and a demand to take our friends seriously. Though less discussed than epistemic partialism, I suggest that the demand to take our friends seriously is motivated by similar cases and considerations, and can avoid key objections to epistemic partialism that have been raised. I further suggest that it does justice to what we care about in friendship, and thus is to be preferred.

In this paper I suggest that there is a way to make sense of blameworthiness for morally problematic actions even when there is no bad will behind such actions. I am particularly interested in cases where an agent acts in a biased way, and the explanation is socialization and false belief rather than bad will on the part of the agent. In such cases, I submit, we are pulled in two directions: on the one hand non-culpable ignorance is usually an (...) excuse, but in the case of acting in a biased way we feel some pull to find the agent blameworthy. I argue that agents are sometimes blameworthy, (where I really mean that they are blameworthy, and not just that it is permissible to reproach them), even if they do not have any bad will. I argue that although the paradigmatic account of blameworthiness is based on quality of will, we can and should be willing to allow that there are non-paradigmatic cases. I argue that the zone of responsibility can be extended to include acts that we are not fully in control of, and acts whose moral status we are non-culpably ignorant about at the time of acting. This extension of responsibility happens through a voluntary taking of responsibility. I argue that there are certain conditions under which we should take responsibility, and that when we do so, we genuinely are responsible. (shrink)

How do we know about other minds on the basis of perception? The two most common answers to this question are that we literally perceive others’ mental states, or that we infer their mental states on the basis of perceiving something else. In this paper, I argue for a different answer. On my view, we don’t perceive mental states, and yet perceptual experiences often immediately justify mental state attributions. In a slogan: other minds are neither seen nor inferred. I argue (...) that this view offers the best explanation of our deeply equivocal intuitions about perception-based mental state attributions, and also holds substantial interest for the epistemology of perception more generally. (shrink)

Philosophical suspicions about the place of shame in the psychology of the mature moral agent are in tension with the commonplace assumption that to call a person shameless purports to mark a fault, arguably a moral fault. I shift philosophical suspicions away from shame and toward its absence in the shameless by focusing attention on phenomena of shamelessness. In redirecting our attention, I clarify the nature of the failing to which ascriptions of shamelessness might refer and defend the thought that, (...) as an evasion of moral self-censure, shamelessness can be morally pernicious. Far from foregoing shame, I conclude, we should be mindful of its moral importance and unapologetic in its defense. (shrink)

Anselm’s ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch’s ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm’s argument, her distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality’s wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.

When we look around us, some things look “alive,” others do not. What is it to “look alive”—to perceive animacy? Empirical work supports the view that animacy is genuinely perceptual. We should construe perception of animacy as perception of agents and behavior. This proposal explains how static and dynamic animacy cues relate, and explains how animacy perception relates to social cognition more broadly. Animacy perception draws attention to objects that are apt to be well‐understood folk psychologically, enabling us to marshal (...) our folk psychological resources efficiently. (shrink)

What’s the difference between those psychological posits that are ‘me” and those that are not? Distinguishing between these psychological kinds is important in many domains, but an account of what the distinction consists in is challenging. I argue for Psychological Constructionism: those psychological posits that correspond to the kinds within folk psychology are personal, and those that don’t, aren’t. I suggest that only constructionism can answer a fundamental challenge in characterizing the personal level – the plurality problem. The things that (...) plausibly qualify as personal are motley. Other attempts at accounting for the personal level either cannot accommodate this plurality, or cannot explain what unifies the personal. Given arguments others have given for a pluralistic conception of folk psychology, constructionism explains and predicts this plurality in a systematic and unified way, thereby solving the plurality problem. (shrink)

The attitudes P. F. Strawson dubs reactive are felt toward another (or oneself). They are thus at least in part affective reactions to what Strawson describes as qualities of will that people manifest toward others and themselves. The reactive attitudes are also interpersonal, relating persons to persons. But how do they relate persons? On the deontic, imperative view, they relate persons in second-personal authority and accountability relations. After addressing how best to understand the reactive attitudes as sentiments, I evaluate the (...) deontic imperative view. I argue that the modality of reactive attitudes is not invariably deontic nor is their mood invariably imperative. Certain reactive attitudes are aretaic, appellative sentiments that prescribe non-jural ideals of conduct or character. Although expansive, my resulting conception of the reactive attitudes escapes the charge of failing to distinguish reactive sentiments from “disengaged aesthetic reactions” to the beautiful and ugly in human action and character. (shrink)

