The Report presents insights which illuminates the intertwinements of European regulatory policies and global governance arrangements. By pinning down the exact nature of the interaction between these two levels, the EU’s dilemma becomes obvious: On the one hand, stronger global governance can be a chance, through which the EU can clarify its own raison d’être of increased integration to the wider world. On the other hand, the design of the European project is being challenged by more assertive global structures. This (...) is especially the case in relation to the WTO regime, which is constraining the decisional autonomy of the EU, regarding the appropriateness of its content and its external effects. Thus, the regulation of services in the EU and the WTO are discussed in the first section of this report. Section two focuses on labour standards, which are analysed from different angles in order to clarify the functions of the WTO and the ILO, multinational companies as well as other private actors within this specific field. The final section deals with the legitimacy problematic of transnational governance. Table of contents: Introduction Christian Joerges and Poul F. Kjaer Section One: Freedom of Services Chapter 1 The Multiple Understandings of Conflict between Trade in Services and Labour Protection Alexia Herwig Chapter 2 Competing in Markets, not Rules: The Conflict over the Single Services Market Susanne K. Schmidt Chapter 3 Competitiveness and Labour Protection: A Comment Markus Krajewski Section Two: Labour Standards Chapter 4 WTO and ILO: Can Social Responsibility be maintained in International Trade? Josef Falke Chapter 5 Reframing RECON: Perspectives on Transnationalisation and Post-national Democracy from Labour Law Claire Methven O’Brien Chapter 6 Transnational Governance and Human Rights: The Obligations of Private Actors in the Global Context Regina Kreide Section Three: The Legitimacy of Transnational Governance Chapter 7 Legitimacy through Precaution in European Regulation of GMOs? From the Standpoint of Governance as Analytical Perspective Maria Weimer Chapter 8 The Justice Deficit of the EU and other International Organisations Jürgen Neyer Chapter 9 Towards Normative Legitimacy of the World Trade Order Alexia Herwig and Thorsten Hüller Chapter 10 From Utopia to Apology – The Return to Inter-state Justice in Normative IR Scholarship: Comments on Neyer and Herwig & Hüller Jens Steffek. (shrink)

John Rawls’s political liberalism and its ideal of public reason are tremendously influential in contemporary political philosophy and in constitutional law as well. Many, perhaps even most, liberals are Rawlsians of one stripe or another. This is problematic, because most liberals also support the redefinition of civil marriage to include same-sex unions, and as I show, Rawls’s political liberalism actually prohibits same- sex marriage. Recently in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, however, California’s northern federal district court reinterpreted the traditional rational basis review (...) in terms of liberal neutrality akin to Rawls’s “public reason,” and overturned Proposition 8 and established same-sex marriage. (This reinterpretation was amplified in the 9th Circuit Court’s decision upholding the district court on appeal in Perry v. Brown.) But on its own grounds Perry should have drawn the opposite conclusion. This is because all the available arguments for recognizing same-sex unions as civil marriages stem from controversial comprehensive doctrines about the good, and this violates the ideal of public reason; yet there remains a publicly reasonable argument for traditional marriage, which I sketch here. In the course of my argument I develop Rawls’s politically liberal account of the family by drawing upon work by J. David Velleman and H. L. A. Hart, and discuss the implications of this account for political theory and constitutional law. (shrink)

In Just Fodder, Milburn argues for a relational account of our duties to animals. Following Clare Palmer, he argues that, though all animals have negative rights that we have a duty not to violate, we only gain positive obligations towards animals in the contexts of our relationships with them, which can be personal or political. He argues that human beings have collective positive duties towards domesticated animals, in virtue of the kind of relationship between us established by domestication. However, when (...) it comes to wild animals, he argues that we have no such morally relevant relationships, and so we have only negative duties towards them. I argue that throughout history and even prehistory human beings have morally entangled themselves with wild animals sufficiently that we may in fact have collective positive duties towards many, if not all, wild animals. (shrink)

