According to a common view, prejudice always involves some form of epistemic culpability, i.e., a failure to respond to evidence in the appropriate way. I argue that the common view wrongfully assumes that prejudices always involve universal generalizations. After motivating the more plausible thesis that prejudices typically involve a species of generic judgment, I show that standard examples provide no grounds for positing a strong connection between prejudice and epistemic culpability. More generally, the common view fails to recognize the extent (...) to which prejudices are epistemically insidious: once they are internalized as background beliefs, they quite reasonably come to control the assessment and interpretation of new evidence. This property of insidiousness helps explain why prejudices are so recalcitrant to empirical counterevidence and also why they are frequently invisible to introspective reflection. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that public linguistic norms are implicated in the epistemology of testimony by way of underwriting the reliability of language comprehension. This paper argues that linguistic normativity, as such, makes no explanatory contribution to the epistemology of testimony, but instead emerges naturally out of a collective effort to maintain language as a reliable medium for the dissemination of knowledge. Consequently, the epistemologies of testimony and language comprehension are deeply intertwined from the start, and there is no (...) room for grounding the one in terms of the other. (shrink)

The present essay is a compact form of the results obtained during many decades of research into the primeval foundations of the collective fields of force, both social and of consciousness. Since everything is determined by their origins, and the collective forces arise from the mind, we had to explore the ultimate origins of mind. We have come to recognize the law of interactions as the law and necessity which determine the primeval origins of mind. It also determines the substance (...) and essence of the Universe and the modes of its existence and functioning. The present essay is a concise form of results obtained during many decades of research in the primeval foundations of collective, both social and consciousness fields. I point out that a yet unknown type of forces existed in the Golden Age, which I termed as collective force. In the Golden Age mankind lived in communities which had a full unity. The communal life developed its collective forms, of which the most significant are the development of human speech, of language, share of work and the development of the communal fests. The law determining the primeval origins of mind is the cosmic law of interactions. It defines the substance of the Universe and the ways of its existence and activity. A detailed analysis is presented on the nature of the lay of interaction here. One consequence of this fundamental principle is the general prevalence of the principle of mutuality, which plays a basic role in the understanding of the unfolding and degeneration of consciousness. The principle of mutuality determines the changes of every levels of life. The laws of the generation of consciousness in the ages of evolution toward Homo and the Golden Age are analysed. I presented some evidences indicating the factual existence of the Golden Age, as well as its destruction, which was necessarily accompanied by the overthrow of the consciousness of the Golden Age, its repression and replacement by the newly developed rational, upper or superficial mind. Starting from the consideration that our mind is a product of our history, the phenomenon of the 'double mind' is recognised, the largely antagonistic duality of human mind. It is succeeded to solve the riddle of the double mind and determining its substance. Our double mind, consisting of the ‘upper’ or rational mind and the ‘deep-mind’, is a creature of the two fundamental ages of mankind, that of the age of power domination and the Golden Age. Therefore it expresses the duality of our history. We attempted to explore the heritage of the Golden Age embedded into our world of instincts, sexuality, emotional and sensual world, and the expressions of this heritage according to the different periods of our lives. If we will succeed in enlightening the deep-mind it may make it possible to give back the long-forgotten collective fields of forces to mankind, unavailable to the surface mind at present, and would expand the all-pervasive power of the conscious mind significantly. Hopefully, our results open up new vistas for the research of the collective fields and the double nature of the human mind, and may enable us to know and complete ourselves more deeply and thoroughly. (shrink)

Auf die Frage „Was ist Wahrnehmung und welche Rolle spielt sie für die Objektivität der Erfahrung?“ hätte Ernst Cassirer vermutlich schlicht geantwortet: „Wahrnehmung ist eine erste Form objektiver Erfahrung.“ Tobias Endres macht es sich zur Aufgabe, Cassirers „Philosophie der symbolischen Formen“ einer Neu- und Gesamtinterpretation zu unterziehen und sie als eine „Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung“ auszulegen. In Auseinandersetzung mit klassischen und gegenwärtigen Wahrnehmungstheorien wie der Sinnesdatentheorie, dem Disjunktivismus oder dem Enaktivismus gelingt es dem Autor, die Aktualität und Originalität solch einer (...) phänomenologischen Wahrnehmungstheorie aufzuzeigen. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to highlight a hidden reception of Ernst Cassirer’s works in the writings of Wilfrid Sellars. To set out such reception, I will begin with defining criteria that allow us to point out a possible influence from one thinker on another. In a second step, I will present several links between the set-out criteria and the constellation Sellars-Cassirer. Finally, the Cassirer Lectures Series at Yale, Sellars’ review of Language and Myth as well as Sellars’ lecture (...) Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man will serve as at the basis for an analysis of historical and systematic connections between Cassirer and Sellars. The conclusion will show that we actually can speak of a hidden influence from Cassirer on Sellars’ thought and that philosophical desiderata remain in this context which are worth to explore even today. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that Cassirer's methodology is idealistic in regard to validity claims and the structuralist views he holds and at the same time empiric in regard to the facts and genealogy of culture. This perspective is best to be unfolded along Cassirer's model of representation. The author does so by showing that Cassirer's triad of symbolic articulation (expressive, presentational, significative) and the triad of symbolic development (mimetic, analogical, symbolic) form a coherent and exhaustive theory of symbolic formation. (...) In order to defend this view, two main objections from the secondary literature against the consistency of this essential theory piece of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms have to be rejected. (shrink)

