May lethal autonomous weapons systems—‘killer robots ’—be used in war? The majority of writers argue against their use, and those who have argued in favour have done so on a consequentialist basis. We defend the moral permissibility of killer robots, but on the basis of the non-aggregative structure of right assumed by Just War theory. This is necessary because the most important argument against killer robots, the responsibility trilemma proposed by Rob Sparrow, makes the same assumptions. We show that the (...) crucial moral question is not one of responsibility. Rather, it is whether the technology can satisfy the requirements of fairness in the re-distribution of risk. Not only is this possible in principle, but some killer robots will actually satisfy these requirements. An implication of our argument is that there is a public responsibility to regulate killer robots ’ design and manufacture. (shrink)

The problem of creeping minimalism concerns how to tell the difference between metaethical expressivism and its rivals given contemporary expressivists’ acceptance of minimalism about truth and related concepts. Explanationism finds the difference in what expressivists use to explain why ethical language and thought has the content it does. I argue that two recent versions of explanationism are unsatisfactory and offer a third version, subject matter explanationism. This view, I argue, captures the advantages of previous views without their disadvantages and gives (...) us a principled and general characterisation of non-representational views about all kinds of language and thought. (shrink)

McGowan argues that everyday verbal bigotry makes a key contribution to the harms of discriminatory inequality, via a mechanism that she calls sneaky norm enactment. Part of her account involves showing that the characteristic of conversational interaction that facilitates sneaky norm enactment is in fact a generic one, which obtains in a wide range of activities, namely, the property of having conventions of appropriateness. I argue that her account will be better-able to show that everyday verbal bigotry is a key (...) factor in social inequality if it tries to isolate a more specific property of conversation as the thing that facilitates sneaky norm enactment. (shrink)

Mill thinks our attitudes should be held in a way that’s active and ‘alive’. He believes attitudes that lack these qualities—those held dogmatically, or in unreflective conformity—are inimical to our well-being. This claim then serves as a premiss in his argument for overarching principles of liberty. He argues that attitudinal vitality, in the relevant sense, relies upon people experiencing attitudinal conflict, and that this necessitates a prioritization of personal liberties. I argue that, pace Mill, contestation isn’t required for attitudinal vitality. (...) I describe one species of attitudinal vitality that isn’t reliant upon conflict. (shrink)

This is the English (and extended version) of an interview originally published in Estonian in October 2018. In the interview, Simpson summarizes a particular way of defending the practice of no-platforming. The varying appeal of different defences of the practice in different socio-historical contexts (i.e. the UK/US versus a post-Soviet country such as Estonia) is discussed also.

Permissivism says that for some propositions and bodies of evidence, there is more than one rationally permissible doxastic attitude that can be taken towards that proposition given the evidence. Some critics of this view argue that it condones, as rationally acceptable, sets of attitudes that manifest an untenable kind of arbitrariness. I begin by providing a new and more detailed explication of what this alleged arbitrariness consists in. I then explain why Miriam Schoenfield’s prima facie promising attempt to answer the (...) Arbitrariness Objection, by appealing to the role of epistemic standards in rational belief formation, fails to resolve the problem. Schoenfield’s strategy is, however, a useful one, and I go on to explain how an alternative form of the standards-based approach to Permissivism – one that emphasizes the significance of the relationship between people’s cognitive abilities and the epistemic standards that they employ – can respond to the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

How do people decide which claims should be considered mere beliefs and which count as knowledge? Although little is known about how people attribute knowledge to others, philosophical debate about the nature of knowledge may provide a starting point. Traditionally, a belief that is both true and justified was thought to constitute knowledge. However, philosophers now agree that this account is inadequate, due largely to a class of counterexamples (termed ‘‘Gettier cases’’) in which a person’s justified belief is true, but (...) only due to luck. We report four experiments examining the effect of truth, justification, and ‘‘Gettiering’’ on people’s knowledge attributions. These experiments show that: (1) people attribute knowledge to others only when their beliefs are both true and justified; (2) in contrast to contemporary philosophers, people also attribute knowledge to others in Gettier situations; and (3) knowledge is not attributed in one class of Gettier cases, but only because the agent’s belief is based on ‘‘apparent’’ evidence. These findings suggest that the lay concept of knowledge is roughly consistent with the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief, and also point to a major difference between the epistemic intuitions of laypeople and those of philosophers. (shrink)

This paper explains how the practice of ‘no platforming’ can be reconciled with a liberal politics. While opponents say that no platforming flouts ideals of open public discourse, and defenders see it as a justifiable harm-prevention measure, both sides mistakenly treat the debate like a run-of-the-mill free speech conflict, rather than an issue of academic freedom specifically. Content-based restrictions on speech in universities are ubiquitous. And this is no affront to a liberal conception of academic freedom, whose purpose isn’t just (...) to protect the speech of academics, but also to give them the prerogative to determine which views and speakers have sufficient disciplinary credentials to receive a hearing in academic contexts. No platforming should therefore be acceptable to liberals, in principle, in cases where it is used to support a university culture that maintains rigorous disciplinary standards, by denying attention and credibility to speakers without appropriate disciplinary credentials. (shrink)