Prediction-based decisions, which are often made by utilizing the tools of machine learning, influence nearly all facets of modern life. Ethical concerns about this widespread practice have given rise to the field of fair machine learning and a number of fairness measures, mathematically precise definitions of fairness that purport to determine whether a given prediction-based decision system is fair. Following Reuben Binns (2017), we take ‘fairness’ in this context to be a placeholder for a variety of normative egalitarian considerations. We (...) explore a few fairness measures to suss out their egalitarian roots and evaluate them, both as formalizations of egalitarian ideas and as assertions of what fairness demands of predictive systems. We pay special attention to a recent and popular fairness measure, counterfactual fairness, which holds that a prediction about an individual is fair if it is the same in the actual world and any counterfactual world where the individual belongs to a different demographic group (cf. Kusner et al. (2018)). (shrink)

The charge of hypocrisy is a peculiar kind of accusation: it is damning and ubiquitous; it is used to deny the hypocrite standing to speak; and it is levelled against a great variety of conduct. Much of the philosophical literature on hypocrisy is aimed at explaining why hypocrisy is wrongful and worthy of censure. We focus instead on the use of the accusation of hypocrisy and argue for a revisionary claim. People think that hypocrisy in politics is bad and that (...) calling it out is good. Our novel claim is that even if hypocrisy in politics is bad (and that is a big if), calling it out is worse. We give a feminist case as to why accusations of hypocrisy are problematic. We also go further and claim that hypocrisy is a ubiquitous and perhaps even a necessary and beneficial part of political debate in liberal democracies. We also consider and reject candour as a possible alternative solution to hypocrisy in public debate. We argue that requiring people to be candid is not necessarily a good solution because it will often require one to divulge what is private when there are good reasons not to do so. (shrink)

While much has been written about the functional profile of intentions, and about their normative or rational status, comparatively little has been said about the subjective authority of intention. What is it about intending that explains the ‘hold’ that an intention has on an agent—a hold that is palpable from her first-person perspective? I argue that several prima facie appealing explanations are not promising. Instead, I maintain that the subjective authority of intention can be explained in terms of the inner (...) structure of intention. In adopting an intention the agent comes to see herself as criticizable depending on whether she executes the intention. This allows us to explain in first-personal terms why the agent becomes disposed to act and deliberate in ways that are characteristic of intention. As intention-formation involves profound changes to reflexive evaluative attitudes, this is the ‘Self-Evaluation’ view of the subjective authority of intention. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted that intentional actions are “the actions to which “a certain sense of the question ‘why?’ is given application” (Anscombe 1957/2000: 9). But there are robust reasons for thinking that this claim is false. First, there are intentional actions for which such questions are unsound. We have good reasons for thinking that the questions are not “given application” in these cases. Second, when these questions are “given application” this is best explained, it is argued, not in (...) terms of a necessary link between intentional action and this type of enquiry, but in terms of the fact that this is an enquiry that we pursue when we take an agent to have exercised certain of their rational capacities. (shrink)

There are various forms of teleological thinking central to debates in the early modern and modern periods, debates in which David Hume (1711–1776) is a key figure. In the first section, we shall introduce three levels at which teleological considerations have been incorporated into philosophical accounts of man and nature, and sketch Hume’s criticisms of these approaches. In the second section, we turn to Hume’s non-teleological ‘science of man’. In the third section, we show how Hume has an account of (...) human flourishing that is not dependent on teleology. In the fourth section, we shall speculate as to the relation between Hume’s account of human nature and contemporary evolutionary accounts of morality and reasoning. (shrink)

We argue that relating to myself as me provides, as such, a reason to care about myself: grasping that an event involves me, instead of another, makes it matter in a special way. Further, this self-concern is not simply a matter of seeing in myself some instrumental value for other ends. We use as our foil a recent skeptical challenge to this view offered in Setiya 2015. We think the case against self-concern is powered by unwarrantedly narrow construals of three (...) key notions. One is the notion of a first-personal way of relating to oneself. A narrow account of the first person in terms of special epistemic relations to oneself makes it easy to overlook a source of non-instrumental reasons of self-concern, located in the special relation a subject has to herself as agent. Two is the notion of what it is to be a reason. And, three, is the notion of self-concern itself. We show that the skeptical case rests in part on a slide towards neighbouring but distinct notions of egoism and selfishness. We also argue that Setiya’s notion of self-love, offered to capture the pre-theoretical intuition of self-concern, cannot do it justice. (shrink)

