Behavior oftentimes allows for many possible interpretations in terms of mental states, such as goals, beliefs, desires, and intentions. Reasoning about the relation between behavior and mental states is therefore considered to be an effortful process. We argue that people use simple strategies to deal with high cognitive demands of mental state inference. To test this hypothesis, we developed a computational cognitive model, which was able to simulate previous empirical findings: In two-player games, people apply simple strategies at first. They (...) only start revising their strategies when these do not pay off. The model could simulate these findings by recursively attributing its own problem solving skills to the other player, thus increasing the complexity of its own inferences. The model was validated by means of a comparison with findings from a developmental study in which the children demonstrated similar strategic developments. (shrink)

Previous work in Game Studies has centered on several loci of investigation in seeking to understand virtual gameworlds. First, researchers have scrutinized the concept of the virtual world itself and how it relates to the idea of “the magic circle”. Second, the field has outlined various forms of experienced “presence”. Third, scholarship has noted that the boundaries between the world of everyday life and virtual worlds are porous, and that this fosters a multiplicity of identities as players identify both with (...) themselves-offline and themselves-in-game. Despite widespread agreement that these topics are targets for research, so far those working on these topics do not have mutually agreed-upon framework. Here we draw upon the work of Alfred Schutz to take up this call. We provide a phenomenological framework which can be used to describe the phenomena of interest to Game Studies, as well as open new avenues of inquiry, in a way acceptable and useful to all. This helps to distinguish the core of the field from the supplemental theoretical and critical commitments which characterize diverse approaches within the field. (shrink)

In this paper, we illustrate some serious difficulties involved in conveying information about uncertain risks and securing informed consent for risky interventions in a clinical setting. We argue that in order to secure informed consent for a medical intervention, physicians often need to do more than report a bare, numerical probability value. When probabilities are given, securing informed consent generally requires communicating how probability expressions are to be interpreted and communicating something about the quality and quantity of the evidence for (...) the probabilities reported. Patients may also require guidance on how probability claims may or may not be relevant to their decisions, and physicians should be ready to help patients understand these issues. (shrink)

As a moral foundation for vegetarianism and other consumer choices, act consequentialism can be appealing. When we justify our consumer and dietary choices this way, however, we face the problem that our individual actions rarely actually precipitate more just agricultural and economic practices. This threshold or individual impotence problem engaged by consequentialist vegetarians and their critics extends to morally motivated consumer decision-making more generally, anywhere a lag persists between individual moral actions taken and systemic moral progress made. Regan and others (...) press just this point against Singer's utilitarian basis for vegetarianism; recently Chartier criticizes act-consequentialist vegetarianism by identifying many factors weakening the connection between individual meat purchases and changes in animal production. While such factors are relevant to act-consequentialist moral reasoning, I argue, they need not defeat the act-consequentialist case for vegetarianism and consumer ethics. This is shown by offering a probabilistic account of the threshold issue and discussing the positive and negative role-modelling effects of our morally motivated dietary and consumer choices. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Hud Hudson's compatibilistic interpretation of Kant's theory of free will, which is based on Davidson's anomalous monism. I sketch an alternative interpretation of my own, an incompatibilistic interpretation according to which agents qua noumena are responsible for the particular causal laws which determine the actions of agents qua phenomena. Hudson's interpretation should be attractive to philosophers who value Kant's epistemology and ethics, but insist on a deflationary reading of things in themselves. It is in an (...) incompatibilist interpretation of Kant's theory of free will that a "positive" conception of noumena is at its most important. If a compatibilistic interpretation is acceptable, one might suppose that we can do without a "positive" conception of noumena throughout Kant's philosophy. I demonstrate, however, that there are central elements of Kant's theory of free will that cannot be accommodated within Hudson's interpretation. (shrink)

