Recent research shows – somewhat astonishingly – that people are willing to ascribe moral blame to AI-driven systems when they cause harm [1]–[4]. In this paper, we explore the moral- psychological underpinnings of these findings. Our hypothesis was that the reason why people ascribe moral blame to AI systems is that they consider them capable of entertaining inculpating mental states (what is called mens rea in the law). To explore this hypothesis, we created a scenario in which an AI system (...) runs a risk of poisoning people by using a novel type of fertilizer. Manipulating the computational (or quasi-cognitive) abilities of the AI system in a between-subjects design, we tested whether people’s willingness to ascribe knowledge of a substantial risk of harm (i.e., recklessness) and blame to the AI system. Furthermore, we investigated whether the ascription of recklessness and blame to the AI system would influence the perceived blameworthiness of the system’s user (or owner). In an experiment with 347 participants, we found (i) that people are willing to ascribe blame to AI systems in contexts of recklessness, (ii) that blame ascriptions depend strongly on the willingness to attribute recklessness and (iii) that the latter, in turn, depends on the perceived “cognitive” capacities of the system. Furthermore, our results suggest (iv) that the higher the computational sophistication of the AI system, the more blame is shifted from the human user to the AI system. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

This article offers a novel, conservative account of material constitution, one that incorporates sortal essentialism and features a theory of dominant sortals. It avoids coinciding objects, temporal parts, relativizations of identity, mereological essentialism, anti-essentialism, denials of the reality of the objects of our ordinary ontology, and other departures from the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. Defenses of the account against important objections are found in Burke 1997, 2003, and 2004, as well as in the often neglected six paragraphs (...) that conclude section V of this article. (shrink)

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? Employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defend a surprising answer last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. For replies to critics, see my publications of 1997 and (especially) 2004.

On the most popular account of material constitution, it is common for a material object to coincide precisely with one or more other material objects, ones that are composed of just the same matter but differ from it in sort. I argue that there is nothing that could ground the alleged difference in sort and that the account must be rejected.

(The downloadable document, posted 07/23/22, incorporates post-publication corrections/refinements, mainly of section II.) The article gives a novel argument to show that there is sense of 'exists' suitable for posing a substantive issue between presentists and eternalists. It then seeks to invigorate a neglected variety of presentism. There are seven doctrines, widely accepted even among presentists, that create problems for presentism. Without distinguishing existence and being, presentists can comfortably reject all seven. Doing so would dispose of the majority of presentism’s problems. (...) Further, it would enable presentists to reduce A-judgments to B-judgments, thereby insulating presentism from doubts about the intelligibility of A-theories. For reasons indicated very briefly, it might also make presentism less difficult to reconcile with special relativity, though the point is not pursued here. (shrink)

It is hard to see why the head and other brain-containing parts of a person are not themselves persons, or at least thinking, conscious beings. Some theorists have sought to reconcile us to the existence of thinking person-parts. Others have sought to avoid them but have relied on radical theories at odds with the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. This paper offers a novel, conservative solution, one on which the heads and other brain-containing parts of persons do exist (...) but are neither persons, thinkers, nor conscious beings. A much briefer statement of the solution is found in section 5 of Burke 2004. (shrink)

Understanding everyday behavior relies heavily upon understanding our ability to improvise, how we are able to continuously anticipate and adapt in order to coordinate with our environment and others. Here we consider the ability of musicians to improvise, where they must spontaneously coordinate their actions with co-performers in order to produce novel musical expressions. Investigations of this behavior have traditionally focused on describing the organization of cognitive structures. The focus, here, however, is on the ability of the time-evolving patterns of (...) inter-musician movement coordination as revealed by the mathematical tools of complex dynamical systems to provide a new understanding of what potentiates the novelty of spontaneous musical action. We demonstrate this approach through the application of cross wavelet spectral analysis, which isolates the strength and patterning of the behavioral coordination that occurs between improvising musicians across a range of nested time-scales. Revealing the sophistication of the previously unexplored dynamics of movement coordination between improvising musicians is an important step towards understanding how creative musical expressions emerge from the spontaneous coordination of multiple musical bodies. (shrink)

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? In Burke 1994, employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defended a surprising position last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. This paper defends that position against objections by Stone, Carter, Olson, and others. Most notably, it offers a novel, conservative solution (...) to the many-thinkers problem, a solution that enables us to accept the existence of brain-containing person-parts while denying that those person-parts are thinking, conscious beings. (shrink)