The first wave of philosophical work on global justice focused largely on the distribution of economic resources, and on the development or reformation of institutions relevant thereto. More recently, however, the horizon has broadened significantly, to also include a concern with the global spread of the right to live under reasonable legal institutions and representative forms of government (cf. “a human right to democracy”). Thus, while the first wave was focused primarily on international (non-territorial) institutions, later work has also brought (...) critical focus to bear on domestic institutions traditionally assumed to be protected by rights of state sovereignty. This naturally raises the question of whether, when, and how the international community can coercively intervene in issues falling under assumed to fall under domestic jurisdiction. Many theorists of global justice will accept, however reluctantly, that coercive means such as military force may be used (even unilaterally, if necessary) to halt a government’s mass atrocities against its civilian population (so-called “humanitarian intervention”). They are, however, for the most part firmly opposed to the use of military force as a tool to force regime change or democratic reform. I will discuss the viability of this stance along two dimensions: (i) can we draw a morally relevant distinction between humanitarian intervention and regime change policies? (ii) can we draw a morally relevant distinction between the use of military force as a policy tool and the use of other kinds of coercive measures such as economic sanctions? (shrink)

Parenting our biological children is a centrally important matter, but how, if it all, can it be justified? According to a contemporary influential line of thinking, the acquisition by parents of a moral right to parent their biological children should be grounded by appeal to the value of the intimate emotional relationship that gestation facilitates between a newborn and a gestational procreator. I evaluate two arguments in defence of this proposal and argue that both are unconvincing.

The article examines Cassirer's complete works as well as his posthumous writings with regard to Heinz Paetzold's thesis that Cassirer's philosophy undergoes a transformation to anthropology in his late work as well as Guido Kreis' thesis that such a transformation of the philosophy of symbols is not possible because it cannot guarantee its own ground. The author demonstrates a continuity in Cassirer's thinking with regard to the topic of anthropology, according to which Cassirer has been dealing with the problem of (...) a metaphysics of the symbolic since at least 1921 and already in 1928 makes an initial determination of man as a being capable of form. The resumption of the anthropological question occurs in 1939 and is in clear continuity with the previous works. The reconstruction of the genesis of An Essay on Man (1944) that follows on from this finally reveals a hitherto well-kept secret of Cassirer-research, namely an answer to the question of why history first appears as a symbolic form in Cassirer's last published work. (shrink)

Technologien haben schon lange Eingang in unseren Alltag gefunden und transformieren zahlreiche Lebensbereiche wie Politik, Wirtschaft, Bildung, Gesundheit und Pflege. Mittels Social Media pflegen wir zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen und kommunizieren miteinander, wir haben Apps zum Schlafen oder für die Ernährung und in der Medizin werden Technologien in den Körper implantiert oder zur Untersuchung des Körpers verwendet. Wearables, wie z. B. die Smart Watch, werden direkt am Körper getragen und müssen kaum noch abgenommen werden. Smart Watches messen den Puls und Herzschlag, zählen (...) unsere Schritte, melden sich, wenn man wieder aufstehen sollte und erfassen den Schlafrhythmus. Wir schlagen Wissen bei Wikipedia nach und lernen interaktiv über Smart Boards in der Schule. Über digitale Tools lässt sich das orts- und zeitunabhängige Zusammenarbeiten organisieren. Wie verändert sich das Menschsein in einer solchen technisierten Welt? Wie verändern sich die menschliche Lebenswelt, Handeln, Verantwortungsstrukturen und Identitätskonzepte? Puzio, Anna/Rutzmoser, Carolin/Endres, Eva-Maria: Menschsein in einer technisierten Welt – Einleitende Bemerkungen zu einer interdisziplinären Auseinandersetzung mit der digitalen Transformation. In: Endres, Eva-Maria/Puzio, Anna/Rutzmoser, Carolin (Hg.): Menschsein in einer technisierten Welt. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf den Menschen im Zeichen der digitalen Transformation. Wiesbaden 2022. (shrink)