Physicalism is incompatible with what is known as the possibility of zombies, that is, the possibility of a world physically like ours, but in which there are no conscious experiences. But it is compatible with what is known as the possibility of ghosts, that is, the possibility of a world which is physically like ours, but in which there are additional nonphysical entities. In this paper we argue that a revision to the traditional definition of physicalism designed to accommodate the (...) possibility of ghosts inadvertently accommodates what is known as the possibility of inverted spectra, that is, the possibility of a world which is physically like ours, but in which colour experience is inverted. This consequence is unwelcome, because it is widely agreed that the possibility of inverted spectra is incompatible with physicalism. We argue for a revised definition of physicalism which resolves this problem. We then use our definition to argue that physicalism is not compatible with what is known as the possibility of blockers, that is, the possibility of a world which is physically like ours, but in which additional nonphysical entities have prevented the existence of conscious experience. This undermines Stephan Leuenberger's attempt to defend physicalism from arguments which purport to establish the possibility of zombies. (shrink)

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

A book chapter (about 8,000 words, plus references) summarizing Part One of Reasons and Persons, with particular attention to the Self-interest Theory, Consequentialism, Common-Sense Morality, and how critical scrutiny of Consequentialism and Common-Sense Morality points the way toward a unified theory of morality.

We suggest that the emerging field of the conservation humanities can play a valuable role in biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where most land remains under collective customary clan ownership. As a first step to mobilising this scholarly field in PNG and to support capacity development for PNG humanities academics, we conducted a landscape review of PNG humanities teaching and research relating to biodiversity conservation and customary land rights. We conducted a systematic literature review, a PNG teaching programme (...) review, and a series of online workshops between the authors (10 PNG-based, 7 UK-based). We found a small but notable amount of PNG research and teaching focused on biodiversity conservation or customary land rights. This included explicit discussion of these topics in 8 of 156 PNG-authored humanities texts published 2010-2020 and related teaching content in the curricula of several different humanities-based programmes. We discuss current barriers to PNG academic development. The growth of fully fledged in-country conservation humanities will require a joint collaborative effort by PNG researchers, who are best placed to carry out such work, and researchers from abroad who can access resources to support the process. (shrink)

Social epistemologists often operationalize the task of indirectly assessing experts’ trustworthiness to identifying whose beliefs are more reliably true on matters in an area of expertise. Not only does this neglect the philosophically rich space between belief formation and testimonial utterances, it also reduces trustworthiness to reliability. In ethics of trust, by contrast, explicitly relational views of trust include things like good will and responsiveness. One might think that relational aspects can be safely set aside for social epistemology of trust (...) in experts, that such considerations may be relevant for personal relationships but not for expert trustworthiness. Against these claims I argue for the social-epistemic relevance of relational aspects of trust in experts, and to that end I discuss three sorts of considerations – responsively positive, neutral, and negative factors – that can make a difference for expert trustworthiness. (shrink)

I argue that a reasonable understanding of Leopold’s ‘Land Ethic’ is one that identifies possession of health as being a sufficient condition for moral consideration. With this, Leopold extends morality not only to biotic wholes, but to individual organisms, as both can have their health undermined. My argument centers on explaining why Leopold thinks it reasonable to analogize ecosystems both to an organism and to a community: both have a health. My conclusions undermine J. Baird Callicott’s rhetorical dismissal of the (...) organism analogy’s importance, a dismissal crucially serving his thesis that Leopoldians should hold community membership necessary for moral standing. (shrink)

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right (...) motivation for it is the ‘experience requirement’ (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). Next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one’s pleasures. (shrink)

Subjectivists think that our well-being is grounded in our subjective attitudes. Many such views are vulnerable to variations on the ‘paradox of desire’, where theories cannot make determinate judgements about the well-being of agents who take a positive valuing attitude towards their life going badly. However, this paradox does not affect all subjectivist theories; theories grounded on agents’ prudential values can avoid it.This paper suggests a new paradox for subjectivist theories which has a wider scope, and includes such prudential judgement (...) theories. I outline the new paradox and show how two plausible idealisztions (coherence and consideration) will not help. Subjectivists about well-being must either add an additional idealization that can solve the paradox of judgement or explain why such paradoxes do not constitute serious objections to a theory of well-being. (shrink)

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

What is it for a life to be meaningful? In this article, I defend what I call Consequentialism about Meaning in Life, the view that one's life is meaningful at time t just in case one's surviving at t would be good in some way, and one's life was meaningful considered as a whole just in case the world was made better in some way for one's having existed.