In addiction, apparently causally significant phenomena occur at a huge number of levels; addiction is affected by biomedical, neurological, pharmacological, clinical, social, and politico-legal factors, among many others. In such a complex, multifaceted field of inquiry, it seems very unlikely that all the many layers of explanation will prove amenable to any simple or straightforward, reductive analysis; if we are to unify the many different sciences of addiction while respecting their causal autonomy, then, what we are likely to need is (...) an integrative framework. In this paper, we propose the theory of “Externalist” or “4E” – for extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive – cognition, which focuses on the empirical and conceptual centrality of the wider extra-neural environment to cognitive and mental processes, as a candidate for such a framework. We begin in Section 2 by outlining how such a perspective might apply to psychiatry more generally, before turning to some of the ways it can illuminate addiction in particular: Section 3 points to a way of dissolving the classic dichotomy between the “choice model” and “disease model” in the addiction literature; Section 4 shows how 4E concepts can clarify the interplay between the addict’s brain and her environment; and Section 5 considers how these insights help to explain the success of some recovery strategies, and may help to inform the development of new ones. (shrink)

The standard view of academic freedom and free speech is that they play complementary roles in universities. Academic freedom protects academic discourse, while other public discourse in universities is protected by free speech. Here I challenge this view, broadly, on the grounds that free speech in universities sometimes undermines academic practices. One defense of the standard view, in the face of this worry, says that campus free speech actually furthers the university’s academic aims. Another says that universities have a secondary (...) democratic function, which cannot be fulfilled without free speech on campus. I identify shortcomings in both types of arguments. (shrink)

We all want to find a way to live fulfilling lives together in spite of our differences. What beliefs must be held in common if we are to do so? What beliefs must be excluded? And what are the implications for religion’s place in society? Philip Kitcher recognises that our answers to these questions have important implications for education, and he devotes a chapter of 'The Main Enterprise of the World' to the role of religion in education and wider society. (...) This paper is a critical response to that chapter. I argue that Kitcher is right to recognise that religious beliefs cannot be confined to the private sphere and thus they are a matter of educational concern. However, I question whether Kitcher makes an adequate case for the distinctive harmfulness of the beliefs that he wishes to exclude. I also question Kitcher’s suggestion that students be taught that all religions are ‘on a par’, epistemically speaking. I finish by shining a light on Kitcher’s proposal that education should aim for students to develop specific beliefs about religion, clarifying the proposal and highlighting some implications for education in practice. (shrink)

Robert Talisse objects that Deweyan democrats, or those who endorse John Dewey’s philosophy of democracy, cannot consistently hold that (i) “democracy is a way of life” and (ii) democracy as a way of life is compatible with pluralism, at least as contemporary political theorists define that term. What Talisse refers to as his “pluralist objection” states that Deweyan democracy resembles a thick theory of democracy, that is, a theory establishing a set of prior restraints on the values that can count (...) as legitimate within a democratic community. In this paper, it is argued that his pluralist objection succumbs to some combination of four charges. The first two sections of the paper are devoted to presentations of Talisse’s two formulations of his pluralist objection, as they appear in his essay “Can Democracy be a Way of Life?” and his book A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy , respectively. The four charges against the pluralist objection receive attention in the second section. In the third section, Dewey’s pluralist procedure is articulated and illustrated using a recent Canadian public policy debate, followed by some concluding remarks on the acceptability of relying on contemporary political examples of Deweyan democracy in action. (shrink)

There are prima facie ethical reasons and prudential reasons for people to avoid or withdraw from social media platforms. But in response to pushes for people to quit social media, a number of authors have argued that there is something ethically questionable about quitting social media: that it involves — typically, if not necessarily — an objectionable expression of privilege on the part of the quitter. In this paper I contextualise privilege-based objections to quitting social media and explain the underlying (...) principles and assumptions that feed into these objections. I show how they misrepresent the kind of act people are performing in quitting, in part by downplaying its role in promoting reforms in communication systems and technologies. And I suggest that this misrepresentation is related to a more widespread, and ultimately insidious, tendency to think of recently-established technological states of affairs as permanent fixtures of our society. (shrink)