In the current philosophy of perception, a debate about whether concepts permeate perceptual states in constituting the perceptual object or not has been widely discussed. Analytic philosophers and phenomenologists participate in this debate likewise, but it is also a debate in Kantian scholarship since the conceptualists’ thesis goes back to Kant’s Criticism and neo-Kantians already discussing such theory against any philosophy of immediate experience long before Wilfrid Sellars had started his attack against the so-called myth of the given. In light (...) of this historical panorama, the article reconstructs Ernst Cassirer’s views on perception in order to systematically reject both Conceptualism and Non-Conceptualism. It can be shown that both positions are uncritical stances which make claims to either the absoluteness of language or perception and that much-discussed arguments such as the fineness of grain argument rely on a category mistake. The proposed solution is a view that upholds the criticism against the myth of the given, but replaces the idea of a conceptual mediation of perceptual experience with a symbolic mediation. As a consequence, perception must perform a paradoxical feat and has thus to be elastic. (shrink)

In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of widely accepted Bayesian norms is (...) sufficient to identify a normatively privileged updating procedure for this kind of learning. Along the way, we justify a privileged formalization of the notion of ‘epistemic conservativity’, offer a new analysis of the Judy Benjamin problem, and emphasize the distinction between interpreting the content of new evidence and updating one’s beliefs on the basis of that content. (shrink)

Collected essays consider points of affinity and friction between Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Despite being contemporaries, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger never directly engaged with one another. Yet, Hannah Arendt, who knew both men, pointed out common ground between the two. Both were concerned with the destruction of metaphysics, the development of a new way of reading and understanding literature and art, and the formulation of radical theories about time and history. On the other hand, their life (...) trajectories and political commitments were radically different. In a 1930 letter, Benjamin told a friend that he had been reading Heidegger and that if the two were to engage with one another, “sparks will fly.” Acknowledging both their affinities and points of conflict, this volume stages that confrontation, focusing in particular on temporality, Romanticism, and politics in their work. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to present and defend a new argument for rights contributionism – the view that the notion of a moral claim-right is a contributory (or pro tanto) rather than overall normative notion. The argument is an inference to the best explanation: it is argued that (i) there are contributory moral factors that contrast with standard moral reasons by way of having a number of formal properties that are characteristic of rights, even though they (...) can be overridden, and (ii) that this is best explained by a view that takes these factors to correlate with rights. The second aim is to show that the truth of rights contributionism matters for normative ethics. More specifically, it is argued that rights contributionism clears the way for deontologists to justify the pre-theoretically plausible verdict that we have a duty to save the greater number in so-called Taurek scenarios – scenarios in which we have to choose between saving either a greater or a smaller number of different people. The chapter offers a novel and distinctively deontological explanation of this verdict that is based on the assumption that everyone has a pro tanto right to be saved in a Taurek scenario. (shrink)

Digitalisierung und technologischer Fortschritt verändern das menschliche Selbstverständnis. Während sich der Mensch in Abgrenzung zu Tier und Natur als kultiviertes und autonom handelndes Wesen definiert, steht er angesichts der zunehmenden Technologisierung nun vor der Frage: Was bedeutet Menschsein vor dem Hintergrund der neuen Technologien? Wie verändern sich die menschliche Lebenswelt, Verantwortungsstrukturen und Identitätskonzepte? Was können Menschen, was Technologien nicht können? Was macht den Menschen aus und wo wird er in Frage gestellt? Der Band bietet einen umfassenden Blick auf diese Fragestellungen. (...) Im ersten Teil befassen sich Beiträge aus der Philosophie und Anthropologie mit dem Spannungsfeld Mensch-Maschine. Die anschließenden Beiträge eröffnen interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf die technisierte Lebenswelt des Menschen in den Bereichen Kultur, Kommunikation und Bildung. Im letzten Teil des Bandes wird schließlich als Kontrapunkt das Menschsein in einer technisierten Welt aus der Perspektive von Spiritualität und Pflege in den Blick genommen. (shrink)

In spite of its significance for everyday and philosophical discourse, the explanatory connective has not received much treatment in the philosophy of logic. The present paper develops a logic for based on systematic connections between and the truth-functional connectives.

