A central debate in philosophy and neuroscience pertains to whether PFC activity plays an essential role in the neural basis of consciousness. Neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have revealed that the contents of conscious perceptual experience can be successfully decoded from PFC activity, but these findings might be confounded by post- perceptual cognitive processes, such as thinking, reasoning, and decision-making, that are not necessary for con- sciousness. To clarify the involvement of the PFC in consciousness, we present a synthesis of research (...) that has used intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) for the causal modulation of neural activity in the human PFC. This research provides compelling evidence that iES of only certain prefrontal regions (i.e., orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingu- late cortex) reliably perturbs conscious experience. Conversely, stimulation of anterolateral prefrontal sites, often con- sidered crucial in higher-order and global workspace theories of consciousness, seldom elicits any reportable alterations in consciousness. Furthermore, the wide variety of iES-elicited effects in the PFC (e.g., emotions, thoughts, and olfactory and visual hallucinations) exhibits no clear relation to the immediate environment. Therefore, there is no evidence for the kinds of alterations in ongoing perceptual experience that would be predicted by higher-order or global workspace theories. Nevertheless, effects in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices suggest a specific role for these PFC subregions in supporting emotional aspects of conscious experience. Overall, this evidence presents a challenge for higher-order and global workspace theories, which commonly point to the PFC as the basis for con- scious perception based on correlative and possibly confounded information. (shrink)

Propositional temporalism is the view that there are temporary propositions: propositions that are true, but not always true. Factual futurism is the view that there are futurist facts: facts that obtain, but that will at some point not obtain. Most A-theoretic views in the philosophy of time are committed both to propositional temporalism and to factual futurism. Mark Richard, Jeffrey King and others have argued that temporary propositions are not fit to be the contents of propositional attitudes, or to be (...) the semantic values of natural language utterances. But these discussions have overlooked another role that the A-theorist’s posits struggle to play: the role of facts in explaining other facts. Focusing on the case of action explanation by reasons, this paper presents the challenge that explanation poses for factual futurism. It then brings that challenge to bear against propositional temporalism and the A-theory more generally. My argument saddles the factual futurist with surprising commitments concerning reasons, facts and explanation. The futurist might accept those commitments and pay the price. The alternative – which I prefer – is to reject factual futurism, and with it the A-theory. (shrink)

The relation between Hume’s constructive and skeptical aims has been a central concern for Hume interpreters. Hume’s two definitions of ‘cause’ in the Treatise and first Enquiry apparently represent an important constructive achievement, but this paper argues that the definitions must be understood in terms of Hume’s skepticism. The puzzle I address is simply that Hume gives two definitions rather than one. I use Don Garrett’s interpretation as a foil to develop my alternative skeptical interpretation. Garrett claims the definitions exhibit (...) a general susceptibility to two kinds of definition that all “sense-based concepts” share. Against Garrett, I argue that the definitions express an imperfection Hume finds only in our concept of causation. That imperfection is absent from other sense-based concepts, and prompts skeptical sentiments in Hume’s conclusion to the Treatise’s Book 1. I close by comparing my interpretation with those of Helen Beebee, Stephen Buckle, Galen Strawson and Paul Russell. (shrink)

In apparent motion experiments, participants are presented with what is in fact a succession of two brief stationary stimuli at two different locations, but they report an impression of movement. Philosophers have recently debated whether apparent motion provides evidence in favour of a particular account of the nature of temporal experience. I argue that the existing discussion in this area is premised on a mistaken view of the phenomenology of apparent motion and, as a result, the space of possible philosophical (...) positions has not yet been fully explored. In particular, I argue that the existence of apparent motion is compatible with an account of the nature of temporal experience that involves a version of direct realism. In doing so, I also argue against two other claims often made about apparent motion, viz. that apparent motion is the psychological phenomenon that underlies motion experience in the cinema, and that apparent motion is subjectively indistinguishable from real motion. (shrink)

The paper argues that an account of understanding should take the form of a Carnapian explication and acknowledge that understanding comes in degrees. An explication of objectual understanding is defended, which helps to make sense of the cognitive achievements and goals of science. The explication combines a necessary condition with three evaluative dimensions: An epistemic agent understands a subject matter by means of a theory only if the agent commits herself sufficiently to the theory of the subject matter, and to (...) the degree that the agent grasps the theory (i.e., is able to make use of it), the theory answers to the facts and the agent’s commitment to the theory is justified. The threshold for outright attributions of understanding is determined contextually. The explication has descriptive as well as normative facets and allows for the possibility of understanding by means of non-explanatory (e.g., purely classificatory) theories. (shrink)