Well‐functioning agents ordinarily have an excellent epistemic relationship to their intentional actions. This phenomenon is often characterized as knowledge of what one is doing and labeled “practical knowledge”. But when we examine it carefully, it seems to require a particular kind of understanding ‐ understanding of the normative structure of one's action. Three lines of argument are offered to support this Necessity of Understanding thesis. The first appeals to the nature of intentional action and the second to our everyday reasons (...) explanation of action. The final line of argument draws on a practical amnesia case in which an agent forgets her overall goal while acting. Implications of the Necessity of Understanding thesis for the widely endorsed non‐observational view of practical knowledge are briefly discussed. It is argued that support for the non‐observational view is weaker than has been appreciated. (shrink)

In this paper, we raise and discuss a puzzle about the relationships among goods, reasons, and deontic status. Suppose you have it within your power to give someone something they would enjoy. The following claims seem platitudinous: you can use this power to reward whatever kind of option you want, thereby making that option better and generating a reason for that person to perform it; this reason is then weighed alongside and against the other reasons at play; and altogether, the (...) reasons determine the deontic statuses of that person’s options. We show, however, that in a certain class of cases at least one of these apparent platitudes must be false. In particular, we show that in a certain kind of case wrongfulness cannot be rewarded. In some cases, if one tries to reward wrongfulness, something surprising must go awry: either what you attempt to give as a reward would not, in fact, be good, or it would not generate a reason, or it would have a surprising effect on the deontic status of the relevant options. The upshot is that the relationships among goods, reasons, and deontic status are complicated in ways that have not previously been remarked. (shrink)

In debates about rationalizing action explanation causalists assume that the psychological states that explain an intentional action have both causal and rational features. I scrutinize the presuppositions of those who seek and offer rationalizing action explanations. This scrutiny shows, I argue, that where rational features play an explanatory role in these contexts, causal features play only a presuppositional role. But causal features would have to play an explanatory role if rationalizing action explanation were a species of causal explanation. Consequently, we (...) should conclude that action explanation is not a species of causal explanation. (shrink)

This chapter aims to get away from the ‘psychological attitude’ approach framing current philosophical discussion of delusion. We ask not what kind of attitude a delusion is – a belief or an imagination? Something else? – as if it were already clear what the ‘content’ of a delusion could be. We aim instead to shift attention to the question of the ‘object’ of delusions. What is delusion of? What is the object of this form of thinking? This focus on a (...) delusion’s object, over its attitudinal nature, is partly motivated by a desire properly to connect delusory thought with ordinary forms of fantastical thinking that are ubiquitous in the experiences faced by reflective humans in everyday life. We aim at securing a continuity, in a way that much extant discussion of delusion fails to, between delusory thought with more ordinary forms of thinking present in, for example, fantastical or magical thinking. Exploring familiar expressions of such thinking, especially those involved in love and loss, enables us to bring out the way in which such expressions convey forms of affective self-consciousness – that have the subject and her relations as an object – that are not naturally taken as reports liable to investigation as true or false. This raises the question about what how to think about what someone is doing when they give expression to a delusion should we think of them as expressing an attitude towards a truth or false content, or may they be doing something rather different? (shrink)

This paper explores one aspect of God’s omniscience, that is, his knowledge of human minds. In §1 I spell out a traditional notion of divine knowledge, and in §2 I argue that our understanding of the thoughts of others is a distinct kind of knowledge from that involved in knowledge of the physical world; it involves empathizing with thinkers. In §3 I show how this is relevant to the question of how, and whether, God understands the thoughts of man. There (...) is, we shall see, some tension between the alleged direct nature of God’s intuition-based knowledge and the empathetic nature of understanding other. (shrink)