Through a close reading of the works of John Dewey and Aldo Leopold, I demonstrate that it is possible to reframe debates about the environment in language better suited to robust and inclusive public discourse. There are at least two ways of framing the instrumental relationship between human and environmental health: (i) in terms of control and (ii) in terms of restraint. On the one hand, means of control are associated with an anthropocentric view of environmental value: the environment has (...) worth only insofar as it provides resources for human benefit. On the other hand, means of restraint reflect greater concern for environmental health, sustainable living, non-anthropocentric (whether eco- or bio-centric) environmental value and lifestyles in harmony with nature, similar to the rhythmic relationship between human and environment captured in the writings of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. While John Dewey defends an instrumentalism of control, Aldo Leopold supports an opposing instrumentalism of restraint. At first blush, these two concepts appear to form a dualism, as incompatible dyads in a permanently bifurcated relationship. However, the matter is not quite so simple--or so I argue. Dewey and Leopold's concepts of environmental instrumentalism prove more compatible than this simple control/restraint dichotomy suggests. Nevertheless, it is helpful to frame environmental issues in terms of these two competing instrumentalism. To test the distinction's usefulness, I examine the wilderness debate, the global warming controversy and a more local matter, attempting to frame these environmental discourses in terms of an instrumentalism of control and an instrumentalism of restraint. (shrink)

The pandemic has been the most vivid agent of change that many of us have known. But it has not changed everything: plenty of the institutions, norms, and practices that sustain racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy have either weathered the storm of the crisis or been nourished by its effects. And yet enough has changed for us to see that the pandemic has profoundly recontextualised those structures and systems of violence, bringing us into a fresh negotiation with, for example, (...) the question of how we discuss and imagine freedom. Responding in part to this unexpected provocation, activist-scholars Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson forged a collaboration from the lockdown of 2020, corresponding by letter to create their forthcoming book, Rehearsals for Living, due to be published by Haymarket Books (US) and Knopf (Canada) in 2022. In this interview, we asked them to explain the epistolary form of the book and expand on the concept of “rehearsal”, before inviting them to reflect on a series of issues that animate our current crises: the politics of recognition; the notion of apocalypse; ways to disrupt linear temporalities; practises of reciprocity against proprietary logics; the gendered violence of state apparatuses; and worldbuilding as a method of resistance. In their expansive answers, Robyn and Leanne draw on their experiences as organisers and educators, commenting on anticolonial struggles, the Movement for Black Lives, and the rise of abolition discourse. Stressing the need to build a multiplicity of shared homespaces in the face of racial/colonial capitalism and organized abandonment, they challenge us to rethink the predicaments and possibilities of the present, enabling us to imagine futures liberated of extractivist, carceral governance – “planting more liberatory futures in the present”, as Robyn puts it. The task of sowing those seeds is a collective praxis of rewriting the narratives that constitute us, refusing to hear that nothing can change and insisting that everything must. (shrink)

Proponents of the view which I call ‘moral antitheodicy’ call for the theistic discourse of theodicy to be abandoned, because, they claim, all theodicies involve some form of moral impropriety. Three arguments in support of this view are examined: the argument from insensitivity, the argument from detachment, and the argument from harmful consequences. After discussing the merits of each argument individually, I attempt to show that they all must presuppose what they are intended to establish, namely, that the set of (...) premises advanced in any given theodicy will be untenable. I conclude by discussing what uses there might be for the moral critique of theodicy, if it cannot be used to ground a global rejection of theodical practice. (shrink)

In chapter 8 of The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal, Victor Kestenbaum disputes the naturalistic-instrumentalist reading of John Dewey's A Common Faith. Rather than accept the orthodox reading, he challenges mainstream Dewey scholars to read Dewey's theism from a phenomenological perspective. From this vantage, Kestenbaum contends that Dewey was wagering on transcendence, gambling on an ideal realm of supersensible entities, and hoping that the payoff would be universal acknowledgement of "a widening of the place of transcendence and faith (...) in every area of his philosophy." In a long-neglected correspondence between John Dewey and Albert Balz, Dewey responds to Balz's misreading of his logic as a correspondence theory of truth by stating that through the translation of all the ontological into the logical in the context of inquiry, he is "on the side of the angels." I argue that Dewey is accomplishing much the same thing in A Common Faith by naturalistically unifying the real and the ideal under the heading of the religious. In this respect, Dewey's naturalism and instrumentalism, rather than Kestenbaum's transcendentalism, is firmly "on the side of the angels.". (shrink)

If it were followed by “I’m a president,” Richard Nixon’s televised denial (“I am not a crook”) would be tantamount to Jimmy McGill’s self-portrayal in Better Call Saul. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, an honest president or an ethical lawyer rarely emerges. They’re like needles in a haystack. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to search for these rare artifacts and, in the process, ask, “Why do so many lawyers (and presidents) fall from grace, transforming into morally bad or corrupt actors?” (...) The ability to be a good or ethical person can deteriorate over time. In their personal and professional lives, people can make consistently poor choices in their capacity as moral agents. In turn, they cultivate flawed habits or what are often referred to as vices. Jimmy McGill’s trajectory is, without a doubt, a harrowing story of moral decline. In some ways, his transformation into Saul Goodman resembles a trite story about how a profession, lawyering, corrupts its practitioners. On a deeper level, McGill’s journey involves a fundamental change in how he habitually interacts with his environment, a change of motivation and disposition that is, almost entirely, a change for the worse. To know the content of Jimmy’s character is to be familiar with his story, a story of moral decline and ethical failure. (shrink)