Recognizing that truth is socially constructed or that knowledge and power are related is hardly a novelty in the social sciences. In the twenty-first century, however, there appears to be a renewed concern regarding people’s relationship with the truth and the propensity for certain actors to undermine it. Organizations are highly implicated in this, given their central roles in knowledge management and production and their attempts to learn, although the entanglement of these epistemological issues with business ethics has not been (...) engaged as explicitly as it might be. Drawing on work from a virtue epistemology perspective, this paper outlines the idea of a set of epistemic vices permeating organizations, along with examples of unethical epistemic conduct by organizational actors. While existing organizational research has examined various epistemic virtues that make people and organizations effective and responsible epistemic agents, much less is known about the epistemic vices that make them ineffective and irresponsible ones. Accordingly, this paper introduces vice epistemology, a nascent but growing subfield of virtue epistemology which, to the best of our knowledge, has yet to be explicitly developed in terms of business ethics. The paper concludes by outlining a business ethics research agenda on epistemic vice, with implications for responding to epistemic vices and their illegitimacy in practice. (shrink)

Since 2023, the UK government's response to the “migrant crisis” has revolved around two controversial flagship policies: the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda, and the detention of migrants aboard a giant barge. In this short article, I examine the colonial and gendered dimensions of the two policies, finding them to be examples of the coloniality of gender. What this indicates, I suggest, is that the purpose of these policies is not merely to deter potential migrants—particularly LGBTQIA+ migrants—but also to (...) create a political narrative that allows the Conservative Party to garner right-wing votes by participating in high-profile culture wars; namely, the debate over transgender rights and the debate over how the UK should reckon with its imperial past. (shrink)

Interactions between an intelligent software agent and a human user are ubiquitous in everyday situations such as access to information, entertainment, and purchases. In such interactions, the ISA mediates the user’s access to the content, or controls some other aspect of the user experience, and is not designed to be neutral about outcomes of user choices. Like human users, ISAs are driven by goals, make autonomous decisions, and can learn from experience. Using ideas from bounded rationality, we frame these interactions (...) as instances of an ISA whose reward depends on actions performed by the user. Such agents benefit by steering the user’s behaviour towards outcomes that maximise the ISA’s utility, which may or may not be aligned with that of the user. Video games, news recommendation aggregation engines, and fitness trackers can all be instances of this general case. Our analysis facilitates distinguishing various subcases of interaction, as well as second-order effects that might include the possibility for adaptive interfaces to induce behavioural addiction, and/or change in user belief. We present these types of interaction within a conceptual framework, and review current examples of persuasive technologies and the issues that arise from their use. We argue that the nature of the feedback commonly used by learning agents to update their models and subsequent decisions could steer the behaviour of human users away from what benefits them, and in a direction that can undermine autonomy and cause further disparity between actions and goals as exemplified by addictive and compulsive behaviour. We discuss some of the ethical, social and legal implications of this technology and argue that it can sometimes exploit and reinforce weaknesses in human beings. (shrink)

This chapter sets the scene for the subsequent philosophical discussions by surveying a number of biological interventions that have been used, or might in the future be used, for the purposes of crime prevention. These interventions are pharmaceutical interventions intended to suppress libido, treat substance abuse or attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or modulate serotonin activity; nutritional interventions; and electrical and magnetic brain stimulation. Where applicable, we briefly comment on the historical use of these interventions, and in each case we discuss (...) the evidence that they are effective, or might become so with further refinement. The chapter concludes with a comment on some potentially significant differences between the varieties of intervention that we canvass. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biology represents a paradigm shift in the understanding of the ontogenesis and evolutionary progression of the denizens of the natural world. Given the empirical successes of the evo-devo framework, and its now widespread acceptance, a timely and important task for the philosophy of biology is to critically discern the ontological commitments of that framework and assess whether and to what extent our current metaphysical models are able to accommodate them. In this paper, I argue that one particular model (...) is a natural fit: an ontology of dispositional properties coherently and adequately captures the crucial casual-cum-explanatory role that the fundamental elements of evo-devo play within that framework. (shrink)