Bioethicists’ views diverge public opinion on various ethical issues, particularly in healthcare. For instance, bioethicists generally oppose payment for organs and advocate for preventing death at any age, whereas the public is more supportive of organ payment and prioritizing younger patients. I offer four arguments on how best to view this divergence. (a) Bioethicists’ specialized training, objectivity, and reliance on research often lead to views that differ from those of the public, which may be less informed and more influenced by (...) biases. (b) Further, divergence between expert and public opinion is a normal and sometimes necessary aspect of bioethics. Divergence can lead to more informed and progressive ethical practices. (c) While public input is valuable, achieving meaningful engagement is difficult due to varying values, risk perceptions, and socioeconomic circumstances. Effective bioethics would balance expert knowledge with public input, aiming for policies that are both scientifically sound and democratically legitimate. (d) Maintaining public trust in bioethics does not require full alignment with public opinion. Instead, bioethicists should focus on educating the public and incorporating informed public perspectives into their analysis and recommendations. (shrink)

This entry is composed of three sections. In §1, we survey debates about what structural rationality is, including the emergence of the concept in the contemporary literature, its key characteristics, its relationship to substantive rationality, its paradigm instances, and the questions of whether these instances are unified and, if so, how. In §2, we turn to the debate about structural requirements of rationality – including controversies about whether they are “wide-scope” or “narrow-scope”, synchronic or diachronic, and whether they govern processes (...) or states; as well as examining various forms of skepticism about structural requirements of rationality. In §3, we turn to the debate about the normative significance of structural rationality, surveying central challenges for the view that structural rationality is normatively significant and the theoretical options that arise in light of these challenges. (shrink)

Vitoria’s 1537 lecture On the American Indians asserts moral equality and fundamental rights for all humans but is contradicted by the significant inequalities between Spanish conquistadores and indigenous peoples of Mexico and Peru. Despite recognizing these rights, Vitoria’s vision supports an unequal Euro-American relationship regarding territorial sovereignty, self-defense, self-determination, and religious freedom. His insights have implications for contemporary international law concerning indigenous rights. However, his theological framework limits this potential. To better address indigenous issues today, I advocate reframing Vitoria’s perspective (...) by replacing his natural law-based human-rights essentialism with a naturalistic approach that views human rights as social constructs. This shift can help develop international law to prevent violent interactions and promote equality between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, reducing reliance on nation states to safeguard indigenous rights. Received: 03 August 2023 Accepted: 18 April 2024. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, epistemic reasons are normative reasons for belief – much like prudential or moral reasons are normative reasons for action. In recent years, however, an increasing number of authors have questioned the assumption that epistemic reasons are normative. In this article, I discuss an important challenge for anti-normativism about epistemic reasons and present a number of arguments in support of normativism. The challenge for anti-normativism is to say what kind of reasons epistemic reasons are if (...) they are not normative reasons. I discuss various answers to this challenge and find them all wanting. The arguments for normativism each stress a certain analogy between epistemic reasons and normative reasons for action. Just like normative reasons for action, epistemic reasons provide partial justification; they provide premises for correct reasoning; they constitute good bases for the responses they are reasons for; and they are reasons for which agents can show these responses without committing a mistake. In each case, I argue that the relevant condition is plausibly sufficient for the normativity of a reason, and that normativism is in any case in a much better position to explain the analogy than anti-normativism. (shrink)

Art, for Hegel, is not only distinct but self-distinguishing of and from nature – it happens in and through the latter. It liberates us from being merely natural creatures, and it does so by a dynamic of a cut or break - even though this liberation is achieved only through natural sensuousness, and hence, keeps us tethered to nature in some particular way. Inspired by Todd McGowan’s emphasis on the central role of contradiction in Hegel’s philosophy, this paper considers the (...) possibility to applying the dialectic between art and nature as it is unfolded in Hegel’s Aesthetic to a more insidious constellation — namely, what Marxists came to refer to as second nature: the world of commodities, in which man-made things appear to those who produce them as a naturalised and repressive opposite, a pseudo nature, an alienated solidified history. (shrink)

Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper provides (...) an overview of the debate on the ethics of partiality through the lens of the domains of permissible and required partiality. After outlining the conceptual space, I first discuss agent-centred moral options that concern permissions not to do what would be impartially optimal. I then focus on required partiality, which concerns associative duties that go beyond our general duties to others and require us to give special priority to people who are close to us. I discuss some notable features of associative duties and the two main objections that have been raised against them: the Voluntarist and the Distributive objections. I then turn to the justification of partiality, focusing on underivative approaches and reasons-based frameworks. I discuss the reductionism and non-reductionism debate: the question whether partiality is derivative or fundamental. I survey arguments for ‘the big three’, according to which partiality is justified by appeal to the special value of either projects, personal relationships, or individuals. I conclude by discussing four newly emerging areas in the debate: normative transitions of various personal relationships, relationships with AI, epistemic partiality, and negative partiality, which concerns the negative analogue of our positive personal relationships. (shrink)