In their recent article in this journal, Giubilini, Gur-Arie, and Jamrozik argue that there is more to expertise than individual healthcare professionals’ knowledge of their fields. To be an expert is to be recognized as a credible authority, they explain, and being a credible authority necessitates trust. Among the core ethical principles they identify for trustworthy experts in medicine and healthcare are honesty, humility, and transparency. Here I aim to affirm these authors’ linkage of expertise and trust by decoupling both (...) from a presumptive norm of transparency. My suggestion is not that medical or healthcare experts should lie or deceive, but that articulating their credible authority in terms of transparency mischaracterizes things. We see this in several ways: through the negative epistemic effects of a general norm of expert transparency, the importance of discretion in healthy trust relations, and the need for relationally responsive interpretation in how medical and health experts communicate with different patients and publics across social-epistemic difference. (shrink)

Practical equilibrium, like reflective equilibrium, is a way of deciding what to think about morality. It shares with reflective equilibrium the general thesis that there is some way in which a moral theory must, in order to be acceptable, answer to one’s moral intuitions, but it differs from reflective equilibrium in its specification of exactly how a moral theory must answer to one’s intuitions. Whereas reflective equilibrium focuses on a theory’s consistency with those intuitions, practical equilibrium also gives weight to (...) a theory’s approval of one’s having those intuitions. (shrink)

It is a platitude that whereas language is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. But this platitude may be attacked on the grounds that resemblance is either insufficient for or incidental to depictive representation. I defend common sense from this attack by using Grice's analysis of meaning to specify the non-incidental role of resemblance in depictive representation.

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

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

Brian Leftow has argued in significant detail for a timeless conception of God. However, his work has been interacted with less than one might expect, especially given that some have contended that divine timelessness should be put to death and buried. Further, the work that has critically interacted with Leftow does a very poor job at discrediting it, or so I will contend. As we shall see, the main reason for this is either because what is central to Leftow’s view (...) is not affected by the objection, or because Leftow provides another way of getting his theory off the ground. Why, then, do so many objections miss the mark? I suspect it’s because many struggle to understand Leftow’s view and what is central to it. As such, one of the main goals of this paper will be to make Leftow’s account more accessible and to elucidate the main elements of the theory, whilst also providing responses to the main objections raised against his view. The overall result of this, I hope, will be a more fruitful examination of Leftow’s view in the future. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the analysis of natural properties as convex subsets of a metric space in which the distances are degrees of dissimilarity is incompatible with both the definition of degree of dissimilarity as number of natural properties not in common and the definition of degree of dissimilarity as proportion of natural properties not in common, since in combination with either of these definitions it entails that every property is a natural property, which is absurd. I suggest (...) it follows that we should think of the convex class analysis of natural properties as a variety of resemblance nominalism. (shrink)

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

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

By defining both depictive and linguistic representation as kinds of symbol system, Nelson Goodman attempts to undermine the platitude that, whereas linguistic representation is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. I argue that Goodman is right to draw a strong analogy between the two kinds of representation, but wrong to draw the counterintuitive conclusion that depiction is not mediated by resemblance.

Recently, I presented evidence that there are two broad kinds of dehumanization: descriptive dehumanization and normative dehumanization. An individual is descriptively dehumanized when they are perceived as less than fully human in the biological-species sense; whereas an individual is normatively dehumanized when they are perceived as lacking a deep-seated commitment to good moral values. Here, I develop the concept of normative dehumanization by addressing skepticism about two hypotheses that are widely held by dehumanization researchers. The first hypothesis is that dehumanization (...) is distinct from mere dislike and other non-dehumanizing attitudes. The second hypothesis is that dehumanization is an important predictor of intergroup hostility. Across four studies, I found evidence that normative dehumanization is distinct from mere dislike, and denials of ideal humanness. I also found that it is a unique predictor of intergroup hostility. These findings suggest that research into dehumanization and intergroup hostility will benefit from recognizing the distinction between descriptive and normative dehumanization. (shrink)