In disagreements about trivial matters, it often seems appropriate for disputing parties to adopt a ‘middle ground’ view about the disputed matter. But in disputes about more substantial controversies (e.g. in ethics, religion, or politics) this sort of doxastic conduct can seem viciously acquiescent. How should we distinguish between the two kinds of cases, and thereby account for our divergent intuitions about how we ought to respond to them? One possibility is to say that ceding ground in a trivial dispute (...) is appropriate because the disputing parties are usually epistemic peers within the relevant domain, whereas in a more substantial disagreement the disputing parties rarely, if ever, qualify as epistemic peers, and so ‘sticking to one’s guns’ is usually the appropriate doxastic response. My aim in this paper is to explain why this way of drawing the desired distinction is ultimately problematic, even if it seems promising at first blush. (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel understanding of how Aristotle’s theoretical works complement each other in such a way as to form a genuine system, and this with the immediate (and ostensibly central) aim of addressing a longstanding question regarding Aristotle’s ‘first philosophy’—namely, is Aristotle’s first philosophy a contribution to theology, or to the science of being in general? Aristotle himself seems to suggest that it is in some ways both, but how this can be is a very difficult question. My (...) answer is in some respects a version of one that goes back at least to the middle ages—i.e., that first philosophy is concerned with the gods (and to that extent offers a theology) because the gods are causes and principles of beings precisely insofar as they are beings. The more original aspect of my position lies in my claim that the sort of tension found in the Metaphysics is likewise to be found in many of Aristotle’s physical works. Thus, for example, the De caelo is (I argue) concerned generally with natural beings (= beings susceptible of change), but its discussions are focused largely on the heavenly bodies and the Aristotelian elements insofar as they admit of change with respect to place. Here I claim that the particular objects of discussion are dealt with precisely because they are causes and principles of natural beings as such. Something similar goes, I claim, for the De generatione et corruptione, the general concern of which is a particular species of natural being—i.e., natural beings susceptible of generation and corruption. In this way, I argue, Aristotle successively deals in his theoretical works with those causes and principles of (say) a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a being, those causes and principles of a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a natural being, those causes and principles of a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a perishable natural being, and so on for the lower genera under which the species horse is subsumed. (shrink)

The verb to legitimate is often used in political discourse in a way that is prima facie perplexing. To wit, it is often said that an actor legitimates a practice which is officially prohibited in the relevant context – for example, that a worker telling sexist jokes legitimates sex discrimination in the workplace. In order to clarify the meaning of statements like this, and show how they can sometimes be true and informative, we need an explanation of how something that (...) is officially illegitimate can have a kind of ersatz legitimacy conferred on it, and how this can occur even when the actor ‘doing the legitimating’ lacks formal authority. I examine one putative explanation centred around the phenomenon of normalization, and I highlight some advantages that this account has in comparison to an alternative explanation, one that makes reference to the phenomenon of licensed authority. (shrink)

I argue that the prime matter that Leibniz posits in every created monad is understood by him to be a mere defect or negation, and not something real and positive. Further, I argue that Leibniz’s talk of prime matter in every created monad is inspired by the thirteenth-century doctrine of spiritual matter, but that such talk is simply one way in which Leibniz frames a point that he frequently makes elsewhere—namely, that each creaturely essence incorporates a limitation that is the (...) ultimate source of an original imperfection that affects the creature from the first moment of its existence. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility that John Dewey’s silence on the matter of which democratic means are needed to achieve democratic ends, while confusing, makes greater sense if we appreciate the notion of political technology from an anthropological perspective. Michael Eldridge relates the exchange between John Herman Randall, Jr., and Dewey in which Dewey concedes “that I have done little or nothing in this direction [of outlining what constitutes adequate political technology, but that] does not detract from my recognition that (...) in the concrete the invention of such a technology is the heart of the problem of intelligent action in political matters.” Dewey’s concession could be interpreted as an admission that he was unqualified to identify political machinery or institutions suitable for realizing his vision of democracy as a way of life. Not being able to specify adequate means to achieve lofty democratic ends is not problematic, though, if we appreciate the roots of Dewey’s work (especially Human Nature and Conduct) in the anthropological writings of Immanuel Kant and Franz Boas. For then experience reflects a myriad of social and cultural conditions such that specifying explicit means to structure that experience risks stymieing the organic development of political practice. When pressured to operationalize political technology, he chose the appropriately open-ended and, at times, frustratingly vague means of education and growth. In short, Dewey did not want his ambitious democratic vision to outstrip the possibilities of practice, so he left the task of specifying exact political technology (or which democratic means are best suited to achieve democratic ends) unfinished. (shrink)