Ang papel ay paglalagom ng itinuturing na pinakamahalagang yugto ng buhay ni José Rizal—ang kanyang pagkakatapon sa Dapitan, sa lente ng konseptong “bagani” ng ating mga ninuno. Sa pagbanggit sa lang nauna nang pag-aaral ukol kay Rizal, ipapakitang kung papaanong ang yugto sa Dapitan ay ang katuparan ng kanyang mga layunin sa La Liga Filipina, na kanyang isinabuhay kasama ang bayan. Sa lente ng kasalukuyang pandemyang COVID 19, makikita natin na tila naranasan din ni Rizal sa kanyang pagkakatapon ang ilang (...) bagay na ating dinaranas ngayon, na tila siya isang frontliner na nasa lockdown, inilagay sa kuwarentena, nag-homeschooling, nagkaroon ng lockdown sickness at namahagi ng ayudang pangkabuhayan sa mga mamamayan ng isang natutulog na bayan upang ito ay sumiglang muli. Nawa ay maging inspirasyon sa bayan na anuman ang hamon at mga balakid, walang makapipigil sa isang Pilipino na magsilbi sa bayan gamit ang kanyang mga talento at manatiling liwanag ng katotohanan at kaalaman. (shrink)

Suppose that five minutes ago, to our astonishment, a healthy, full-grown duck suddenly popped into existence on the table in front of us. Suppose further that there was no first time at which the duck existed but rather a last time, T, at which it had yet to exist. Then for each time t at which the duck has existed, there is an explanation of why the duck existed at t: there was a time t’ earlier than t but later (...) than T such that the duck existed at t’, and it was only to be expected that a healthy duck would survive the brief period from t’ to t. But would these explanations remove the mystery? Taken collectively, would they explain why the duck has existed since T rather than never having existed at all? Presumably not. But if not, this seems to discredit the style of explanation offered by Hume and Edwards for the infinite regress they hypothesize of causes and effects. (shrink)

Simple regression (regression analysis with a single explanatory variable), and multiple regression (regression models with multiple explanatory variables), typically correspond to very different biological questions. The former use regression lines to describe univariate associations. The latter describe the partial, or direct, effects of multiple variables, conditioned on one another. We suspect that the superficial similarity of simple and multiple regression leads to confusion in their interpretation. A clear understanding of these methods is essential, as they underlie a large range of (...) procedures in common use in biology. Beyond simple and multiple regression in their most basic forms, understanding the key principles of these procedures is critical to understanding, and properly applying, many methods, such as mixed models, generalised models, and causal inference using graphs (including path analysis and its extensions). A simple, but careful, look at the distinction between these two analyses is valuable in its own right, and can also be used to clarify widely-held misconceptions about collinearity (correlations among explanatory variables). There is no general sense in which collinearity is a problem. We suspect that the perception of collinearity as a hindrance to analysis stems from misconceptions about interpretation of multiple regression models, and so we pursue discussions about these misconceptions in this light. In particular, collinearity causes multiple regression coefficients to be less precisely estimated than corresponding simple regression coefficients. This should not be interpreted as a problem, as it is perfectly natural that direct effects should be harder to characterise than univariate associations. Purported solutions to the perceived problems of collinearity are detrimental to most biological analyses. (shrink)

An intuitive view regarding the epistemic significance of disagreement says that when epistemic peers disagree, they should suspend judgment. This abstemious view seems to embody a kind of detachment appropriate for rational beings; moreover, it seems to promote a kind of conciliatory inclination that makes for irenic and cooperative further discussion. Like many strategies for cooperation, however, the abstemious view creates opportunities for free-riding. In this essay, the authors argue that the believer who suspends judgment in the face of peer (...) disagreement is vulnerable to a kind of manipulation on the part of more tenacious peers. The result is that the abstemious view can have the effect of encouraging dogmatism. (shrink)

Analogical reminding in humans and machines is a great source for chance discoveries because analogical reminding can produce representational change and thereby produce insights. Here, we present a new kind of representational change associated with analogical reminding called packing. We derived the algorithm in part from human data we have on packing. Here, we explain packing and its role in analogy making, and then present a computer model of packing in a micro-domain. We conclude that packing is likely used in (...) human chance discoveries, and is needed if our machines are to make their own chance discoveries. (shrink)

E-money systems have revolutionized global business transactions through digital payment methods. This quantitative correlational study aimed to assess the awareness and acceptance of e-money among individuals in Balayan, Batangas. Employing quota and purposive sampling, 100 participants aged 21 to 70 completed a survey questionnaire. Statistical analysis revealed that consumers were aware of e-money but lacked comprehensive knowledge. They acknowledged the convenience of e-money for online shopping and expense tracking. Age significantly influenced acceptance, while gender did not exhibit a similar effect. (...) Significant differences were observed in awareness and acceptance levels. Recommendations for improving acceptance include administrator-led campaigns, business incentives, consumer education, financial institution partnerships, and integration into student curricula. The study underscores the need for targeted strategies to translate e-money knowledge into practical use. Future research should explore adoption trends over time, barriers, and the impact of regulations on e-money utilization. (shrink)