Defenses of political obligation—the pro tanto obligation to obey the law because the state commands it—often operate at or near the level of ideal theory. Critics, though, increasingly question that approach’s relevance for the imperfect states that exist. This article develops a lesser evil framework to evaluate political obligation with several advantages over more ideal approaches: (1) avoids the questionable assumption that some actual states are reasonably just, (2) recognizes that context matters for political obligation, (3) captures the complicity involved (...) in obeying the state, and (4) identifies a basis—varying intuitions on lesser evil justifications—to distinguish philosophical anarchism from conceptions of political obligation without the former collapsing into the latter. We remain agnostic on whether this framework establishes political obligation to any state but argue that it offers a compelling account of the moral dilemma of obeying the state under nonideal conditions. (shrink)

The possibilities of depicting non-existents, depicting non-particulars and depictive misrepresentation are frequently cited as grounds for denying the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. I first argue that these problems are really a manifestation of the more general problem of intentionality. I then show how there is a plausible solution to the general problem of intentionality which is consonant with the platitude.

Models are being used extensively for practicing and understanding scientific, engineering and mathematical subjects, but are rarely used as art analyzing tools, particularly, in learning environments. Contrarily, using art to explain mathematical ideas is not unprecedented. Strogatz (1988), for example, built a model based on Romeo and Juliet’s love story and used it to explain the idea of differential mathematics, and system dynamics. Artwork, specially written and plastic classics, is a fixed form of art. We frame them and put them (...) in a gallery, or a book (digital or physical). We don’t try to “fix” them or optimize their functioning, we analyze them to find meaning, intention, and patterns. In this article, we aim to show how, by building models combined with simple mathematical representations and analogies, it is possible to understand literary texts, from the prism of system and complexity theories, which emphasize the dynamic, non-linear, and non-reductionist aspects of the observed. We’ll demonstrate how modeling processes of three cultural assets, allow active correspondence with the original textual art, by treating them as systemic objects with interactions and dynamics. They will be analyzed while raising questions about the significance of modeling as a cognitive learning process. (shrink)

In recent years Mullins and Craig have argued that there is a problem for a timeless God creating, with Mullins formulating the argument as follows: (1) If God begins to be related to creation, then God changes. (2) God begins to be related to creation. (3) Therefore, God changes. (4) If God changes, then God is neither immutable nor timeless. (5) Therefore, God is neither immutable nor timeless. In this paper I argue that all the premises, (1), (2), and (4) (...) are false, and then provide a revised formulation of the argument which more clearly represents what Mullins and Craig wish to argue, given the explication and commentary they give when discussing this objection to timelessness. I then call into question this argument, and conclude by stating what I think Mullins and Craig should really be arguing given the specific views they have about creation ex nihilo and in virtue of what timelessness requires. (shrink)

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

This is a (likely incomplete) transcendental phenomenology of professional failure. You can read it, if you like. Or don't.

This paper argues for a theory of phenomenal intentionality (herein referred to as ‘Structuralism’), according to which perceptual experiences only possess intentional content when their phenomenal components are appropriately related to one another. This paper responds to the objections (i) that Structuralism cannot explain why some experiences have content while others do not, or (ii) why contentful experiences have the specific contents that they have. Against (i), I argue that to possess content, an experience must present itself as an experience (...) of something distinct from itself, and that only experiences whose components are suitably structured satisfy this requirement. Against (ii), I argue that Structuralists can provide a deeper explanation of perceptual content than other theories of phenomenal intentionality by showing how the content-determining relations among our experiences depend on the selection pressures under which our perceptual systems developed. (shrink)

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

Within contemporary philosophy of religion there are three main ways in which God is conceptualised in relation to personhood:God is a person and so personal. God is non-personal, and so is not a person. God is a personal non-person. The first two of these options will be familiar to many, with held by most contemporary monotheist philosophers of religion and mainly by those who are pantheists., however, is a view some may not have come across, despite its proponents claiming it (...) was the view of great philosophical theologians from the past. However, within recent times has become more popular. On the face of it, it might not be clear what the difference between and is, and whether debate had between the two positions is substantive. The goal of this paper is therefore to clarify the debate and assess whether the many claims advocates of make as to why God cannot be a person stand up to scrutiny or are persuasive. My suggestion will be that on the whole they do and are not. As such, defenders of will either need to defend these reasons in more detail or focus on the area I suggest the debate really rests on. (shrink)