This paper examines two recent contributions to the hate speech literature – by Steven Heyman and Jeremy Waldron – which seek a justification for the legal restriction of hate speech in an account of the way that hate speech infringes against people’s dignity. These analyses look beyond the first-order hurts and disadvantages suffered by the immediate targets of hate speech, and consider the prospect of hate speech sustaining complex social structures whose wide-scale operations lower the social status of members of (...) targeted groups. In Heyman’s and Waldron’s accounts we find plausible insights into the nature of identity-based social hierarchies, and the harms that redound to subordinated people under the operations of such hierarchies. I argue, however, that both analyses are unsuccessful as justifications for the restriction of hate speech, because they do not ultimately provide reason to think that hate speech is responsible for creating or sustaining identity-based social hierarchies. (shrink)

Chilling Effects occur when the risks surrounding a speech restriction inadvertently deter speech that lies outside the restriction’s official scope. Contrary to the standard interpretation of this phenomenon I show how speech deterrence for individuals can sometimes, instead of suppressing discourse at the group level, intensify it – with results that are still unwelcome, but crucially unlike a ‘chill’. Inadvertent deterrence of speech may, counterintuitively, create a Heating Effect. This proposal gives us a promising explanation of the intensity of public (...) debate on topics for which there is, simultaneously, evidence of people self-censoring, for fear of breaching speech restrictions. It also helps to pinpoint two problems with existing theoretical analyses of the Chilling Effect: (i) in how they construe the relation between individual- and group-level discursive phenomena; and (ii) how they characterize the distinctively wrongful nature of inadvertent speech deterrence. (shrink)

In recent work Mary Kate McGowan presents an account of oppressive speech inspired by David Lewis's analysis of conversational kinematics. Speech can effect identity-based oppression, she argues, by altering 'the conversational score', which is to say, roughly, that it can introduce presuppositions and expectations into a conversation, and thus determine what sort of subsequent conversational 'moves' are apt, correct, felicitous, etc., in a manner that oppresses members of a certain group (e.g. because the suppositions and expectations derogate or demean members (...) of that group). In keeping with the Lewisian picture, McGowan stresses the asymmetric pliability of conversational scores. She argues that it is easier to introduce (for example) sexist presuppositions and expectations into a conversation than it is to remove them. Responding to a sexist remark, she thus suggests, is like trying to "unring a bell". I begin by situating McGowan's work in the wider literature on speech and social hierarchy, and explaining how her account of oppressive speech improves upon the work of others in its explication of the relationship between individuals' verbal conduct and structurally oppressive social arrangements. I then propose an explanation and supportive elaboration of McGowan's claims about the asymmetric pliability of conversations involving identity-oppressive speech. Rather than regarding such asymmetry as a sui generis phenomenon, I show how we can understand it as a consequence of a more general asymmetry between making things salient and un-salient in speech, and I show how this asymmetry also operates in various cases that interested Lewis. (shrink)

We should drop the marketplace of ideas as our go-to metaphor in free speech discourse and take up a new metaphor of the connected city. Cities are more liveable when they have an integrated mix of transport options providing their occupants with a variety of locomotive affordances. Similarly, societies are more liveable when they have a mix of communication platforms that provide a variety of communicative affordances. Whereas the marketplace metaphor invites us to worry primarily about authoritarian control over the (...) content that circulates through our communication networks, the connected-city metaphor invites us to worry, more so, about the homogenization of the tools and formats through which we communicate. I argue that the latter worry demands greater attention under emerging technological conditions. (shrink)

This paper considers the phenomenon of lying and the implications it has for those subjects who are capable of lying. It is argued that lying is not just intentional untruthfulness, but is intentional untruthfulness plus an insincere invocation of trust. Understood in this way, lying demands of liars a sophistication in relation to themselves, to language, and to those to whom they lie which exceeds the demands on mere truth-tellers.