The God Experiment – Let there be Light -/- The question “What is real?” can be traced back to the shadows in Plato’s cave. Two thousand years later, Rene Descartes lacked knowledge about arguing against an evil´ deceiver feeding us the illusion of sensation. Descartes’ epistemological concept later led to various theories of what our sensory experiences actually are. The concept of ”illusionism”, proposing that even the very conscious experience we have – our qualia – is an illusion, is not (...) only a red-pill scenario found in the 1999 science fiction movie ”The Matrix” but is also a philosophical concept promoted by modern tinkers, most prominently by Daniel Dennett. He describes his argument against qualia as materialistic and scientific. Reflection upon a possible simulation and our perceived reality was beautifully visualized in “The Matrix”, bringing the old ideas of Descartes to coffee houses around the world. Irish philosopher Bishop Berkeley was the father of what has later been coined as “subjective idealism”, basically stating that “what you perceive is real” (e.g., ”The Matrix” is real because its population perceives it). Berkeley then argued against Isaac Newton’s absolutism of space, time, and motion in 1721, ultimately leading to Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein’s respective views. Several neuroscientists have rejected Dennetts’ perspective on the illusion of consciousness, and idealism is often dismissed as the notion that people want to pick and choose the tenets of reality. Even Einstein ended his life on a philosophical note, pondering the very foundations of reality. With the advent of quantum technologies based on the control of individual fundamental particles, the question of whether our universe is a simulation isn’t just intriguing. Our ever-advancing understanding of fundamental physical processes will likely lead us to build quantum computers utilizing quantum effects for simulating nature quantum-mechanically in all complexity, as famously envisioned by Richard Feynman. Finding an answer to the simulation question will potentially alter our very definition and understanding of life, reshape theories on the evolution and fate of the universe, and impact theology. No direct observations provide evidence in favor or against the simulation hypothesis, and experiments are needed to verify or refute it. In this paper, we outline several constraints on the limits of computability and predictability in/of the universe, which we then use to design experiments allowing for first conclusions as to whether we participate in a simulation chain. We elaborate on how the currently understood laws of physics in both complete and small-scale universe simulations prevent us from making predictions relating to the future states of a universe, as well as how every physically accurate simulation will increase in complexity and exhaust computational resources as global thermodynamic entropy increases. Eventually, in a simulation in which the computer simulating a universe is governed by the same physical laws as the simulation and is smaller than the universe it simulates, the exhaustion of computational resources will halt all simulations down the simulation chain unless an external programmer intervenes or isn’t limited by the simulation’s physical laws, which we may be able to observe. By creating a simulation chain and observing the evolution of simulation behavior throughout the hierarchy taking stock of statistical relevance, as well as comparing various least complex simulations under computability and predictability constraints, we can gain insight into whether our universe is part of a simulation chain. -/- Index Terms—Simulation, simulation hypothesis, quantum computing, universe, life, intelligence. (shrink)

Functionalists hold that the territorial rights of states are grounded solely in their successful performance of their morally mandated functions. In this paper, I defend a distinctive functionalist view of the right of territorial jurisdiction. I develop this view over the course of considering a variety of objections to functionalism that arise from reflection on cases of non- violent and otherwise rights-respecting annexation. Functionalism’s critics argue that it is committed to counterintuitive implications in these cases, as it is unable to (...) explain why the usurper states do not gain rights over the territory they take over. Against these critics, I argue that functionalism can in fact deliver intuitively plausible verdicts regarding: (a) the territorial rights of unsuccessful states; (b) the morality of military occupation; and (c) the appropriate response to past territorial injustices. (shrink)

Machine learning algorithms may radically improve our ability to diagnose and treat disease. For moral, legal, and scientific reasons, it is essential that doctors and patients be able to understand and explain the predictions of these models. Scalable, customisable, and ethical solutions can be achieved by working together with relevant stakeholders, including patients, data scientists, and policy makers.

Several philosophers have suggested that certain aspects of people’s experience of agency partly explains why people tend to report that it seems to them, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. In turn, it has been suggested that people come to believe that time robustly passes on the basis of its seeming to them in experience that it does. We argue that what require explaining is not just that people report that it seems to them as though time robustly (...) passes, and that they believe that it does, but rather, the substantial variation (a) in people’s reports regarding whether it seems as though time robustly passes, and (b) their beliefs about whether time robustly passes. We empirically investigate the agentive explanation of (a), according to which variation in people’s agentive experiences explains variation in people’s reports regarding whether it seems to them as though time robustly passes. We also empirically investigate the experiential seeming explanation of belief, according to which variation in people’s beliefs about whether time robustly passes is explained by variation in their reports regarding whether it seems in experience as though time robustly passes. We found empirical support for the agentive explanation, but not for the experiential seeming explanation of passage beliefs. We consider the implications of our results for three views about temporal experience and temporal beliefs: dynamism, passage illusionism and deflationism. (shrink)