According to an attractive and widely held view, all practical reasons are explained in terms of the (instrumental or final) value of the action supported by the reason. I argue that this theory is incompatible with plausible assumptions about the practical reasons that correspond to certain moral rights, including the right to a promised action and the right to an exclusive use of one’s property. The argument is an explanatory rather than extensional one: while the actions supported by the relevant (...) reasons (e.g. keeping a valid promise or respecting property) can be argued to have a certain kind of value, I argue that this value presupposes a moral right, and therefore cannot explain the reason. Reflection on such cases suggest the conclusion that reasons that are subject to normative powers are generally not value-based. This also has important implications for the dialectic between ‘value-first’ and ‘reasons-first’ approaches to normativity. (shrink)

Hypocrisy is widely thought to be morally objectionable in a way that undermines the hypocrite’s moral standing to blame others. To wit, we seem to intuitively accept the “Nonhypocrisy Condition:” R has the standing to blame S for some violation of a moral norm N only if R’s blaming S is not hypocritical. This claim has been the subject of intensifying philosophical investigation in recent years. However, we can only understand why hypocrisy is morally objectionable and has an effect on (...) standing to blame if we can correctly characterize hypocrisy itself. Unfortunately, some recent discussions fail to do this, which fatally undermines subsequent arguments concerning the effect of hypocrisy on the standing to blame. This paper’s central aim is to develop and defend a better account of hypocrisy. The hope is that with such an account in hand, we can explain and perhaps justify our moral aversion to hypocrisy in general as well as the Nonhypocrisy Condition in particular. (shrink)

Kyle Fritz and Daniel Miller’s reply to my article helpfully clarifies their position and our main points of disagreement. Their view is that those who blame hypocritically lack the right to blame for a violation of some moral norm N in virtue of having an unfair disposition to blame others, but not themselves, for violations of N. This view raises two key questions. First, are there instances of hypocritical blame that do not involve an unfair differential blaming disposition? Second, if (...) the answer to the first question is Yes, do hypocritical blamers of this kind lack the right to blame? In this paper, I argue that the answer to the first question is Yes. Given this, Fritz and Miller’s account faces serious problems regardless of whether the answer to the second question is Yes or No. (shrink)

The principle of indifference states that in the absence of any relevant evidence, a rational agent will distribute their credence equally among all the possible outcomes under consideration. Despite its intuitive plausibility, PI famously falls prey to paradox, and so is widely rejected as a principle of ideal rationality. In this article, I present a novel rehabilitation of PI in terms of the epistemology of comparative confidence judgments. In particular, I consider two natural comparative reformulations of PI and argue that (...) while one of them prescribes the adoption of patently irrational epistemic states, the other provides a consistent formulation of PI that overcomes the most salient limitations of existing formulations. (shrink)

If you ought to perform a certain act, and some other action is a necessary means for you to perform that act, then you ought to perform that other action as well – or so it seems plausible to say. This transmission principle is of both practical and theoretical significance. The aim of this paper is to defend this principle against a number of recent objections, which (as I show) are all based on core assumptions of the view called actualism. (...) I reject actualism, provide an alternative explanation of its plausible features, and present an independent argument for the transmission principle. (shrink)

There is consensus within the chemosciences that olfactory perception is of the molecular structure of chemical compounds, yet within philosophical theories of smell there is little agreement about the nature of smell. The paper critically assesses the current state of debate regarding smells within philosophy in the hopes of setting it upon firm scientific footing. The theories to be covered are: Naïve Realism, Hedonic Theories, Process Theory, Odor Theories, and non-Objectivist Theories. The aforementioned theories will be evaluated based on their (...) explanations of the (a) the olfactory quality of a smell, (b) smells as distal entities, and (c) our experience of smells as intentional objects. The paper concludes with a defense of Molecular Structure Theory that demonstrating its superiority in accounting for each of these three aspects of smell. (shrink)