As the value of a university degree plummets, the popularity of digital microcredentials has soared. Similar to recent calls for the early adoption of Blockchain technology, the so-called ‘microcredentialing craze’ could be no more than a fad, marketing hype or another case of ‘learning innovation theater’. Alternatively, the introduction of these compact skills- and competency-based online certificate programs might augur the arrival of a legitimate successor to the four-year university diploma. The thesis of this article is that the craze for (...) microcredentialing reflects (1) administrative urgency to unbundle higher education curricula and degree programs for greater efficiency and profitability and (2) a renascent movement among industry and higher education leaders to reorient the university curriculum towards vocational training. (shrink)

Did the pragmatic turn encompass the linguistic turn in the history of philosophy? Or was the linguistic turn a turn away from pragmatism? Some commentators identify the so-called “eclipse” of pragmatism by analytic philosophy, especially during the Cold War era, as a turn away from pragmatist thinking. However, the historical evidence suggests that this narrative is little more than a myth. Pragmatism persisted, transforming into a more analytic variety under the influence of Quine and Putnam and, more recently, a continental (...) version in the hands of Richard Rorty and Cornel West. In this paper, I argue that proof of the linguistic turn’s presence as a moment in a broader pragmatic turn in philosophy can be garnered from close examination of a single article, W. V. O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” and a single issue: whether the analytic-synthetic distinction is philosophically defensible. (shrink)

According to the dogmatism puzzle, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then she’s entitled to be dogmatic about p, and so disregard any evidence against p, for she knows that (or is in a position to know that) that evidence is misleading. But this seems clearly problematically dogmatic. The standard solution to the dogmatism puzzle involves appealing to the view that acquiring new evidence (even misleading evidence) can undermine one’s knowledge that p. That’s why one (...) can’t rightly disregard any future evidence against p. This solution to the dogmatism puzzle has come to be called ‘the defeat solution’. Maria Lasonen-Aarnio has recently argued, however, that the defeat solution leaves unsolved a partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle, where some subject acquires weak misleading evidence against p, but, since it is weak, it doesn’t rob her of knowledge that p. Lasonen-Aarnio argues that solving this partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle requires those who endorse the defeasibility of knowledge to either go dogmatist or reject an extremely plausible principle that she calls ‘Entitlement’ (roughly, for any S and any e, if S knows that evidence e is misleading, then S can rightly disregard e). In this paper, however, I argue that defeasibilists face no such challenge from any version of the dogmatism puzzle, since the dogmatism puzzle, in both its original and partial defeat form, rests on an assumption that we have very good reason to think is mistaken. Specifically, the assumption that, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then S knows (or is in a position to know) that any evidence against p is misleading. I further argue that rejecting this assumption also yields a neat solution to the dogmatism puzzle involving intention originally proposed by Saul Kripke and recently adapted by R.E. Fraser. (shrink)

The notion of the “deep state” or a “state within a state” is creepy, to say the least. It indicates the existence of a shadowy group of unelected bureaucrats deeply embedded in the military-intelligence establishment secretly manipulating government policy. International relations scholars and public administration experts associate deep states with authoritarian regimes, such as Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and pre-civil-war Syria. However, as we’re finding out, the U.S. has its own deep state. While some media outlets portray deep state talk as (...) tantamount to conspiracy theory, the deep state is quite real. (shrink)

A short story exploring cloning and the Teletransporter Thought Experiment. Rather than abstract consideration, the focus is on the first-personal experience.

According to Margaret Wilson, Leibniz is inconsistent when it comes to the question of whether one can have distinct ideas of sensible qualities, and this because he sometimes conceives of sensible qualities as sensations and sometimes conceives of them as complexes of primary qualities. When he conceives of them as sensations, he denies that we can have distinct ideas of sensible qualities; when he conceives of them as complexes of primary qualities, he asserts that we can. In this paper I (...) argue that Wilson is wrong to think that Leibnizian ideas admit of various degrees of confusion or distinctness. I also argue that although Wilson's problem admits of being reformulated in a manner consistent with a correct understanding of Leibnizian perceptions and ideas, this reformulated version of the problem admits to a satisfactory interpretive solution. (shrink)

Any treatment of the relationship between pragmatism and politics would be incomplete without considering the multiple areas in which pragmatist thought and political studies intersect. Extensive scholarly work on pragmatism and politics can be found in the broad literature on political science, democratic theory, global political theory, public administration, and public policy. To a lesser extent, scholarship employing a pragmatist approach can be found in other subfields of political studies, including American politics and international relations. Unfortunately, the few works in (...) these subfi elds tend to appeal to a generic form of pragmatism (e.g., pragmatism as brute instrumentalism or pragmatism as vicious opportunism), not the robust version associated with classic and contemporary philosophical pragmatism.1 Most works on classic pragmatism and politics draw heavily on John Dewey’s political writings. Pragmatism’s two other founders remained relatively silent on the subject; in Robert Talisse’s words, “neither [Charles Sanders] Peirce nor [William] James wrote systematically about politics.” Neo-pragmatist treatments of politics can be found in the works of the late Richard Rorty, Cornell West, and Richard Posner. (shrink)