Subjective rightness (or ‘ought’ or obligation) seems to be the sense of rightness that should be action guiding where more objective senses fail. However, there is an ambiguity between strong and weak senses of action guidance. No general account of subjective rightness can succeed in being action guiding in a strong sense by providing an immediately helpful instruction, because helpfulness always depends on the context. Subjective rightness is action guiding in a weaker sense, in that it is always accessible and (...) comprehensible to the agent. Hence traditional belief formulations say roughly, “do what you believe is best.” This is not yet a satisfactory formulation, because it cannot make sense of our ongoing subjective duty to improve our beliefs. The notion of ‘trying’ does capture the dynamic and diachronic nature of our subjective obligation. Thus, we should formulate subjective obligation in terms of trying: “try to do well by morality.”. (shrink)

Despite contemporary moral philosophers' renewed attention to the moral significance of emotions, the attitudinal repertoire with which they equip the mature moral agent remains stunted. One attitude moral philosophers neglect (if not disown) is contempt. While acknowledging the nastiness of contempt, I here correct the neglect by providing an account of the moral psychology of contempt. In the process, I defend the moral propriety of certain tokens of properly person-focused contempt against some prominent objections -- among them, objections stemming from (...) Kantian worries that contempt is incompatible with the respect we owe to persons as such. (shrink)

Quilty-Dunn et al. argue that deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) optimized for image classification exemplify structural disanalogies to human vision. A different kind of artificial vision – found in reinforcement-learning agents navigating artificial three-dimensional environments – can be expected to be more human-like. Recent work suggests that language-like representations substantially improves these agents’ performance, lending some indirect support to the language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH).

People are manifestly polarized. On many topics, extreme perspectives are much easier to find than ‘reasonable’, ‘moderate’ perspectives. A natural reaction to this situation is that something epistemically irrational is afoot. Here, I question this natural reaction. I argue that often polarization is epistemically innocuous. In particular, I argue that certain mechanisms that underlie polarization are rational, and polarized beliefs are often fully justified. Additionally, even reflective subjects, who recognize themselves as in a polarized or polarizing situation shouldn’t necessarily reduce (...) confidence in the relevant beliefs. Finally, I draw attention to some often overlooked epistemic _benefits_ associated with polarization. A fuller understanding of the epistemology of polarization requires incorporating both the potential costs and the potential benefits, and being more precise about exactly what is—and is not—epistemically objectionable in these situations. (shrink)

Despite how revered Socrates is among many educators nowadays, he can seem in the end to be a poor model for them, particularly because of how often he refutes his interlocutors and poses leading questions. As critics have noted, refuting people can turn them away from inquiry instead of drawing them in, and being too directive with them can squelch independent thought. I contend, though, that Socrates' practices are more defensible than they often look: although there are risks in refuting (...) people and posing leading questions, Socrates has sensible ways of minimizing the risks, ways that are feasible even for teachers nowadays, and there are times when the risks are worth taking. I illustrate my point by discussing Plato's _Meno_. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary paper identifies principles of an affluent country (im)migration policy that avoids: (1) the positivist inclusion/exclusion mechanism of liberalism and communitarianism; and (2) the idealism of most cosmopolitan (im)migration theories. First, I: (a) critique the failure of liberalism and communitarianism to consider (im)migration under distributive justice; and (b) present cosmopolitan (im)migration approaches as a promising alternative. This paper’s central claim is that cosmopolitan (im)migration theory can determine normative shortcomings in (im)migration policy by coupling elements of Frankfurt School methodology to (...) case studies of (im)migration regimes. Lastly, I apply this analytical procedure to recent special changes in Spanish and UK immigration law. (shrink)

This paper presents the history of the Frankfurt School’s inclusion of normative concerns in social science research programs during the period 1930-1955. After examining the relevant methodology, I present a model of how such a program could look today. I argue that such an approach is both valuable to contemporary social science programs and overlooked by current philosophers and social scientists.

Recent discussions of moral testimony have focused on the acceptability of forming beliefs on the basis of moral testimony, but there has been little acknowledgement of the limits to testimony's capacity to convey moral knowledge. In this paper I outline one such limit, drawing on Iris Murdoch's conception of private moral concepts. Such concepts, I suggest, plausibly play an important role in moral thought, and yet moral knowledge expressed in them cannot be testimonially acquired.