In “The Open Future” (2021) Patrick Todd argues that the future is open, and that as a consequence all future contingents are false (as opposed to the more common view that they are neither true nor false). Very roughly, this latter claim is motivated by the idea that (a) presentism is true, and so future (and indeed past) things do not exist and (b) if future things do not exist, then the only thing that could ground there being future tensed (...) facts, and hence make those future tensed claims true, is the present and the laws of nature. But (c) the present and the laws of nature cannot ground there being future tensed facts because they do not necessitate there being any such fact. Hence future tensed claims are all false. Todd then goes on to present a semantics for his version of the open future on which all future contingents are false. In what follows we take up two strands of Todd’s view. First, we begin, in Section 2, by outlining Todd’s argument that future contingents are all false. We suggest that the considerations that Todd adduces for this conclusion do not support this being so. Then in Section 3 we consider the semantics that Todd offers, and argue that it yields implausible consequences. (shrink)

The potential capacity for robots to deceive has received considerable attention recently. Many papers explore the technical possibility for a robot to engage in deception for beneficial purposes (e.g., in education or health). In this short experimental paper, I focus on a more paradigmatic case: robot lying (lying being the textbook example of deception) for nonbeneficial purposes as judged from the human point of view. More precisely, I present an empirical experiment that investigates the following three questions: (a) Are ordinary (...) people willing to ascribe deceptive intentions to artificial agents? (b) Are they as willing to judge a robot lie as a lie as they would be when human agents engage in verbal deception? (c) Do people blame a lying artificial agent to the same extent as a lying human agent? The response to all three questions is a resounding yes. This, I argue, implies that robot deception and its normative consequences deserve considerably more attention than they presently receive. (shrink)

Due to the emergence of ICT in ELT sector, seasoned English teachers find it resistant to such a shift despite having a positive attitude towards its use. This quasi-experimental study aimed to examine the extent to which seasoned English language teachers developed their ICT skills through a Service-Learning Activity (SLA). Using a one-group pre- and post-test design, this study collected the data through a modified Needs Assessment Survey (NAS) distributed to fourteen purposively selected participants. It was administered to examine what (...) professional ICT development would greatly benefit them. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and themes according to the Service-Learning Activity (SLA) topics. A Post Evaluation Survey (PES) was administered, and its result was compared to the initial test. The results showed that the seasoned teachers gained significant learning gains in terms of (1) sharing of knowledge from other teachers; (2) being encouraged to use ICT tools; (3) training opportunities; (4) working with other colleagues; and 5) attending professional workshops which include SLA. However, this study unveiled that the English teachers had no significant difference in perceptions regarding the roles of computers in teaching before and after the intervention. Limitations and recommendations for future studies were discussed. (shrink)

In The Methods of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick maintains that resolution of the free will problem is of “limited” importance to ethics and to practical reasoning. Despite the view’s uniqueness, surprisingly little sustained attention has been paid to Sidgwick’s view. This chapter tries to remedy this situation. Part one clarifies Sidgwick’s argument for the claim that resolving the free will controversy is of only limited importance to ethics. Part two examines and tries to deflect objections to Sidgwick’s position raised by J. (...) B. Schneewind and Roger Crisp while putting forward a different objection. Part three raises objections to Sidgwick’s claim that “it is practically impossible to be guided, either in remunerating services or in punishing mischievous acts, by any other considerations than those which the Determinist interpretation of desert [and responsibility] would include”. The chapter concludes by noting that although Sidgwick’s view is not without its problems, his discussion forces us to consider which aspects of moral thinking (if any) survive the conclusion that free will is illusory. (shrink)

Poverty in many societies is racialized, with poverty concentrated among particular racial groups. This article aims (a) to provide a philosophical account of how racialized poverty can represent an unjust form of inequality, and (b) to suggest the general direction that policies aiming to reduce racialized poverty ought to take in light of this account. (a) As a species of inequality, racialized poverty (whether absolute or relative) is not intrinsically morally objectionable. However, it can be extrinsically objectionable because it is (...) caused by past or current racial injustice, undermines the value of specific goods to the impoverished, or contributes to objectionable deficiencies in impoverished groups’ political efficacy. (b) Racialized poverty is strongly intergenerational, tending to replicate itself between generations within racial groups. This suggests that approaches to its alleviation that offer income security to all members of those groups, rather than targeted opportunity to subsets of such groups, are both more just and more effective. In particular, societies with racialized poverty should strongly consider policies such as income guarantees, which act to counteract the income volatility that contribute to intergenerational racial poverty. (shrink)

Sartre draws a sharp distinction between consciousness, on the one hand, and inner sense or knowledge of (it)self, on the other: ‘La conscience n’est pas un mode de connaisance particullier, appelé sens intime ou connaisance de soi’ (B& N: 7). I explore in detail the meaning of the terms involved in that distinction with a view to highlight its significance.