If bioethical questions cannot be resolved in a widely acceptable manner by rational argument, and if they can be regulated only on the basis of political decision-making, then bioethics belongs to the political sphere. The particular kind of politics practiced in any given society matters greatly: it will determine the kind of bioethical regulation, legislation, and public policy generated there. I propose approaching bioethical questions politically in terms of decisions that cannot be “correct” but that can be “procedurally legitimate.” Two (...) procedures in particular can deliver legitimate bioethical decisions, once combined: expert bioethics committees and deliberative democracy. Bioethics so understood can exceed bioethics as a moral project or as a set of administrative principles to regulate medical practice; it can now aspire to a democratic project that involves ordinary citizens as far as reasonably possible. I advance this argument in four steps: (1) using the example of human germline gene editing, (2) I propose a general understanding of proceduralism, and (3) then combine two types and (4) conclude with a defense of majoritarian proceduralism. I develop this argument in terms of one example: germline gene editing. (shrink)

Hypocrisy is a ubiquitous feature of moral and political life, and accusations of hypocrisy a ubiquitous feature of moral and political discourse. Yet it has been curiously under-theorized in analytic philosophy. Fortunately, the last decade has seen a boomlet of articles that address hypocrisy in order to explain and justify conditions on the so-called “standing” to blame (Wallace 2010; Friedman 2013; Bell 2013; Todd 2017; Herstein 2017; Roadevin 2018; Fritz and Miller 2018). Nevertheless, much of this more recent literature does (...) not adequately address the question, “what is hypocrisy?” In this paper, I develop and defend an account of hypocrisy as vicious, value-expressing inconsistency. I show how this account solves some traditional and some novel philosophical puzzles concerning hypocrisy and affords a deeper understanding of the features of hypocrisy emphasized by other prominent accounts. (shrink)

Actualists hold that contrary-to-duty scenarios give rise to deontic dilemmas and provide counterexamples to the transmission principle, according to which we ought to take the necessary means to actions we ought to perform. In an earlier article, I have argued, contrary to actualism, that the notion of ‘ought’ that figures in conclusions of practical deliberation does not allow for deontic dilemmas and validates the transmission principle. Here I defend these claims, together with my possibilist account of contrary-to-duty scenarios, against Stephen (...) White’s recent criticism. (shrink)

Which principles govern the transmission of reasons from ends to means? Some philosophers have suggested a liberal transmission principle, according to which agents have an instrumental reason for an action whenever this action is a means for them to do what they have non-instrumental reason to do. In this paper, we (i) discuss the merits and demerits of the liberal transmission principle, (ii) argue that there are good reasons to reject it, and (iii) present an alternative, less liberal transmission principle, (...) which allows us to accommodate those phenomena that seem to support the liberal transmission principle while avoiding its problems. (shrink)

People loved for their beauty and cheerfulness are not loved as irreplaceable, yet people loved for “what their souls are made of” are. Or so literary romance implies; leading philosophical accounts, however, deny the distinction, holding that reasons for love either do not exist or do not include the beloved’s distinguishing features. In this, I argue, they deny an essential species of love. To account for it while preserving the beloved’s irreplaceability, I defend a model of agency on which people (...) can love each other for identities still being created, through a kind of mutual improvisation. (shrink)

Suppositions can be introduced in either the indicative or subjunctive mood. The introduction of either type of supposition initiates judgments that may be either qualitative, binary judgments about whether a given proposition is acceptable or quantitative, numerical ones about how acceptable it is. As such, accounts of qualitative/quantitative judgment under indicative/subjunctive supposition have been developed in the literature. We explore these four different types of theories by systematically explicating the relationships canonical representatives of each. Our representative qualitative accounts of indicative (...) and subjunctive supposition are based on the belief change operations provided by AGM revision and KM update respectively; our representative quantitative ones are offered by conditionalization and imaging. This choice is motivated by the familiar approach of understanding supposition as `provisional belief revision' wherein one temporarily treats the supposition as true and forms judgments by making appropriate changes to their other opinions. To compare the numerical judgments recommended by the quantitative theories with the binary ones recommended by the qualitative accounts, we rely on a suitably adapted version of the Lockean thesis. Ultimately, we establish a number of new results that we interpret as vindicating the often-repeated claim that conditionalization is a probabilistic version of revision, while imaging is a probabilistic version of update. (shrink)

In recent years, a new generation of activists has reinvigorated debate over the public commemorative landscape. While this debate is in no way limited to statues, it frequently crystallizes around public representations of historical figures who expressed support for the oppression of certain groups or contributed to their past or present oppression. In this paper, I consider what should be done about such representations. A number of philosophers have articulated arguments for modifying or removing public monuments. Joanna Burch-Brown (2017) grounds (...) her argument for removal in what I call the “honorific” function of such representations—the ways in which they express and tend to cultivate admiration for their subjects. In the first two sections of the paper, I develop a novel argument for modifying these representations based on this insight. I argue that leaving such representations unmodified in the public space tends to undermine the dignity of members of oppressed groups as well as their assurance that society and government are committed to their rights and constitutional entitlements. In the paper’s third section, I develop a “balancing test” for determining whether the relevant moral and pragmatic considerations favor making a particular representation inaccessible to the public, or recontextualizing it for public consumption. Unlike some of the existing philosophical treatments of honorific representations that focus on particular monuments, this balancing test is designed for general application to any honorific representation that satisfies the presumptive case for modification. To conclude, I offer some reasons why weak forms of recontextualization that do not involve altering institutional context may often be an insufficient remedy for the problems I describe. (shrink)