The intuitive, folk concept of hypocrisy is not a unified moral category. While many theorists hold that all cases of hypocrisy involve some form of deception, I argue that this is not the case. Instead, I argue for a disjunctive account of hypocrisy whereby all cases of “hypocrisy” involve either the deceiving of others about the sincerity of an agent's beliefs or the lack of will to carry through with the demands of an agent's sincere beliefs. Thus, all cases of (...) hypocrisy can be described either as cases of deception or as cases of akrasia. If this analysis correct, then I suggest further that the moral status of all instances of hypocrisy must be reduced either to the moral blameworthiness of deception or to the moral blameworthiness of akrasia. There can be no unified account of the moral wrongness of “hypocrisy” that holds across the disjunction. (shrink)

Although they are continually compositionally reconstituted and reconfigured, organisms nonetheless persist as ontologically unified beings over time – but in virtue of what? A common answer is: in virtue of their continued possession of the capacity for morphological invariance which persists through, and in spite of, their mereological alteration. While we acknowledge that organisms‟ capacity for the “stability of form” – homeostasis - is an important aspect of their diachronic unity, we argue that this capacity is derived from, and grounded (...) in a more primitive one – namely, the homeodynamic capacity for the “specified variation of form”. In introducing a novel type of causal power – a „structural power‟ – we claim that it is the persistence of their dynamic potential to produce a specified series of structurally adaptive morphologies which grounds organisms‟ privileged status as metaphysically “one over many” over time. (shrink)

Après avoir présenté et expliqué la notion de cognition distribuée, je situerai l'analyse qu'elle permet au sein des sciences cognitives et de la sociologie. Mes buts sont de montrer en quoi la théorie de la cognition distribuée contribue aux théories de la psychologie et de la sociologie, et réciproquement comment les théories de la sociologie et de la psychologie peuvent être recrutées pour expliquer l'existence de systèmes de cognition distribuée. La troisième section de ce chapitre est centrée sur les relations (...) entre psychologie et théorie de la cognition distribuée. Elle montre que la sociologie de la cognition distribuée béné à être une sociologie cognitive de la cognition distribuée. La quatrième partie continue cet argument, mais en soulignant les phénomènes typiquement sociologique qui interviennent dans la constitution et l'évolution des systèmes de cognition distribuèe. (shrink)

Political epistemology is the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology. This paper develops a political 'hinge' epistemology. Political hinge epistemology draws on the idea that all belief systems have fundamental presuppositions which play a role in the determination of reasons for belief and other attitudes. It uses this core idea to understand and tackle political epistemological challenges, like political disagreement, polarization, political testimony, political belief, ideology, and biases, among other possibilities. I respond to two challenges facing the development of a (...) political hinge epistemology. The first is about nature and demarcation of political hinges, while the second is about rational deliberation over political hinges. I then use political hinge epistemology to analyze ideology, dealing with the challenge of how an agent's ideology 'masks' or distorts their understanding of social reality, along with the challenge of how ideology critique can change the beliefs of agents who adhere to dominant ideologies, if agents only have their own or the competing ideology to rely on (see Haslanger 2017). I then explore how political hinge epistemology might be extended to further our understanding of political belief polarization. (shrink)

Dispositional properties are often referred to as ‘causal powers’, but what does dispositional causation amount to? Any viable theory must account for two fundamental aspects of the metaphysics of causation – the causal complexity and context sensitivity of causal interactions. The theory of mutual manifestations attempts to do so by locating the complexity and context sensitivity within the nature of dispositions themselves. But is this theory an acceptable first step towards a viable theory of dispositional causation? This paper argues that (...) the reconceptualization that the theory entails comes at too high a price, and is an unnecessary step in the wrong direction: these two central aspects concerning the metaphysics of causation can and should be accounted for in a dispositional account of causation without it. (shrink)