The generality problem is widely considered to be a devastating objection to reliabilist theories of justification. My goal in this paper is to argue that a version of the generality problem applies to all plausible theories of justification. Assume that any plausible theory must allow for the possibility of reflective justification—S's belief, B, is justified on the basis of S's knowledge that she arrived at B as a result of a highly (but not perfectly) reliable way of reasoning, R. The (...) generality problem applies to all cases of reflective justification: Given that is the product of a process-token that is an instance of indefinitely many belief-forming process-types (or BFPTs), why is the reliability of R, rather than the reliability of one of the indefinitely many other BFPTs, relevant to B's justificatory status? This form of the generality problem is restricted because it applies only to cases of reflective justification. But unless it is solved, the generality problem haunts all plausible theories of justification, not just reliabilist ones. (shrink)

Suppose that A explains B. Do A and B need to be true? Provided that we have metaphysical explanation in mind, orthodoxy answers “yes:” metaphysical explanation is factive. This article introduces and defends a non-factive notion of metaphysical explanation. I argue that we need a non-factive notion of explanation in order to make sense of explanationist arguments where we motivate a view by claiming that it offers better explanations than its competitors. After presenting and rejecting some initially plausible rivals, I (...) account for non-factive metaphysical explanation by drawing on existing applications of structural equation models to metaphysical grounding. (shrink)

The theory-ladenness of perception argument is not an argument at all. It is two clusters of arguments. The first cluster is empirical. These arguments typically begin with a discussion of one or more of the following psychological phenomena: (a) the conceptual penetrability of the visual system, (b) voluntary perceptual reversal of ambiguous figures, (c) adaptation to distorting lenses, or (d) expectation effects. From this evidence, proponents of theory-ladenness typically conclude that perception is in some sense "laden" with theory. The second (...) cluster attempts to extract deep epistemological lessons from this putative fact. Some philosophers conclude that science is not (in any traditional sense) a rational activity, while others conclude that we must radically reconceptualize what scientific rationality involves. Once we understand the structure of these arguments, much conventional wisdom about the significance of the psychological data turns out to be false. (shrink)

Past research has found that the value of a person's activities can affect observers' judgments about whether that person is experiencing certain emotions (e.g., people consider morally good agents happier than morally bad agents). One proposed explanation for this effect is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about fittingness (whether the emotion is merited). Another hypothesis is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about the agent's true self (whether the emotion reflects how the agent feels “deep down”). We (...) tested these hypotheses in six studies. After finding that people think a wide range of emotions can be fitting and reflect a person's true self (Study 1), we tested the predictions of these two hypotheses for attributions of happiness, love, sadness, and hatred. We manipulated the emotions' fittingness (Studies 2a-b and 4) and whether the emotions reflected an agent's true self (Studies 3 and 5), measuring emotion attributions as well as fittingness judgments and true self judgments. The fittingness manipulation only impacted emotion attributions in the cases where it also impacted true self judgments, whereas the true self manipulation impacted emotion attribution in all cases, including those where it did not impact fittingness judgments. These results cast serious doubt on the fittingness hypothesis and offer some support for the true self hypothesis, which could be developed further in future work. -/- . (shrink)

Utilitarians are supposed to have difficulty accounting for our obligation to keep promises. But utilitarians also face difficulties concerning our obligation to make promises. Consider any situation in which the options available to me are acts A, B, C… n, and A is utility maximizing. Call A+ the course of action consisting of A plus my promising to perform A. Since there appear to be a wide range of instances in which A+ has greater net utility then A, utilitarianism obligates (...) us to make far more promises than even the most expansive views concerning our obligations to make promises would acknowledge. (shrink)

According to rational will views of paternalism, the wrongmaking feature of paternalism is that paternalists disregard or fail to respect the rational will of the paternalized, in effect substituting their own presumably superior judgments about what ends the paternalized ought to pursue or how they ought to pursue them. Here I defend a version of the rational will view appealing to three rational powers that constitute rational agency, which I call recognition, discrimination, and satisfaction. By appealing to these powers, my (...) version of the rational will view can rank the wrongfulness of paternalistic acts in terms of the extent to which such acts (a) amount to supplanting the paternalized individual’s identity as a rational agent with that of the paternalist, and (b) the degree of mistrust the paternalistic act shows in the paternalized individual’s rational agency. My rational powers account thus provides a more complete account of why paternalism is a powerful, but not decisive or absolute, objection to an act or policy. My rational powers account also provides powerful explanations of why rational suasion deflects charges of paternalism; why consenting to intercessions in one’s rational agency negates paternalism; why we ordinarily believe that strong paternalism is more objectionable than weak paternalism; and why we ordinarily believe that hard paternalism is more objectionable than soft paternalism. (shrink)