Joel Feinberg’s Offense to Others is the most comprehensive contemporary work on the significance of offense in a liberal legal system. Feinberg argues that being offended can impair a person’s liberty, much like a nuisance, and that it is therefore legitimate in principle to regulate conduct because of its offensiveness. In this article, I discuss some overlooked considerations that give us reason to resist Feinberg’s conclusion, even while granting this premise. My key claim is that the regulation of offense can (...) inadvertently increase the incidence of offense, by nurturing offense-taking sensibilities. In the course of defending this claim and spelling out its implications, I explain why concerns about the inadvertent nurturing of offense are now more pressing, given the identity–political character of contemporary offense-based social conflicts, and I discuss why a reluctance to legally regulate offensive conduct need not be insensitive to the identity–political issues that animate those conflicts. (shrink)

Heralded as the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison was, besides one of the most influential architects of the U.S. Constitution, a man of letters, a politician, a scientist and a diplomat who left an enduring legacy for American philosophical thought. As a tireless advocate for the ratification of the Constitution, Madison advanced his most groundbreaking ideas in his jointly authoring The Federalist Papers with John Jay and Andrew Hamilton. Indeed, two of his most enduring ideas—the large republic thesis and (...) the argument for government separation-of-powers/checks-and-balances—are contained in there. In his life’s work, Madison fused together the three dominant philosophies in post-revolutionary, antebellum America: Lockean liberalism, classical republicanism and Christian Protestantism. (shrink)

During the 1960s and 1970s, institutionalists and behavioralists in the discipline of political science argued over the legitimacy of the institutional approach to political inquiry. In the discipline of philosophy, a similar debate concerning institutions has never taken place. Yet, a growing number of philosophers are now working out the institutional implications of political ideas in what has become known as “non-ideal theory.” My thesis is two-fold: (1) pragmatism and institutionalism are compatible and (2) non-ideal theorists, following the example of (...) pragmatists, can avoid a similar debate as took place between institutionalists and behavioralists by divulging their assumptions about institutions. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is examine the recent literature on the intersection between philosophical pragmatism and International Relations (IR), including IR theory and IR research methodology. One of the obstacles to motivating pragmatist IR theories and research methodologies, I contend, is the difficulty of defining pragmatism, particularly whether there is a need for a more generic definition of pragmatism or one narrowly tailored to the goals of IR theorists and researchers.

Most contemporary deliberative democrats contend that deliberation is the group activity that transforms individual preferences and behavior into mutual understanding, agreement and collective action. A critical mass of these deliberative theorists also claims that John Dewey’s writings contain a nascent theory of deliberative democracy. Unfortunately, very few of them have noted the similarities between Dewey and Robert Goodin’s theories of deliberation, as well as the surprising contrast between their modeling of deliberation as a mixed monological-dialogical process and the prevalent view (...) expressed in the deliberative democracy literature, viz., that deliberation is predominantly a dialogical process. Both Dewey and Goodin have advanced theories of deliberation which emphasize the value of internal, monological or individual deliberative procedures, though not to the exclusion of external, dialogical and group deliberation. In this paper I argue that deliberative theorists bent on appropriating Dewey’s theory of moral deliberation for political purposes should first consider Goodin’s account of ‘deliberation within’ as a satisfactory if not superior proxy, an account of deliberation which has the identical virtues of Dewey’s theory— imaginative rehearsal, weighing of alternatives and role-taking—with the addition of one more, namely, that it operates specifically within the domain of the political. (shrink)

Few debates in environmental philosophy have been more heated than the one over the nature of wilderness. And yet, when one surveys the present scene, one finds that a variety of different conceptions of wilderness are still quite popular – some more so in certain professions than others. In this paper, I look at three popular conceptions of wilderness with an eye toward sussing out the good and the bad them. I look at what I call (1) the folk view (...) of wilderness, (2) Leopold’s conception of wilderness, and (3) the legal conception of wilderness (as found in the Wilderness Act of 1964). In the final part of the paper, I sketch out a sort of spectrum account of wilderness, one that I argue allows us to capture more cases of wilderness and might serve as a useful tool in future conservation efforts. (shrink)

The 13th-15th centuries were witness to lively and broad-ranging debates about the nature of persons. In this paper, I look at how the uses of ‘person’ in logical/grammatical, legal/political, and theological contexts overlap in the works of 13th-15th century contemplatives in the Latin West, such as Hadewijch, Meister Eckhart, and Catherine of Siena. After explicating the key concepts of individuality, dignity, and rationality, I show how these ideas combine with the contemplative use of first- and second-person perspectives, personification, and introspection (...) to yield a concept of 'person' that both prefigures Locke's classic 17th century definition and deeply influences the development of personalism. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the ethical and conceptual relationship between free speech and press freedom. Many authors have argued that, despite there being some common ground between them, these two liberties should be treated as properly distinct, both theoretically and practically. The core of the argument, for this “unbundling” approach, is that conflating free speech and press freedom makes it too easy for reasonable democratic regulations on press freedom to be portrayed, by their opponents, as part of a (...) programme of illiberal censorship. While we acknowledge the important grain of truth in that argument, we try to show how the alternative, “unbundling” approach can also be used to undermine or mischaracterise democratically justifiable opposition to media regulations in despotic regimes. In light of the problems on both sides, we defend a contextually-variable account of the relation between these two liberties. (shrink)