John Broome argues that rationality cannot consist in reasons-responsiveness since rationality supervenes on the mind, while reasons-responsiveness does not supervene on the mind. I here defend this conception of rationality by way of defending the assumption that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind. Given the many advantages of an analysis of rationality in terms of reasons-responsiveness, and in light of independent considerations in favour of the view that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, we should take seriously the backup view, a hypothesis (...) that explains why reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind even though paradigmatic reasons are external facts. I argue that Broome’s objections to the backup view, as well as his more general objection to the thesis that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, do not succeed. (shrink)

In this paper I present an argument for the claim that you ought to do something only if you may believe that you ought to do it. More exactly, I defend the following principle about normative reasons: An agent A has decisive reason to φ only if she also has sufficient reason to believe that she has decisive reason to φ. I argue that this principle follows from the plausible assumption that it must be possible for an agent to respond (...) correctly to her reasons. In conclusion, I discuss some implications of this argument (given that some other standard assumptions about reasons hold). One such implication is that we are always in a position to be justified in believing all truths about what we have decisive reason (or ought) to do. (shrink)

According to Milner and Goodale’s dual visual systems (DVS) theory, a division obtains between visual consciousness and motor action, in that the visual system producing conscious vision (the ventral stream) is distinct from the one guiding action (the dorsal stream). That there would be this division is often taken (by Andy Clark and others) to undermine the folk view on how consciousness and action relate. However, even if this division obtains, this leaves open the possibility that con- scious ventral information (...) is often transmitted to the uncon- scious dorsal stream and then used to guide action, a possibility seeming to preserve a significant role for consciousness in action. This article assesses this possibility. In course of doing so, we will review those arguments recently having been made against the DVS view on how visual consciousness and action relate (ones due to, e.g., Briscoe and Schwenkler, or Schenk and McIntosh). What we will find is that, if we properly analyze the data upon which these arguments are based, we are still left with the impression that the DVS view is largely correct; i.e., it is only rarely that visual experience guides action. (shrink)

Mind &Language, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 90-114, February 2020.

The first part of this paper surveys five perspectives in Kant’s philosophy on the quantity of retribution to be inflicted on wrongdoers, ordered by two dimensions of difference – whether they are theoretical or practical perspectives, and the quantity of retribution they prescribe: (1) theoretical zero, the perspective of theoretical philosophy; (2) practical infinity, the perspective of God and conscience; (3) practical equality, the perspective of punishment in public law; (4) practical degrees, the perspective we adopt in private relations to (...) others and (5) practical zero, a perspective I argue is entailed by Kant’s doctrine of strict right, which is his justification of coercing compliance with public law. Kant acknowledges 1–4 but not 5. The second part draws on Kant’s account of the burden of proof in criminal law to argue that Kant is wrong to adopt 3 in responding to criminals, and that we ought to adopt 5 instead. (shrink)

The motivational constraint on normative reasons says that a consideration is a normative reason for an agent to act only if it is logically possible for the agent to act for that reason, or at least to be moved so to act. The claim figures Zelig-like in philosophical debates about practical reasons: on hand, occasionally prominent, but never the focus of discussion. However, because it is entailed by a number of prominent views about normative reasons—including various forms of internalism and (...) some views that closely connect reasons to good practical reasoning—its truth or falsehood has important implications. Mark Schroeder (2007) and Julia Markovits (2014) have recently criticized the Motivational Constraint on the grounds of so-called “elusive reasons”: reasons for some agent to act that are such that it is logically impossible both that they are normative reasons for that agent and the agent is moved to act for those reasons. In response, a number of philosophers (Sinclair 2016; Ridge and McKeever 2012; Paakkunainen 2017) have attempted to reconcile blindspot reasons with the motivational constraint. My aim in this paper is to show that these conciliatory strategies fail to overcome the challenge posed by elusive reasons. First, I examine each strategy and argue that it unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I adduce another type of elusive reason not heretofore discussed in the literature, and I argue that these strategies also cannot make this kind of reason consistent with the motivational constraint. Finally, I defend the existence of this kind of reason against an important objection. (shrink)