What I call medically enabled suicides have four distinctive features: 1. They are instigated by actions of a suicidal individual, actions she intends to result in a physiological condition that, absent lifesaving medical interventions, would be otherwise fatal to that individual. 2. These suicides are ‘completed’ due to medical personnel acting in accordance with recognized legal or ethical protocols requiring the withholding or withdrawal of care from patients (e.g., following an approved advance directive). 3. The suicidal individual acts purposefully to (...) ensure that medical personnel will act on these protocols. 4. These suicides do not involve medical personnel providing aid in dying in the standard sense, either through (a) active voluntary euthanasia, or (b) assistance by means of prescriptions, etc. -/- Regardless of how common medically enabled suicides are, they raise compelling questions at the interface of medicine and individual choice. After first clarifying the concept of medically enabled suicide and exploring some of the reasons why it might be attractive to suicidal individuals, I then investigate two apparent dilemmas that medically enabled suicides raise for medical care providers. The first alleges that medical care providers may not contribute to harming their patients, and so they may not contribute to their patients’ suicides. The second alleges that if care providers, as a matter of personal conscience, believe that suicide is wrong, then they may not be compelled to contribute to their patient’s acting wrongly by assenting to the wishes of a patient pursuing medically enabled suicide. Both dilemmas arise from the fact that while medical personnel are bound by widely accepted precepts of medical ethics to honor the competent wishes of their patients, medically enabled suicides entangle them in their patients’ suicidal plans in ways that result in their contributing to those suicides. I conclude that neither dilemma should be resolved in the direction of medical personnel having the right to refrain from involvement in medically enabled suicides. Thus, while we may find medically enabled suicide distasteful or exploitative, a strong case cannot be made that medical personnel refusing to involve themselves in such suicides is ethically permissible. (shrink)

An intuitive and widely accepted view is that (a) beliefs aim at truth, (b) many citizens have stable and meaningful political beliefs, and (c) citizens choose to support political candidates or parties on the basis of their political beliefs. We argue that all three claims are false. First, we argue that political beliefs often differ from ordinary world-modelling beliefs because they do not aim at truth. Second, we draw on empirical evidence from political science and psychology to argue that most (...) people lack stable and meaningful political beliefs. Third, we claim that the true psychological basis for voting behavior is not an individual’s political beliefs but rather group identity. Along the way, we reflect on what this means for normative democratic theory. (shrink)

This is a critical review of J. B. Schneewind's Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy.

ABSTRACT: Recent work in moral theory includes an intriguing new argument that the vagueness of moral properties, together with two well-known and well-received metaethical principles, entails the incredible conclusion that it is impossible to be moral. I show that the argument equivocates between “it is true that A and B are morally indistinguishable” and “it is not false that A and B are morally indistinguishable.” As expected the argument is interesting but unsound. It is therefore not impossible to be moral.RÉSUMÉ: (...) Les travaux récents en théorie morale comprennent un nouvel argument intrigant voulant que le caractère vague des propriétés morales, joint à deux principes métaéthiques bien connus et généralement admis, entraîne une conclusion incroyable, soit qu’il est impossible d’être moral. Je montre que cet argument entretient l’équivoque entre «il est vrai que A et B sont moralement impossibles à distinguer» et «il n’est pas faux que A et B soient moralement impossibles à distinguer». Comme on s’y attendait, l’argument est intéressant mais mal fondé. Il n’est donc pas impossible d’être moral. (shrink)

I argue that Kant has developed a broad systematic account of the architectonic functionality of pure reason that can be used and advanced in contemporary contexts. Reason, in the narrow sense, is responsible for the picture of a well-ordered universe of science consisting of architectonic ideas of science, sciences and parts of sciences. In the first section (I), I show what Kant means by the architectonic ideas by explaining and interrelating the concepts of (a) the faculty of reason, (b) ideas (...) (as principles), (c) method, and (d) sciences of reason. Thereafter (II), I think through his holistic understanding of science and scientific progress and suggest differentiating between four levels of use of architectonic ideas, drawing on the metaphor of a well-structured universe as imagined by Kant in his work on the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. I also claim that each possible idea of reason can be (apart from its primary function) additionally regarded as a fourth-level architectonic concept when explicitly conceived as an object of (e. g. philosophical) studies, i. e. from a mere methodological perspective. In the final section (III), I unveil the potential of Kant’s theory by pointing out how this architectonic methodological function of pure reason is tacitly used in Karl-Otto Apel’s contemporary philosophical research programme. You can get the official version of the paper and the whole issue (open access) by clicking on the attached link. (shrink)