Although contemporary metaphysics has recently undergone a neo-Aristotelian revival wherein dispositions, or capacities are now commonplace in empirically grounded ontologies, being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, a central Aristotelian concept has yet to be given serious attention – the doctrine of hylomorphism. The reason for this is clear: while the Aristotelian ontological distinction between actuality and potentiality has proven to be a fruitful conceptual framework with which to model the operation of the natural world, the distinction between (...) form and matter has yet to similarly earn its keep. In this chapter, I offer a first step toward showing that the hylomorphic framework is up to that task. To do so, I return to the birthplace of that doctrine - the biological realm. Utilising recent advances in developmental biology, I argue that the hylomorphic framework is an empirically adequate and conceptually rich explanatory schema with which to model the nature of organisms. (shrink)

Common mental health disorders are rising globally, creating a strain on public healthcare systems. This has led to a renewed interest in the role that digital technologies may have for improving mental health outcomes. One result of this interest is the development and use of artificial intelligence for assessing, diagnosing, and treating mental health issues, which we refer to as ‘digital psychiatry’. This article focuses on the increasing use of digital psychiatry outside of clinical settings, in the following sectors: education, (...) employment, financial services, social media, and the digital well-being industry. We analyse the ethical risks of deploying digital psychiatry in these sectors, emphasising key problems and opportunities for public health, and offer recommendations for protecting and promoting public health and well-being in information societies. (shrink)

This paper examines the debate between permissive and impermissive forms of Bayesianism. It briefly discusses some considerations that might be offered by both sides of the debate, and then replies to some new arguments in favor of impermissivism offered by Roger White. First, it argues that White’s (Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–186, 2010) defense of Indifference Principles is unsuccessful. Second, it contends that White’s (Philos Perspect 19:445–459, 2005) arguments against permissive views do not (...) succeed. (shrink)

In his paper, Jakob Hohwy outlines a theory of the brain as an organ for prediction-error minimization, which he claims has the potential to profoundly alter our understanding of mind and cognition. One manner in which our understanding of the mind is altered, according to PEM, stems from the neurocentric conception of the mind that falls out of the framework, which portrays the mind as “inferentially-secluded” from its environment. This in turn leads Hohwy to reject certain theses of embodied cognition. (...) Focusing on this aspect of Hohwy’s argument, we first outline the key components of the PEM framework such as the “evidentiary boundary,” before looking at why this leads Hohwy to reject certain theses of embodied cognition. We will argue that although Hohwy may be correct to reject specific theses of embodied cognition, others are in fact implied by the PEM framework and may contribute to its development. We present the metaphor of the “body as a laboratory” in order to highlight wha... (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the edited collection of the same name, which includes chapters that explore digital well-being from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, psychology, economics, health care, and education. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a short primer on the different disciplinary approaches to the study of well-being. To supplement this primer, we also invited key experts from several disciplines—philosophy, psychology, public policy, and health care—to share their thoughts on what they (...) believe are the most important open questions and ethical issues for the multi-disciplinary study of digital well-being. We also introduce and discuss several themes that we believe will be fundamental to the ongoing study of digital well-being: digital gratitude, automated interventions, and sustainable co-well-being. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the edited collection of the same name, which includes chapters that explore digital well-being from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, psychology, economics, health care, and education. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a short primer on the different disciplinary approaches to the study of well-being. To supplement this primer, we also invited key experts from several disciplines—philosophy, psychology, public policy, and health care—to share their thoughts on what they (...) believe are the most important open questions and ethical issues for the multi-disciplinary study of digital well-being. We also introduce and discuss several themes that we believe will be fundamental to the ongoing study of digital well-being: digital gratitude, automated interventions, and sustainable co-well-being. (shrink)

According to dispositionalism, de re modality is grounded in the intrinsic natures of dispositional properties. Those properties are able to serve as the ground of de re modal truths, it is said, because they bear a special relation to counterfactual conditionals, one of truthmaking. However, because dispositionalism purports to ground de re modality only on the intrinsic natures of dispositional properties, it had better be the case that they do not play that truthmaking role merely in virtue of their being (...) embedded in some particular, extrinsic causal context. This paper examines a recent argument against dispositionalism that purports to show that the intrinsicality of that relation cannot be maintained, due to the ceteris paribus nature of the counterfactuals that dispositions make-true. When two prominent responses are examined, both are found wanting: at best, they require unjustified special pleading, and at worst, they amount to little more than ad hoc conceptual trickery. (shrink)

We commonly explain the distinctive prudential and moral status of persons in terms of our mental capacities. I draw from recent work to argue that the common explanation is incomplete. I then develop a new explanation: We are ethically important because we are the object of a pattern of self-concern. I argue that the view solves moral problems posed by permissive ontologies, such as the recent personite problem.