Environmental philosophy plays an important role, directly and indirectly, in many parts of society, including land and wildlife management (Leopold, 1949; Minteer, 2015), political activism (Abbey, 1968; Malm, 2020),and technological research and development (Baum & Owe, 2022; Donhauser et al., 2021). Environmental philosophy uncovers the ethical relationships existing between humans and the living and non-living world. It reveals the nuances of our scientific ecological concepts. And it tries to tell us how we might act – individually or collectively – to (...) better achieve our environmental goals. The aim of this special issue is to explore the limits and ever-expanding outer edges of this increasingly important area of philosophical thought. (shrink)

John Dewey's political and educational ideas can offer some guidance in arbitrating the online literacy debate.

It's well known that Leibniz characterizes bodies in two apparently incompatible ways. On the one hand, he asserts that a body is a real or well-founded phenomenon; on the other, he claims that a body is an aggregate of substances that possesses the reality of these same substances. In this essay I aim to defend an explanation of the relation that exists, according to Leibniz, between these two conceptions of body, an explanation that shows them to be compatible and, indeed, (...) complementary. In the first part of this paper I aim above all to show that Robert Adams and Donald Rutherford are wrong to think that these two conceptions are to be reconciled by recognizing that for Leibniz they apply to one and the same thing. (shrink)

Should we implement epistemically paternalistic measures outside of the narrow range of cases, like legal trials, in which their benefits and justifiability seem clear-cut? In this chapter I draw on theories of student-led pedagogy, and Jane Friedman’s work on norms of inquiry, to argue against this prospect. The key contention in the chapter is that facts about an inquirer’s interests and temperament have a bearing on whether it is better for her to, at any given moment, pursue epistemic goods via (...) outward-facing evidence-acquisition, or in a more introspective, ratiocinative fashion. This makes problems for any non-consultative approach to assisting people in inquiry, and speaks in favor of approaches which, as with student-led pedagogy, aim to ‘tap into’ the inquirer’s interests and temperament in helping them to learn. (shrink)

Starting with the interest and effort of the children, the whole community has become tremendously interested in starting gardens, using every bit of available ground. The district is a poor one and, besides transforming the yards, the gardens have been a real economic help to the people....we understand different episodes in the history of organized garden projects as distinct discursive formations that have been constituted through material practice and myriad discourses or tropes during each era by advocates, organizers, observers, participants, (...) and theoreticians.What is the normative significance of school gardening for environmental activism today? While philosophical treatments generally highlight .. (shrink)

In several lectures, interviews and essays from the early 1980s, Michel Foucault startlingly argues that he is engaged in a kind of critical work that is similar to that of Immanuel Kant. Given Foucault's criticisms of Kantian and Enlightenment emphases on universal truths and values, his declaration that his work is Kantian seems paradoxical. I agree with some commentators who argue that this is a way for Foucault to publicly acknowledge to his critics that he is not, as some of (...) them charge, attempting a total critique of Enlightenment beliefs and values, but is instead attempting to transform them from within. I argue further that Foucault's self-professed Kantianism can also productively be read as a means of encouraging change in his intellectual audience, a call to courage to take up the thread of Enlightenment thought that Foucault finds in Kant's essay, `What is Enlightenment?': that of directing one's philosophical efforts towards questioning and transforming one's own present in its historical specificity, for the sake of promoting the values of freedom and autonomy therein. Though much of Kant's philosophical work is focused on that which lies outside of history, Foucault locates in some of it a concern for what is happening here and now that, I argue, he encourages his audience to take up for themselves through tracing his own intellectual lineage to Kant. In so doing, he encourages contemporary philosophers to consider the value and effects of their work on the present social and political contexts in which they live. (shrink)

The Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) is a suite of interoperable ontology modules that aims to provide coverage of all aspects of the infectious disease domain, including biomedical research, clinical care, and public health. IDO Core is designed to be a disease and pathogen neutral ontology, covering just those types of entities and relations that are relevant to infectious diseases generally. IDO Core is then extended by a collection of ontology modules focusing on specific diseases and pathogens. In this paper we (...) present applications of IDO Core within various areas of infectious disease research, together with an overview of all IDO extension ontologies and the methodology on the basis of which they are built. We also survey recent developments involving IDO, including the creation of IDO Virus; the Coronaviruses Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO); and an extension of CIDO focused on COVID-19 (IDO-CovID-19).We also discuss how these ontologies might assist in information-driven efforts to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to accelerate data discovery in the early stages of future pandemics, and to promote reproducibility of infectious disease research. (shrink)