Man is a seeker by nature. He searches for truth. An ordinary man cannot be indifferent to truth because of the deep quest within him for truth. Gandhi lived his whole life in the perpetual quest for truth. He lived and moved in pursuit of this goal. This pursuit of seeking truth under the banner of philosophical education makes educational philosophizing moral. One can perfect these ideologies of different schools and make philosophizing in education better by placing truth in the (...) center. Thus, an idealist can evolve a realization of truth, a naturalist can bring about the true nature and potentialities of the individual, and pragmatists can rejuvenate the minds with a truth-oriented strategy and existential thinkers can invite truth into them so that they can avoid fear and dread. The Gandhian vision of Satya offers us the key to integral education. Following the footprints of Satya not only satisfies the Gandhian aims for education but it also helps the human person to continue his role on the earth as the seeker of truth. The aim of my research is to explore whether the concept of the truth of Mahatma Gandhi could be used as a platform for philosophical education? Can we take inspiration from Gandhian thoughts so that philosophizing may not engage itself in hermeneutical violence to bring out the truth (of our making) but a hermeneutical ahimsa that lets the truth show itself? Truth for Gandhi was equal to one of his lungs. He spoke the truth, wrote on truth, and exhorted people to be truthful. Gandhi made the concept of truth central to metaphysics, epistemology, morality, and the philosophy of religion. Truth was the guiding principle for Gandhi in all these disciplines. When we bring in truth as the guiding principle in the philosophy of education we envisage an educational community of all truth seekers traveling together in freedom to come to an ever-increasing approximation of truth. Should philosophy stop the pursuit of truth (satya) as Rorty claims? Is communication of truth irrelevant as no truth is ascertainable as skeptics claim? Is the will to communicate truth senseless since truth is an illusion? Do these approaches satisfy the philosophical minds that are after truth? The methodology I pursue in this thesis is an exploratory, analytical, and critical approach. a) Analytical: The basic method to be used is to analyze the existing works and apprehend their significance in the area of education, in particular philosophical education. b) Critical: a critical and comprehensive analysis of the concept of truth is followed in the research to represent the significance of truth in philosophical education. Man cannot be indifferent to truth since there is a longing for truth in the heart of every human being. Hence the need to search for it with all one’s might through success does not come everyone’s way in the same measure. The reason for this is that there are certain factors that impede our search and they even distort our understanding. They are natural limitations of reason, inconsistency of the heart, worldly concerns, and fear of the demand that truth makes. Hence it is necessary to overcome these in the search for truth. In his dealings with others, the human person wishes that the other may communicate his truth and only truth. Gandhian invitation is to be an experimenter with truth. Truth is that all seek and want above everything. No one wishes to compromise on that. When we bring in truth as the guiding principle in the philosophy of education we envisage an educational community of all truth seekers traveling together in freedom to come to an ever-increasing approximation of truth. They are compelled to study and defend truth in a better way when they are confronted. They will be forced to discern the core of truth from its formulations. That is the role of the experimenter with the truth. -/- In this research paper, I attempt to present M. K. Gandhi as an educationist giving emphasis only on his concept of truth. It is a limited approach to Gandhian educational philosophy because when I attend only to the concept of truth I fail to include very many other aspects of his educational philosophy like craft-centered education, teaching methods, education for different sections of society, etc. It also limits me to criticizing Gandhian dislike for the higher education system appropriately. However, the notion of truth is a common platform that could be shared by three important branches of philosophical education, namely the naturalistic, the idealistic, and the pragmatic. (shrink)

To Aaron Pacitti and Michael Cauvel–whose journal article, “Rent-Seeking Behavior and Economic Justice: A Classroom Exercise” broadly argues that “understanding the [complexities] of rent-seeking behavior helps fill the gap between economics and politics”–the varieties of rent are wide and, therefore, can only be described in their category-specific positions. I will discuss three of these categories in more detail below, but for now, I propose that a useful working grasp of economic rent involves “the amount paid to the owner of (...) a factor of production over the cost that is to be necessarily incurred on utilizing such elements in the production process.” In math terms, ‘economic rent’ equals the agreed-upon-amount paid by the consumer (when that amount far exceeds the market value of the product) minus the cost spent by the producer to make the product (when that cost is far below the typical amount to produce the product). Originally, the concept of economic rent concerned land ownership and the production of natural goods. Two major economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, offered insights into the general makeup and logic of what they called, the rent of land and simply rent, respectively. (shrink)

For Kant, philosophical investigations are inherently analytic. The proper method of philosophy is analysis, and the object of analysis are concepts. Hence, Kant’s short description of philosophy as “rational cognition […] from concepts” (KrV, A 837/B 865) can be substituted by “philosophy is conceptual analysis”. The article shows that Kant follows a representationalism about concepts and a combination of intensional and extensional feature semantics. Against the claim that Kant is a proponent of the concept-judgement-inversion, it is argued that concepts are (...) being articulated in form of singular terms, propositions, and sets of propositions alike. Kant interlinks different kinds of concepts with different kinds of definitions, as the reconstruction of his theory of definitions reveals. Philosophy foremost deals with what Kant calls “given” empirical and pure concepts. Such concepts are object of analysis, i.e., explication and exposition. The article ends with answers to five possible objections. Is philosophy all about analysis? (shrink)

In this essay, my goal is, first, to describe the most important contemporary philosophical approaches to the nature of time, and then, secondly, to discuss the ways in which those different accounts bear upon the question of the possibility of divine foreknowledge. I shall argue that different accounts of the nature of time give rise to different objections to the idea of divine foreknowledge, but that, in addition, there is a general argument for the impossibility of divine foreknowledge that is (...) independent of one’s account of the nature of time. (shrink)