As there is currently a neo-Aristotelian revival currently taking place within contemporary metaphysics and dispositions, or causal powers are now being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, more attention is beginning to be paid to a central Aristotelian concern: the metaphysics of substantial unity, and the doctrine of hylomorphism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of hylomorphism present in the contemporary literature and argue that not only does each engender unique conceptual difficulties, but neither adequately captures the (...) metaphysics of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Thus both strands of contemporary hylomorphism, I argue, fundamentally misunderstand what substantial unity amounts to in the hylomorphic framework – namely, the metaphysical inseparability of matter and form. (shrink)

Causal reasoning and game-theoretic reasoning are fundamental topics in artificial intelligence, among many other disciplines: this paper is concerned with their intersection. Despite their importance, a formal framework that supports both these forms of reasoning has, until now, been lacking. We offer a solution in the form of (structural) causal games, which can be seen as extending Pearl's causal hierarchy to the game-theoretic domain, or as extending Koller and Milch's multi-agent influence diagrams to the causal domain. We then consider three (...) key questions: i) How can the (causal) dependencies in games - either between variables, or between strategies - be modelled in a uniform, principled manner? ii) How may causal queries be computed in causal games, and what assumptions does this require? iii) How do causal games compare to existing formalisms? To address question i), we introduce mechanised games, which encode dependencies between agents' decision rules and the distributions governing the game. In response to question ii), we present definitions of predictions, interventions, and counterfactuals, and discuss the assumptions required for each. Regarding question iii), we describe correspondences between causal games and other formalisms, and explain how causal games can be used to answer queries that other causal or game-theoretic models do not support. Finally, we highlight possible applications of causal games, aided by an extensive open-source Python library. (shrink)

In recent work, Adlam (2022b), Chen & Goldstein (2022), and Meacham (2023) have defended accounts of laws that take laws to be primitive global constraints. A major advantage of these accounts is that they’re able to accommodate the many different kinds of laws that appear in physical theories. In this paper I’ll present these three accounts, highlight their distinguishing features, and note some key differences that might lead one to favor one of these accounts over the others. I’ll conclude by (...) briefly discussing a version of a “constraint” account that I think is especially attractive. (shrink)

A cognitivist account of decision-making views choice behaviour as a serial process of deliberation and commitment, which is separate from perception and action. By contrast, recent work in embodied decision-making has argued that this account is incompatible with emerging neurophysiological data. We argue that this account has significant overlap with an embodied account of predictive processing, and that both can offer mutual development for the other. However, more importantly, by demonstrating this close connection we uncover an alternative perspective on the (...) nature of decision-making, and the mechanisms that underlie our choice behaviour. This alternative perspective allows us to respond to a challenge for predictive processing, which claims that the satisfaction of distal goal-states is underspecified. Answering this challenge requires the adoption of an embodied perspective. (shrink)

Aside from the systematic theory of recognition, Honneth’s work in the last decade has also centered around a less commented-upon theme: the critical social theoretic diagnosis of social pathologies. This paper claims first that his diverse diagnoses of specific social pathologies can be productively united through the conceptual structure evinced by second-order disorders, where there are substantial disconnects, of various kinds, between first-order contents and second-order reflexive understandings of those contents. The second major claim of the paper is that once (...) we understand social pathologies as second-order disorders, it becomes apparent that critical social theory must do more than accurately identify and explicate these disorders at the phenomenological and action-theoretic levels. It must further engage in insightful sociological explanations of the social causes of those pathologies in order to further the prognostic and therapeutic tasks implied by the aim of developing a social theory with emancipatory intent. The paper argues that the identificatory and explicative components of diagnostic social theory have been fulfilled by Honneth to a much greater degree than the latter components of explanation, prognosis and therapy. (shrink)

A standard interpretation of Plato’s metaphysics holds that sensible particulars are images of Forms. Such particulars are fairly independent, like Aristotelian substances. I argue that this is incorrect: Platonic particulars are not Form images but aggregates of Form images, which are property-instances. Timaeus 49e-50a focuses on “this-suches” and even goes so far as to claim that they compose other things. I argue that Form images are this-suches, which are tropes. I also examine the geometrical account, showing that the geometrical constituents (...) of the elements are also Form images. Thus everything in the sensible world is composed of tropes. (shrink)