I outline three conceptions of seeing that a creature might possess: ‘the headlamp conception,’ which involves an understanding of the causal connections between gazing at an object, certain mental states, and behavior; ‘the stage lights conception,’ which involves an understanding of the selective nature of visual attention; and seeing-as. I argue that infants and various nonhumans possess the headlamp conception. There is also evidence that chimpanzees and 3-year-old children have some grasp of seeing-as. However, due to a dearth of studies, (...) there is no evidence that infants or nonhumans possess the stage lights conception of seeing. I outline the kinds of experiments that are needed, and what we stand to learn about the evolution and development of perspective taking. (shrink)

This paper considers whether an analogy between distance and dissimilarlity supports the thesis that degree of dissimilarity is distance in a metric space. A straightforward way to justify the thesis would be to define degree of dissimilarity as a function of number of properties in common and not in common. But, infamously, this approach has problems with infinity. An alternative approach would be to prove representation and uniqueness theorems, according to which if comparative dissimilarity meets certain qualitative conditions, then it (...) is representable by distance in a metric space. I will argue that this approach faces equally severe problems with infinity. (shrink)

I build on Adam Smith’s account of the impartial spectator in The Theory of Moral Sentiments in order to offer a modest ideal observer theory of moral judgment that is adequate in the following sense: the account specifies the hypothetical conditions that guarantee the authoritativeness of an agent’s (or agents’) responses in constituting the standard in question, and, if an actual agent or an actual community of agents are not under those conditions, their responses are not authoritative in setting this (...) standard. However, in the account that I provide, the hypothetical conditions can themselves be constructed from the psychology and interactions of actual human beings. In other words, facts about the morally appropriate and inappropriate are determined from hypothetical conditions that––while agents in a given society might have yet to attain them––can be constructed from those agents’ shared experiences. Thus, the account offers both an attainable standard of moral judgment and a standard that can transcend the biases of the society which gave rise to it. I also defend the account against three challenges: (a) ideal observer theories do not offer the right kind of motivation to act on the verdicts of the ideal observer; (b) ideal observer theories cannot explain why the idealization in question is well-motivated and not objectionably ad hoc; (c) the standard used in ideal observer theories cannot be defended upon further reflection, because we would need a non-arbitrary, second-order standard to govern our reflection on the first-order standard of moral judgment. (shrink)

Ben-Yami presents Wittgenstein’s explicit criticism of the Platonic identification of an explanation with a definition and the alternative forms of explanation he employed. He then discusses a few predecessors of Wittgenstein’s criticisms and the Fregean background against which he wrote. Next, the idea of family resemblance is introduced, and objections answered. Wittgenstein’s endorsement of vagueness and the indeterminacy of sense are presented, as well as the open texture of concepts. Common misunderstandings are addressed along the way. Wittgenstein’s ideas, as is (...) then shown, have far-reaching implications for knowledge of meaning and the nature of logic, and with them to the nature of the philosophical project and its possible achievements. (shrink)

How does God govern the world? For many theists “laws of nature” play a vital role. But what are these laws, metaphysically speaking? I shall argue that laws of nature are not external to the objects they govern, but instead should be thought of as reducible to internal features of properties. Recent work in metaphysics and philosophy of science has revived a dispositionalist conception of nature, according to which nature is not passive, but active and dynamic. Disposition theorists see particulars (...) as being internally powerful rather than being governed by external laws of nature, making external laws in effect ontologically otiose. I will argue that theists should prefer a dispositionalist ontology, since it leads them toward the theory of concurrentism in divine conservation, rather than occasionalism, and revives the distinction between internal and external teleology. God on this view does not govern the world through external laws of nature, but rather through internal aspects of powerful properties. (shrink)