What is common to all instances of friendship? Given their seemingly heterogeneous character, Phelan (2019. “Rethinking Friendship.” Inquiry) suggests that friendships are relationships that result from collaborative norm-manipulation. In this paper, I suggest that this proposal fails to account for all friendships without relying on the notion of some kind of care.

1 Some philosophers defend the thesis that women are adult human females. Call this the adult human female thesis (AHF). There are two versions of this thesis—one modal and one definitional. Accord...

P.F. Strawson famously suggested that employment of the objective attitude in an intimate relationship forebodes the relationship’s demise. Relatively less remarked is Strawson's admission that the objective attitude is available as a refuge from the strains of relating to normal, mature adults as proper subjects of the reactive attitudes. I develop an account of the strategic employment of the objective attitude in such cases according to which it denies a person a power of will – authorial power – whose recognition (...) is necessary for sustaining intimacy. This conception of the objective attitude in its strategic employment presses those who urge universal adoption of the objective attitude (perhaps in its nonreactive, emotionally toned species) to confront the costs of their proposal. (shrink)

Whether anorexic patients should be able to refuse treatment when this potentially has a fatal outcome is a vexed topic. A recent proposal for a new category of ‘terminal anorexia’ suggests criteria when a move to palliative care or even physician assisted suicide might be justified. I argue that this proposed diagnosis presents a false sense of certainty of the illness trajectory by conceptualizing anorexia in analogy with physical disorders and stressing the effects of starvation. Furthermore, this conceptualization is in (...) conflict with the claim that individuals who meet the diagnostic criteria for terminal anorexia have decision making capacity. It should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

I argue that current discussions of the epistemological significance of reflection have entangled concerns about reflection with agential concerns. I begin by showing that a central strand of internalist criticism finds externalism unsatisfactory because it fails to provide a particular kind of self-knowledge, knowledge about the epistemic status of one’s own beliefs. Identifying this internalist motivation as the desire for a kind of self-knowledge opens up new possibilities and suggests new conceptual resources. I employ one of these resources—Richard Moran’s distinction (...) between the theoretical stance and the deliberative stance—to locate two types of reflection: mere reflective awareness of one’s attitudes and agent-awareness of one’s attitudes. I then examine Ernest Sosa’s account of the importance of reflection, showing how Moran’s distinction brings out the centrality of agential concerns in Sosa’s argument for reflective knowledge. I also consider briefly its relevance to fully apt knowledge. While I focus on Sosa’s epistemology, the point extends to internalism more generally. (shrink)

In this essay, I offer some of the reasons to think that Plato has a substantial contribution to make to contemporary thinking about moral education. To allow a sense of how wide the range of reasons is, I start by listing ten miscellaneous reasons that one can compellingly offer and some of which scholars *have* offered. Then I present my preferred reason, which involves a way of approaching Plato that is new and unorthodox. When you approach Plato this way, you (...) don't try to interpret him correctly. Instead, you use his writings simply as a tool for theorizing, and what you theorize about is how best to carry out the Socratic project of leading other people to self-examination. (shrink)

Taking pride in being better than others in some regard is not uncommon. In a recent paper, Christopher Morgan-Knapp argues that such pride is misguided: it ‘presents things as being some way they are not’. I argue that Morgan-Knapp's arguments do not succeed in showing that comparative pride is theoretically mistaken.

In the recent epistemological literature much has been written about the nature of suspending judgement or agnosticism. There has also been a surge of recent interest in the nature of ignorance. But what is the relationship between these two epistemically significant states? Prima facie, both suspension and ignorance seem to involve the lack of a correct answer to a question. And, again prima facie, there may be some intuitive attraction to the idea that when one is ignorant whether p, one (...) ought to suspend judgement whether p. In this paper we will explore a range of different possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension of judgement. We will also discuss how both ignorance and suspension are related to having inconclusive evidence. As we will see, the issues can become quite complex due to the fact that there are different, competing views about the nature of ignorance and also about the nature of suspension. Moreover, there are importantly different kinds of epistemic norms. Our overall aim then will be to systematically chart how these different choices will impact the possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension. (shrink)