Though the realm of biology has long been under the philosophical rule of the mechanistic magisterium, recent years have seen a surprisingly steady rise in the usurping prowess of process ontology. According to its proponents, theoretical advances in the contemporary science of evo-devo have afforded that ontology a particularly powerful claim to the throne: in that increasingly empirically confirmed discipline, emergently autonomous, higher-order entities are the reigning explanantia. If we are to accept the election of evo-devo as our best conceptualisation (...) of the biological realm with metaphysical rigour, must we depose our mechanistic ontology for failing to properly “carve at the joints” of organisms? In this paper, I challenge the legitimacy of that claim: not only can the theoretical benefits offered by a process ontology be had without it, they cannot be sufficiently grounded without the metaphysical underpinning of the very mechanisms which processes purport to replace. The biological realm, I argue, remains one best understood as under the governance of mechanistic principles. (shrink)

The advent of contemporary evolutionary theory ushered in the eventual decline of Aristotelian Essentialism (Æ) – for it is widely assumed that essence does not, and cannot have any proper place in the age of evolution. This paper argues that this assumption is a mistake: if Æ can be suitably evolved, it need not face extinction. In it, I claim that if that theory’s fundamental ontology consists of dispositional properties, and if its characteristic metaphysical machinery is interpreted within the framework (...) of contemporary evolutionary developmental biology, an evolved essentialism is available. The reformulated theory of Æ offered in this paper not only fails to fall prey to the typical collection of criticisms, but is also independently both theoretically and empirically plausible. The paper contends that, properly understood, essence belongs in the age of evolution. (shrink)

The ‘traditional’ interpretation of the Receptacle in Plato’s Timaeus maintains that its parts act as substrata to ordinary particulars such as dogs and tables: particulars are form-matter compounds to which Forms supply properties and the Receptacle supplies a substratum, as well as a space in which these compounds come to be. I argue, against this view, that parts of the Receptacle cannot act as substrata for those particulars. I also argue, making use of contemporary discussions of supersubstantivalism, against a substratum (...) interpretation that separates substratum and space in the Timaeus. (shrink)

This response focuses on Balibar’s method of thinking transindividuality through multiple figures, in their similarities as well as their productive differences. His essay ‘Philosophies of the Transindividual: Spinoza, Marx, Freud’ combines the three titular figures in order to better think the multifaceted idea of ‘classical’ transindividuality. Balibar’s method combines the three but nonetheless maintains their dissimilarities as real differences. This response attempts to test or apply that method in two ways. The first application links Balibar’s analysis of Freud’s hypnotic leader (...) with a theme Balibar does not here discuss: wonder’s connection to superstition in Spinoza. At the level of their effects, superstitious wonder and hypnosis are nearly identical transindividual processes which lead to affective mass formation. However, their causes are quite distinct. This response details the similar effects and different causes, then asks the question: does their difference render them irreconcilable or complementary? Given the prominent role Spinoza plays in Balibar’s work, and the strong overall equivalence of wonder and hypnosis, this first application of Balibar’s method of multiple combination likely presents a complementarity rather than a conflict. This response’s second application, attempting to integrate another figure into the transindividual multiple, presents greater difficulties: what role, if any, could Foucault play in Balibar’s transindividuality? With Foucault, the tensions or differences perhaps amount to fundamental and thoroughgoing incompatibilities. However, combining Foucault with ‘classical’ transindividuality potentially extends and deepens each. This response concludes with examples of these problematic tensions as well as possibly fruitful combinations. (shrink)

Giubilini and Minerva argue that the permissibility of abortion entails the permissibility of infanticide. Proponents of what we refer to as the Birth Strategy claim that there is a morally significant difference brought about at birth that accounts for our strong intuition that killing newborns is morally impermissible. We argue that strategy does not account for the moral intuition that late-term, non-therapeutic abortions are morally impermissible. Advocates of the Birth Strategy must either judge non-therapeutic abortions as impermissible in the later (...) stages of pregnancy or conclude that they are permissible on the basis of premises that are far less intuitively plausible than the opposite conclusion and its supporting premises. (shrink)