In recent work on the semantics of ‘knowledge’-attributions, a variety of accounts have been proposed that aim to explain the data about speaker intuitions in familiar cases such as DeRose’s Bank Case or Cohen’s Airport Case by means of pragmatic mechanisms, notably Gricean implicatures. This paper argues that pragmatic explanations of the data regarding ‘knowledge’-attributions are unsuccessful and concludes that in explaining those data we have to resort to accounts that (a) take those data at their semantic face value (Epistemic (...) Contextualism, Subject-Sensitive Invariantism or Epistemic Relativism), or (b) reject them on psychological grounds (Moderate Insensitive Invariantism). To establish this conclusion, the paper relies solely upon widely accepted assumptions about pragmatic theory, broadly construed, and on the Stalnakerian insight that linguistic communication takes place against the backdrop of a set of mutually accepted propositions: a conversation’s common ground. (shrink)

Whatever the merits idealized liberal accounts of citizenship education may have in the seminar room, in this essay I argue that they are both unpersuasive and ineffectual. This is the case, because they are insufficiently attentive to the empirical realities, first (a) with respect to how real – versus imaginary – school systems function; and second, (b) with respect to the broader political context in which citizenship education policies are implemented. Because so much is already known about the former, I (...) devote more attention in this essay to the latter. (shrink)

Kant’s doctrine of the “transcendental object” has always puzzled interpreters. On the one hand, he says that the transcendental object is the object to which we relate our representations. On the other hand, he declares the transcendental object to be unknowable and identifies it with the thing in itself. I argue that this poses a problem that Kant only in the B edition of the Critique solves in a satisfactory manner. According to this solution, we ascribe sensible predicates to things (...) in themselves, but only insofar as they appear. I conclude that this could motivate a phenomenalist account of Kant’s idealism, but one that gives due weight to the role of things in themselves. (shrink)

Deontological ethicists generally agree that there is a way of harming others such that it is wrong to harm others in that way for the sake of producing a comparable but greater benefit for others. Given plausible assumptions about this type of harm, this principle yields the paradoxical result that it may be wrong to do A, wrong to do B, but permissible to do (A and B).

The command to love one’s enemies (the ‘LE Principle’ as it shall henceforth be called) is one of the most striking and counterintuitive precepts that have arisen in the Christian tradition. However, it has received little philosophical scrutiny. This paper aims to fill that gap. I shall first answer two questions behind the two main concepts underlying the principle: a) what would count as an enemy; b) and what does it mean to love someone. Then, after clarifying the relevant concepts, (...) I shall try to examine the whether the LE Principle is consistent with two major ethical traditions in philosophy: utilitarianism and deontology. I shall conclude by affirming that despite the psychological barriers inherent in living by the LE Principle, it will be shown to be livable and morally praiseworthy. (shrink)

Philosophical views about the logical structure of time are typically divided between proponents of A and B theories, based on McTaggart's A and B series. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic phenomenology, I develop and defend McTaggart's thesis that the C series and the A series working together give a consistent description of temporal experience, provided that the two series are treated as distinct dimensions internal to time. In the proposed two-dimensional model, the C series expresses a nesting order of the (...) constitutive states of a world, whereas ontological continuity and change are properties of the A series. This, I argue, allows for limited backward causation. (shrink)

How surprising is the insight, that being equals I in the 15th lecture of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II? It might have been indeed an unexpected turn for his contemporaries in Berlin listening to Fichte for the first time, but should it be surprising for us, having at least since 2012 (the year the last volume of [Gesamtausgabe] appeared) access to all his published and unpublished works? I want to propose a way of reading Fichte, which bypasses two popular and (...) contradictory interpretations of his philosophy in the post-Jena period: (a) the Absolute is the new first principle (hence the I is just a shadow of the much higher being) and (b) his system basically remains unchanged (hence the being is nothing more than the I). At first, I analyze the functions of later Fichte’s improved version of the Kantian and Reinholdian abstract subject-object-symbolism and assign specific content to it. This will shed light on the structure and the first principle of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II. In the second section I give reasons why Fichte calls both God and I “absolute” and “pure being” and explain their relation to each other referring to a thought experiment sometimes used by Kant—an analogy between the divine and human (pure) reason. The analogical thinking of this kind remains within the borders of transcendental philosophy as long as it is used only for certain didactic purposes. (shrink)

This paper reports on an ongoing ARC Discovery Project that is conducting design research into learning in collaborative virtual worlds (CVW).The paper will describe three design components of the project: (a) pedagogical design, (b)technical and graphics design, and (c) learning research design. The perspectives of each design team will be discussed and how the three teams worked together to produce the CVW. The development of productive failure learning activities for the CVW will be discussed and there will be an interactive (...) demonstration of the project's CVW. (shrink)