What connection (if any) is there between living well, in the sense of living a life of ethical virtue, and faring well, in the sense of living a life that is good for the agent whose life it is? Philosophical arguments that attempt to defend a connection between exercising the virtues and living a good life typically display two commitments: first, a commitment to addressing their answer to the person whose life is in question and, second, a commitment to showing (...) that virtue is what I call a reliability conferring property. I urge we reject both. I propose instead that we take up the question from the point of view of a person charged with the care of the character of another (an “ethical trustee”) and argue that virtue is what I call a status conferring property. Ethical trustees benefit their charges by inculcating the virtues because in doing so they bestow on them a status that is necessary for a good life. Although circumstances may conspire against the path of virtue proving to be the best bet, statistically speaking, for happiness, my account begins to make sense of the thought that when such tragedies come to pass the fault lies not in the agent but the world. (shrink)

In order to make sense of collective doxastic reasons we need an account of group belief. Once we arrive at a more nuanced understanding of group belief it turns out that for some group beliefs we need not invoke collective epistemic reasons. However, we do need them for better understanding how and why different social identity groups will hold beliefs whose evidence-base is irreducibly social and tied to them being that kind of group. This short article is a commentary on (...) Veli Mitova's 2022 article "The collective epistemic reasons of social-identity groups". (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Plato's views on Forms play a central role in his educational philosophy. In response to what certain commentators have recently written, I contend that this interpretation not only is accurate but also is advantageous because of how it can help philosophy of education. I also address the view, proposed by one philosopher of education, that Plato believes that the most valuable sort of knowledge cannot be fully expressed in words and that the objects of (...) this knowledge are something other than transcendent Forms. Preferable to that view, I argue, is the idea that Plato wants knowledge of Forms which is nonrepresentational. (shrink)

Philosophers writing on moral responsibility inherit from P.F. Strawson a particular problem space. On one side, it is shaped by consequentialist accounts of moral criticism on which blame is justified, if at all, by its efficacy in influencing future behavior in socially desirable ways. It is by now a common criticism of such views that they suffer a "wrong kind of reason" problem. When blame is warranted in the proper way, it is natural to suppose this is because the target (...) deserves blame – thus opposing to consequentialist views of blame desert-based views. The latter, however, raise worries that blame is a form of retributive sanction whose justificatory burdens cannot be met. I evaluate T.M. Scanlon's recent attempt to maneuver this space. In doing so, I argue that although Scanlon’s relationship-impairment model of blame has clear advantages over consequentialist and desert-based alternatives, it fails: (1) to adequately appreciate the significance of person-focused emotional attitudes in constituting persons as agents subject to a nexus of normative expectations and demands, and (2) to recognize that a victim may owe nearly nothing *to* a blameworthy agent while nonetheless retaining unconditional moral obligations to act in certain ways (and forego acting in other ways) toward him. (shrink)

I introduce a distinction between two divergent trends in the literature on Hume and practical reason. One trend, action-theoretic Humeanism, primarily concerns itself with defending a general account of reasons for acting. The other trend, virtue-theoretic Humeanism, concentrates on defending the case for being an agent of a particular practical character, one whose enduring dispositions of practical thought are virtuous. I discuss work exemplifying these two trends and warn against decoupling thought about Hume's and a Humean theory of practical reason (...) from Hume's and a Humean ethics. I conclude that the virtue-theoretic approach is a fruitful one for pursuing future work on Hume and Humeanism about practical reason. (shrink)

Gervais & Fessler’s defense of a sentiment construct for contempt captures features distinguishing the phenomenon from basic emotions and highlights the fact that it comprises a coordinated syndrome of responses. However, their conceptualization of contempt as the absence of respect equivocates. Subsequently, a “dignity” culture that prescribes respect does not thereby limit legitimate contempt in the manner the authors claim.