For a variety of reasons, Hegel's theory of the estates remains an unexpected and unappreciated feature of his practical philosophy. In fact, it is the key element of his social philosophy, which grounds his more properly political philosophy. Most fundamentally, it plays this role because the estates provide the forms of visibility required by Hegel's distinctive theory of self-determination, and so the estates constitute conditions for the possibility of human agency as such. With respect to political agency in particular, this (...) ramifies into the view that the estates are social preconditions for legal and political practices, forms of political participation in their own right, and conditions of possibility of moderate government (three functions also attributed to the estates by Montesquieu). (shrink)

According to contemporary ‘process ontology’, organisms are best conceptualised as spatio-temporally extended entities whose mereological composition is fundamentally contingent and whose essence consists in changeability. In contrast to the Aristotelian precepts of classical ‘substance ontology’, from the four-dimensional perspective of this framework, the identity of an organism is grounded not in certain collections of privileged properties, or features which it could not fail to possess, but in the succession of diachronic relations by which it persists, or ‘perdures’ as one entity (...) over time. In this paper, I offer a novel defence of substance ontology by arguing that the coherency and plausibility of the radical reconceptualisation of organisms proffered by process ontology ultimately depends upon its making use of the ‘substantial’ principles it purports to replace. (shrink)

Much of the debate about Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato has focused on the separability of the Forms. Here the dispute has to do with the ontological status of the Forms, in particular Plato’s claim for their ontological priority in relation to perceptible objects. Aristotle, however, also disputes the explanatory and causal roles that Plato claims for the Forms. This second criticism is independent of the first; even if the problem of the ontological status of the Forms were resolved to Aristotle’s (...) satisfaction, this second criticism would still stand. The problem here is not that there is no room for Aristotle’s four causes in Plato’s ontology; on the contrary, antecedents for all four can be found in Plato’s works. The problem, instead, is that Plato’s Forms fail to meet the general requirements that Aristotle sets out for the material, efficient, formal, and final causes of perceptible objects. Hence, even if the Forms were immanent in perceptible objects, they would still explain nothing about them. (shrink)

Ectogestation involves the gestation of a fetus in an ex utero environment. The possibility of this technology raises a significant question for the abortion debate: Does a woman’s right to end her pregnancy entail that she has a right to the death of the fetus when ectogestation is possible? Some have argued that it does not Mathison & Davis. Others claim that, while a woman alone does not possess an individual right to the death of the fetus, the genetic parents (...) have a collective right to its death Räsänen. In this paper, I argue that the possibility of ectogestation will radically transform the problem of abortion. The argument that I defend purports to show that, even if it is not a person, there is no right to the death of a fetus that could be safely removed from a human womb and gestated in an artificial womb, because there are competent people who are willing to care for and raise the fetus as it grows into a person. Thus, given the possibility of ectogestation, the moral status of the fetus plays no substantial role in determining whether there is a right to its death. (shrink)

Tu quoque arguments regard inconsistencies in some speaker‘s performance. Most tu quoque arguments depend on actual inconsistencies. However, there are forms of tu quoque arguments that key, instead, on the conflicts a speaker would have, were some crucial contingent fact different. These, we call subjunctive tu quoque arguments. Finally, there are cases wherein the counterfactual inconsistencies of a speaker are relevant to the issue.

Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammer of Social Conflicts (reviewed by Christopher Zurn).

At the heart of the Bayesianism is a rule, Conditionalization, which tells us how to update our beliefs. Typical formulations of this rule are underspecified. This paper considers how, exactly, this rule should be formulated. It focuses on three issues: when a subject’s evidence is received, whether the rule prescribes sequential or interval updates, and whether the rule is narrow or wide scope. After examining these issues, it argues that there are two distinct and equally viable versions of Conditionalization to (...) choose from. And which version we choose has interesting ramifications, bearing on issues such as whether Conditionalization can handle continuous evidence, and whether Jeffrey Conditionalization is really a generalization of Conditionalization. (shrink)

This paper provides a rational reconstruction of a Platonic trope bundle theory that is a live alternative to contemporary bundle theories. According to the theory, Platonic particulars are composed of what Plato calls images of Forms; contemporary metaphysicians call these tropes. Tropes are dependent on Forms and the Receptacle, while trope bundles are structured by natural kinds using the Phaedo's principles of inclusion and exclusion and the Timaeus’ geometrised elements, as well as by co-location in the Receptacle. Key elements of (...) discussion include persistence and abundance of Plato's tropes. The resulting theory is compared with contemporary trope bundle theories. (shrink)

I distinguish several doctrines that economic methodologists have found attractive, all of which have a positivist flavour. One of these is the doctrine that preference assignments in economics are just shorthand descriptions of agents' choice behaviour. Although most of these doctrines are problematic, the latter doctrine about preference assignments is a respectable one, I argue. It doesn't entail any of the problematic doctrines, and indeed it is warranted independently of them.