Despite the frequency of stillbirths, the subsequent implications are overlooked and underappreciated. We present findings from comprehensive, systematic literature reviews, and new analyses of published and unpublished data, to establish the effect of stillbirth on parents, families, health-care providers, and societies worldwide. Data for direct costs of this event are sparse but suggest that a stillbirth needs more resources than a livebirth, both in the perinatal period and in additional surveillance during subsequent pregnancies. Indirect and intangible costs of stillbirth are (...) extensive and are usually met by families alone. This issue is particularly onerous for those with few resources. Negative effects, particularly on parental mental health, might be moderated by empathic attitudes of care providers and tailored interventions. The value of the baby, as well as the associated costs for parents, families, care providers, communities, and society, should be considered to prevent stillbirths and reduce associated morbidity. (shrink)

This research explores the crucial role of leadership transitions in educational institutions, particularly at Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. (ICCBI). Recognizing the profound impact of leadership practices on organizational effectiveness, this study addresses nuanced aspects of employee engagement during transitions. Using a qualitative case study design involving face-to-face interviews, common themes emerge regarding the transition of leadership, such as inclusive decision-making, resistance to new policies, unclear communication, continuity in vision, mission, and commitment, and transparency. The findings underscore the substantial (...) influence of leadership transitions on the institution's dynamics, shaping its mission, vision, and commitment to both students and employees. Proactively addressing challenges is emphasized as crucial for maintaining a positive work environment and enhancing organizational effectiveness. The study further recommends a strategic focus on transforming challenges into -/- opportunities, prioritizing employee engagement, and implementing the outlined strategies to foster a healthy work- life relationship within Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. (shrink)

Responding to an article in a previous issue from Matthew B. O’Brien on the impermissibility of same-sex marriage, this reply corrects a misinterpretation of Rawls’s understanding of political liberalism and a misdirected complaint against the jurisprudence of the U.S. federal courts on civil marriage and other matters. In correcting these interpretations, I seek to demonstrate that a publicly reasonable case for same-sex civil marriage is conceivable in line with political liberalism. I conclude the article by arguing that, although the (...) same-sex civil marriage issue is likely to be a matter of controversy for some time in western societies, a proper understanding of the theoretical issues at stake may contribute to a partial de-escalation of the ‘culture wars’ currently surrounding the issue. (shrink)

Hume’s Critique of Religion is a valuable and rewarding contribution to Hume scholarship. The atheistic interpretation that the authors defend is well supported and convincingly argued. Although Gaskin’s Hume’s Philosophy of Religion is (rightly) highly regarded, I believe that Bailey and O’Brien provide a more compelling and convincing interpretation. Their account is, in particular, much stronger in respect of the historical background and contextual considerations that they draw on to support of their interpretation. These historical advances are achieved without (...) weakening the care and attention that is given to Hume’s philosophical arguments. Students and more advanced scholars alike will find this study highly illuminating and instructive. It deserves to be widely read and carefully considered. -/- . (shrink)

Dan O’Brien gives an excellent analysis of testimonial knowledge transmission in his article ‘Communication Between Friends’ (2009) noting that the reliability of the speaker is a concern in both externalist and internalist theories of knowledge. O’Brien focuses on the belief states of Hearers (H) in cases where the reliability of the Speaker (S) is known via ‘intimate trust’, a special case pertaining to friendships with a track record of reliable or unreliable reports. This article considers the notion of (...) ‘intimate trust’, specifically in the context of online fan communities, in which the amount of time as a member of an online fan community and the extent of one’s posting history often results in something like ‘intimate trust’ between fans who are, for all other purposes, strangers. In the last two years, Twitter has provided a number of celebrities with a place to update fans and ‘tweet’ back and forth an innumerable number of times in any given day. This accentuates the intimacy to such a level that it becomes a ‘caricature of intimacy’ – the minute-to-minute updates accentuate the illusion that the fan ‘knows’ the celebrity, but the distance and mediation are still carefully maintained. This is an issue with both ethical and epistemological implications for fan-fan and fan-celebrity relationships online, considering ethics of care and ethics of justice, whether fans ‘owe’ celebrities a certain amount of distance and respect, and whether stars owe the fan something in return, either in the sense of reciprocal Kantian duties or Aristotelian moderation. (shrink)