Despite appeals to Hume in debates over moralism in art criticism, we lack an adequate account of Hume’s moralist aesthetics, as presented in “Of the Standard of Taste.” I illuminate that aesthetics by pursuing a problem, the moral prejudice dilemma, that arises from a tension between the “freedom from prejudice” Hume requires of aesthetic judges and what he says about the relevance of moral considerations to art evaluation. I disarm the dilemma by investigating the taxonomy of prejudices by which Hume (...) justifies the true judge’s moralism. The result distinguishes Hume’s aesthetic and moral points of view while defending aesthetic moralism. (shrink)

If mourning is a proof of value, how could it be appropriate to move on when one has truly loved and valued someone? Assuming that it is appropriate to value others extremely highly – perhaps even infinitely – how could it ever make sense for one’s grief to abate? Do loss and proper mourning thus present us with a choice between living well and loving well? This paper aims to vindicate the pressing nature of these questions while arguing that we (...) do not need to choose between living well and loving well. It discusses how these questions become pressing, some empirical research seeming to imply that humans do not tend to love well at all, and finally, offers an explanation of why ceasing to mourn need not be a failure of love. In particular, we offer an account of how ceasing to mourn can be a fitting response to the object of love, as well as compatible with living well. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Strabbing (2020) argues that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation relative to a relationship level. In this paper, we argue that the openness-to-reconciliation account of forgiveness does not constitute an improvement on the forswearing-resentment account. We argue that it does not fit well with our ordinary practices of forgiving and cannot allow for plausible cases of forgiveness without reconciliation. We also argue that the features Strabbing identifies as distinct advantages of her account are features of the forswearing-resentment (...) account as well. (shrink)

Dog whistling—speech that seems ordinary but sends a hidden, often derogatory message to a subset of the audience—is troubling not just for our political ideals, but also for our theories of communication. On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention is typically assumed or even inferred from the act, and perhaps for good reason, for dog whistles seem misleading by design, not just by chance. In this (...) paper, I argue that, to understand when and why it’s possible to dog-whistle unintentionally (and indeed, intentionally), we’ll need to recognize the structure of our linguistic practices. For dog whistles and for covertly coded speech more generally, this structure is a pair of practices, one shared by all competent speakers and the other known only to some, but deployable in the same contexts. In trying to identify these enabling conditions, we’ll discover what existing theories of communicated content overlook by focusing on particular utterances in isolation, or on individual speakers’ mental states. The remedy, I argue, lies in attending to the ways in which what is said is shaped by the temporally extended, socio-politically structured linguistic practices that utterances instantiate. (shrink)

It is common to think that clarity is an essential ingredient of good teaching, meaning, in part, that good teachers always make it as easy as possible to follow what they say. We disagree. What we argue is that there are cases in which a philosophy teacher needs to forego clarity, making strategic use of obscurity in the undergraduate classroom.

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss what motivated reasoning research tells us about the prospects for deliberative democracy. In section I, I introduce the results of several political psychology studies examining the problematic affective and cognitive processing of political information by individuals in nondeliberative, experimental environments. This is useful because these studies are often neglected in political philosophy literature. Section II has three stages. First, I sketch how the study results from section I question the practical viability of deliberative democracy. Second, (...) I briefly present the results of three empirical studies of political deliberation that can be interpreted to counter the findings of the studies in section I. Third, I show why this is a misinterpretation and that the study results from section I mean that it is implausible that sites of political deliberation would naturally emerge from the wide public sphere and coalesce into institutionalized forms of the practice such that deliberative democracy can satisfy its raison d’être. Finally, in section III, I conclude that viable conceptions of deliberative democracy should be limited to narrower aims. (shrink)

Together we can achieve things that we could never do on our own. In fact, there are sheer endless opportunities for producing morally desirable outcomes together with others. Unsurprisingly, scholars have been finding the idea of collective moral obligations intriguing. Yet, there is little agreement among scholars on the nature of such obligations and on the extent to which their existence might force us to adjust existing theories of moral obligation. What interests me in this paper is the perspective of (...) the moral deliberating agent who faces a collective action problem, i.e. the type of reasoning she employs when deciding how to act. I hope to show that agents have collective obligations precisely when they are required to employ ‘we-reasoning’, a type of reasoning that differs from I-mode, best response reasoning, as I shall explain below. More precisely, two (or more) individual agents have a collective moral obligation to do x if x is an option for action that is only collectively available (more on that later) and each has sufficient reason to rank x highest out of the options available to them. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the proposed use of combinatorial derivatives markets for event prediction, especially for catastrophic events such as terrorism, war, or political assasination. Following a presentation of the philosophical principles underlying these politico-economic tools, I examine case studies (U.S. DoD proposals) that evaluate their advantages and disadvantages in terms of both efficacy and moral considerations. I conclude that these markets are both fatally flawed due to internal conceptual contradictions and morally problematic.