Physicians frequently ask whether they should give patients what they want, usually when there are considerations pointing against doing so, such as medicine’s values and physicians’ obligations. It has been argued that the source of medicine’s values and physicians’ obligations lies in what has been dubbed “the internal morality of medicine”: medicine is a practice with an end and norms that are definitive of this practice and that determine what physicians ought to do qua physicians. In this paper, I defend (...) the claim that medicine requires a morality that is internal to its practice, while rejecting the prevalent characterization of this morality and offering an alternative one. My approach to the internal morality of medicine is constructivist in nature: the norms of medicine are constructed by medical professionals, other professionals, and patients, given medicine’s end of “benefitting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care.” I make the case that patients should be involved in the construction of medicine’s morality not only because they have knowledge that is relevant to the internal morality of medicine—namely, their own values and preferences—but also because medicine is an inherently relational enterprise: in medicine the relationship between physician and patient is a constitutive component of the craft itself. The framework I propose provides an authoritative morality for medicine, while allowing for the incorporation, into that very morality, of qualified deference to patient values. (shrink)

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

Two problems seem to plague Adam Smith’s account of sympathy and approbation in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). First, Smith’s account of sympathy at the beginning of TMS appears to be inconsistent with the account of sympathy at the end of TMS. In particular, it seems that Smith did not appreciate the distinction between ‘self-oriented sympathy’ and ‘other-oriented sympathy’, that is, between imagining being oneself in the actor’s situation and imagining being the actor in the actor’s situation. Second, Smith’s (...) account of approbation, according to which a sentiment of approval arises when there is recognition of concordance between the spectator’s sympathetic passion and the actor’s original passion, seems to face the following problem: since the spectator attains both his own sympathetic passion and the actor’s original passion by sympathizing with the actor, the sympathetic passion of the spectator and the original passion of the actor will necessarily be identical. Therefore, Smith’s account of approbation requires that the spectator utilize both self-oriented and other-oriented sympathy (‘the double-sympathy model of approbation’). I offer a novel developmental account of sympathy in TMS that renders Smith’s account of sympathy consistent and allows for the utilization of the double-sympathy model of approbation. (shrink)

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

I defend the feasibility of a medical conscience in the following sense: a medical professional can object to the prevailing medical norms because they are incorrect as medical norms. In other words, I provide an account of conscientious objection that makes use of the idea that the conscience can issue true normative claims, but the claims in question are claims about medical norms rather than about general moral norms. I further argue that in order for this line of reasoning to (...) succeed, there needs to be an internal morality of medicine that determines what medical professionals ought to do qua medical professionals. I utilize a constructivist approach to the internal morality of medicine and argue that medical professionals can conscientiously object to providing treatment X, if providing treatment X is not in accordance with norms that would have been constructed, in light of the end of medicine, by the appropriate agents under the appropriate conditions. (shrink)

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

I offer a novel two-stage reconstruction of Hume’s general-point-of-view account, modeled in part on his qualified-judges account in ‘Of the Standard of Taste.’ In particular, I argue that the general point of view needs to be jointly constructed by spectators who have sympathized with (at least some of) the agents in (at least some of) the actor’s circles of influence. The upshot of the account is two-fold. First, Hume’s later thought developed in such a way that it can rectify the (...) problems inherent in his Treatise account of the general point of view. Second, the proposed account provides the grounds for an adequate and well-motivated modest ideal observer theory of the standard of virtue. (shrink)

One natural way to argue for the existence of some subjective constraint on agents’ obligations is to maintain that without that particular constraint, agents will sometimes be obligated to do that which they lack the ability to do. In this paper, I maintain that while such a strategy appears promising, it is fraught with pitfalls. Specifically, I argue that because the truth of an ability ascription depends on an (almost always implicit) characterization of the relevant possibility space, different metaethical accounts (...) take obligation to be constrained by different senses of ability. As a result, what initially looks to be a point of consensus—that ability constrains obligation—turns out to be a point of contention, and arguments with this at the foundation are much more likely to obscure, rather than resolve, metaethical disputes. Despite this, appeals to ability in metaethics aren’t doomed to be fruitless. On the contrary, if we can independently establish a particular sense of ability as the normatively relevant one, then we have good grounds for ruling out metaethical accounts that are inconsistent with it. In the final section, I make just such an argument. What seems right about the thought that ability constrains obligation is that an agent cannot be obligated to do that which her circumstances prevent her from doing. I argue that only a sense of ability that is both epistemically and motivationally restricted adequately respects the limits of agential control. (shrink)