O'Brien & Opie's (O&O's) theory demands a view of unconscious processing that is incompatible with virtually all current PDP models of neural activity. Relative to the alternatives, the theory is closer to an AI than a parallel distributed processing (PDP) perspective, and its treatment of phenomenology is ad hoc. It raises at least one important question: Could features of network relaxation be the “switch” that turns an unconscious into a conscious network?

A central debate in philosophy of action concerns whether agential knowledge, the knowledge agents characteristically have of their own actions, is inferential. While inferentialists like Sarah Paul hold that it is inferential, others like Lucy O’Brien and Kieran Setiya argue that it is not. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for the view that agential knowledge is non-inferential, by posing a dilemma for inferentialists: on the first horn, inferentialism is committed to holding that agents have only alienated (...) knowledge of their own actions; on the second horn, inferentialism is caught in a vicious regress. Neither option is attractive, so inferentialism should be rejected. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu của O'Brien và đồng nghiệp tiến hành đánh giá ảnh hưởng của 3 phương pháp đa dạng hóa rủi ro môi trường [1] đối với tác động môi trường ở một số trang trại nuôi gia súc tại Ireland. Ba phương pháp thường được đề xuất, đề cập trong nghiên cứu này là: 1) Hỗn hợp cỏ và white clover (GWC), 2) Canh tác hữu cơ (OFS), và 3) Tiếp cận nông lâm (AGF). Với AGF thì cụ thể (...) là phương pháp kết hợp cây lâu năm, với đồng cỏ chăn thả và thu hoạch cất trữ (Silvopasture). (shrink)

The study conducted by O'Brien and their colleagues aimed to assess the impact of three methods for diversifying environmental risk on multiple cattle farms in Ireland. These three methods, as highlighted in the study, include: 1) The combination of grass and white clover (referred to as GWC), 2) Organic farming (referred to as OFS), and 3) An approach involving both agriculture and forestry (referred to as AGF), with a specific focus on the technique of combining perennial crops, grazing pastures, and (...) harvesting for storage (known as Silvopasture). While there are various other options available for diversifying livestock production sources, the three methods mentioned above are representative of livestock systems primarily based on natural grass. The study covers the entire life cycle of both dairy and beef cattle, from calf age to maturity, spanning the three years from 2017 to 2019, making it highly representative of Ireland. (shrink)

In Disturbed Consciousness, philosophers and other scholars examine various psychopathologies in light of specific philosophical theories of consciousness. The contributing authors—some of them discussing or defending their own theoretical work—consider not only how a theory of consciousness can account for a specific psychopathological condition but also how the characteristics of a psychopathology might challenge such a theory. Thus one essay defends the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness against the charge that it cannot account for somatoparaphrenia (a delusion in which (...) one denies ownership of a limb). Another essay argues that various attempts to explain away such anomalies within subjective theories of consciousness fail. -/- Other essays consider such topics as the application of a model of unified consciousness to cases of brain bisection and dissociative identity disorder; prefrontal and parietal underconnectivity in autism and other psychopathologies; self-deception and the self-model theory of subjectivity; schizophrenia and the vehicle theory of consciousness; and a shift in emphasis away from an internal (or brainbound) approach to psychopathology to an interactive one. Each essay offers a distinctive perspective from the intersection of philosophy, consciousness research, and psychiatry. -/- Contributors Alexandre Billon, Andrew Brook, Paula Droege, Rocco J. Gennaro, Philip Gerrans, William Hirstein, Jakob Hohwy, Uriah Kriegel, Timothy Lane, Thomas Metzinger, Erik Myin, Inez Myin-Germeys, Myrto Mylopoulos, Gerard O’Brien, Jon Opie, J. Kevin O’Regan, Iuliia Pliushch, Robert Van Gulick . (shrink)