According to higher-order theories of consciousness, a mental state is conscious only when represented by another mental state. Higher-order theories must predict there to be some brain areas (or networks of areas) such that, because they produce (the right kind of) higher-order states, the disabling of them brings about deficits in consciousness. It is commonly thought that the prefrontal cortex produces these kinds of higher-order states. In this paper, I first argue that this is likely correct, meaning that, if some (...) higher-order theory is true, prefrontal lesions should produce dramatic deficits in visual consciousness. I then survey prefrontal lesion data, looking for evidence of such deficits. I argue that no such deficits are to be found, and that this presents a compelling case against higher-order theories. (shrink)

Pereboom’s Four-Case Argument was once considered to be the most powerful of the manipulation arguments against compatibilism. However, because of Demetriou’s :595–617, 2010) response, Pereboom has significantly weakened his argument. Manipulation arguments in general have also been challenged by King : 65–83, 2013). In this paper, I argue that the Four-Case Argument resists both these challenges. One upshot is that Pereboom doesn’t need weaken his argument. Another is that compatibilists still need a response the Four-Case Argument. And another is that (...) we get a much better understanding of the Four-Case Argument, and of manipulation arguments more generally, than is currently available in the literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a theory of how claims about an agent’s normative reasons are sensitive to the epistemic circumstances of this agent, which preserves the plausible ideas that reasons are facts and that reasons can be discovered in deliberation and disclosed in advice. I argue that a plausible theory of this kind must take into account the difference between synchronic and diachronic reasons, i.e. reasons for acting immediately and reasons for acting at some later point in time. I (...) provide a general account of the relation between synchronic and diachronic reasons, demonstrate its implications for the evidence-sensitivity of reasons and finally present and defend an argument for my view. (shrink)

A theory of blameworthiness must answer two fundamental questions. First, what makes a person blameworthy when they act? Second, what makes a person blameworthy after the time of action? Two main answers have been given to the second question. According to interminability theorists, blameworthiness necessarily doesn’t even diminish over time. Terminability theorists deny this. In this paper, I argue against interminability and in favour of terminability. After clarifying the debate about whether blameworthiness is interminable or terminable, I argue there’s no (...) positive case for interminability. I then respond to three objections to terminability. In doing so, I clarify the nature of blame, self-blame, and posthumous blame. I also give theoretical reasons in favour of the view that a person’s blameworthiness for a minor wrong can not only diminish but also cease completely. (shrink)

Permissivism about rationality is the view that there is sometimes more than one rational response to a given body of evidence. In this paper I discuss the relationship between permissivism, deference to rationality, and peer disagreement. I begin by arguing that—contrary to popular opinion—permissivism supports at least a moderate version of conciliationism. I then formulate a worry for permissivism. I show that, given a plausible principle of rational deference, permissive rationality seems to become unstable and to collapse into unique rationality. (...) I conclude with a formulation of a way out of this problem on behalf of the permissivist. (shrink)

Compatibilists disagree over whether there are historical conditions on moral responsibility. Historicists claim there are, whilst structuralists deny this. Historicists motivate their position by claiming to avoid the counter-intuitive implications of structuralism. I do two things in this paper. First, I argue that historicism has just as counter-intuitive implications as structuralism when faced with thought experiments inspired by those found in the personal identity literature. Hence, historicism is not automatically preferable to structuralism. Second, I argue that structuralism is much more (...) plausible once we accept that personal identity is irrelevant to moral responsibility. This paves the way for a new structuralist account that makes clear what it takes to be the diachronic ownership condition (which is normally taken to be personal identity) and the locus of moral responsibility (which is normally taken to be ‘whole’ person), and helps to alleviate the intuitive unease many have with respect to structuralism. (shrink)

We use a theorem from M. J. Schervish to explore the relationship between accuracy and practical success. If an agent is pragmatically rational, she will quantify the expected loss of her credence with a strictly proper scoring rule. Which scoring rule is right for her will depend on the sorts of decisions she expects to face. We relate this pragmatic conception of inaccuracy to the purely epistemic one popular among epistemic utility theorists.

The problem of old evidence, first described by Glymour [1980], is still widely regarded as one of the most pressing foundational challenges to the Bayesian account of scientific reasoning. Many solutions have been proposed, but all of them have drawbacks and none is considered to be definitive. Here, we introduce and defend a new kind of solution, according to which hypotheses are confirmed when we become more confident that they provide the only way of accounting for the known evidence.

Given some of the various possible impacts of clinical germline editing, we can expect robust disagreement about how best to regulate it. One can point to examples of the promise of editing: “rough...