We argue that while digital health technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, smartphones, and virtual reality) present significant opportunities for improving the delivery of healthcare, key concepts that are used to evaluate and understand their impact can obscure significant ethical issues related to patient engagement and experience. Specifically, we focus on the concept of empowerment and ask whether it is adequate for addressing some significant ethical concerns that relate to digital health technologies for mental healthcare. We frame these concerns using five key (...) ethical principles for AI ethics (i.e. autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and explicability), which have their roots in the bioethical literature, in order to critically evaluate the role that digital health technologies will have in the future of digital healthcare. (shrink)

In identifying intrinsic molecular chance and extrinsic adaptive pressures as the only causally relevant factors in the process of evolution, the theoretical perspective of the Modern Synthesis had a major impact on the perceived tenability of an ontology of dispositional properties. However, since the late 1970s, an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have challenged the descriptive and explanatory adequacy of this “chance alone, extrinsic only” understanding of evolutionary change. Because morphological studies of homology, convergence, and teratology have revealed a space (...) of possible forms and phylogenetic trajectories that is considerably more restricted than expected, evo-devo has focused on the causal contribution of intrinsic developmental processes to the course of evolution. Evo-devo’s investigation into the developmental structure of the modality of morphology – including both the possibility and impossibility of organismal form – has led to the utilisation of a number of dispositional concepts that emphasise the tendency of the evolutionary process to change along certain routes. In this sense, and in contrast to the perspective of the Modern Synthesis, evo-devo can be described as a “science of dispositions.” This chapter discusses the recent philosophical literature on dispositional properties in evo-devo, exploring debates about both the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of the central dispositional concepts utilised in contemporary evo-devo and addressing the epistemological question of how dispositional properties challenge existing explanatory models in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

What is it about serial killers that grips our imaginations? They populate some of our most important literature and art, and to this day, Jack the Ripper intrigues us. In this paper, we examine this phenomenon, exploring the idea that serial killers in part represent something in us that, if not good, is at least admirable. To get at this, we have to peel off layers of other causes of our attraction, for our attraction to serial killing is complex (it (...) mixes with repulsion, too). For example, part of the attraction is curiosity associated with the pragmatic desire to understand serial killers. Another part is the allure of safe violence, the very same allure that causes us to slow down to look at traffic accidents and that makes movies like Saw box office gold. Once we are through the initial layers of attraction, we expose the one we are interested in. Humans are not really Homo sapiens (the wise human), but rather Homo oboediens (the rule‐following human), and these rules can become oppressive. Serial killers, properly sanitized, show us something, albeit in a twisted way, that we long for – a life unfettered by rules, a life where we can do exactly what we want. We close by noting the paradox that an actual serial killer is not free at all. (shrink)

Nguyen offers a number of profound insights about the nature and value of games. Games are works of art, according to Nguyen, because they offer players aesthetic experiences. Game designers aim to...

The paper argues that Motion and Rest are “greatest kinds” and not just convenient examples, since they are all-pervading. Thus Motion and Rest can be jointly predicated of a single subject and can be predicated of each other, just as Sameness and Otherness can. While Sameness and Otherness are opposites, a single subject may be the same in one respect, namely, the same as itself, and other in another respect, namely, other than other things. Thus they can be predicated of (...) a single subject, and they can be predicated of each other, as well, since Sameness is other than other things and Otherness is the same as itself. The same explanation applies to Motion and Rest, as the paper demonstrates: a given subject may be in motion in one respect while being at rest in another respect. This distinction is made in the Sophist itself, right in the passage concerning the greatest kinds. Thus Motion and Rest should be considered greatest kinds on par with Being, Sameness, and Otherness, and each of these kinds pervades all other kinds. (shrink)