A long line of writers on Evans – Andy Hamilton, Lucy O'Brien, José Bermúdez, and Jason Stanley, to name just a few – assess Evans' account of first-person thought without heeding his warnings that his theory comprises an information and an action component. By omitting the action component, these critics are able to characterize Evans' theory as a perceptual model theory and reject it on that ground. This paper is an attempt to restore the forgotten element. With this component put (...) back in, the charge of Evans' theory as a perceptual model of such thoughts falls apart, and the theory turns out to have enough merit to project itself as a legitimate contender for a plausible account of ‘I’-thought. (shrink)

If Australasian philosophers constitute the kind of group to which a collective identity or broadly shared self-image can plausibly be ascribed, the celebrated history of Australian materialism rightly lies close to its heart. Jack Smart’s chapter in this volume, along with an outstanding series of briefer essays in A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (Forrest 2010; Gold 2010; Koksvik 2010; Lycan 2010; Matthews 2010; Nagasawa 2010; Opie 2010; Stoljar 2010a), effectively describe the naturalistic realism of Australian philosophy (...) of mind. In occasional semi-serious psychogeographic speculation, this long-standing and strongly-felt intellectual attitude has been traced back to the influences of our light, land, or lifestyle (Devitt 1996, x; compare comments by Chalmers and O’Brien in Mitchell, 2006). Australasian work in philosophy of mind and cognition has become more diverse in the last 40 years, but is almost all still marked, in one way or another, by the history of these debates on materialism. (shrink)

This idea that what is distinctive of intentional performances (or at least of those intentional performances that amount to skilled actions) is one’s practical knowledge in it —i.e., knowledge of what one is doing while doing it— famously traces back to Anscombe ([]1963] 2000). While many philosophers have theorized about Anscombe’s notion of practical knowledge (e.g., Setiya (2008), Thompson et al. (2011), Schwenkler (2019), O’Brien (2007)), there is a wide disagreement about how to understand it. This paper investigates how (...) best to understand practical knowledge for it to play the desired explanatory role in a reductive theory of intentional action, of intention-in-action, and of control-in-action. I argue that practical knowledge ought to be construed as a dynamic knowledge state and that structured practical senses (Pavese 2015) are needed to model it. (shrink)

Contributors: -/- John Beatty (British Columbia); Kelly James Clark (Ibn Haldun, Istanbul); Angela Coventry (Portland State); Thomas Holden (UC Santa Barbara); Willem Lemmens (Antwerp); Robin Le Poidevin (Leeds); Jennifer Marusic (Edinburgh); Kevin Meeker (South Alabama); Amyas Merivale (Oxford); Peter Millican (Oxford); Dan O’Brien (Oxford Brookes); Graham Oppy (Monash); Paul Russell (Lund); Andre C. Willis (Brown).

Ce n’est pas un livre parfait, mais il est unique, et si vous écrémez les 400 premières pages ou plus, les 300 dernières (sur quelque 700) sont une assez bonne tentative d’appliquer ce qui est connu sur le comportement aux changements sociaux de la violence et des manières au fil du temps. Le sujet fondamental est le suivant : comment notre génétique contrôle-t-elle et limite-t-elle le changement social ? Étonnamment, il ne parvient pas à décrire la nature de la sélection (...) des parents (fitness inclusif) qui explique une grande partie de la vie sociale animale et humaine. Il n’a pas non plus (comme presque tout le monde) un cadre clair pour décrire la structure logique de la rationalité (LSR—terme préféré de John Searle) que je préfère appeler la psychologie descriptive de la pensée de haut ordre (DPHOT). Il aurait dû dire quelque chose sur les nombreuses autres façons d’abuser et d’exploiter les gens et la planète, car ceux-ci sont maintenant beaucoup plus graves que de rendre d’autres formes de violence presque hors de propos. Étendre le concept de violence pour inclure les-conséquences mondiales à long terme de la réplication des gènes de quelqu’un, et avoir une compréhension de la nature de la façon dont fonctionne l’évolution (c.-à-d., la sélection des parents) fournira une perspective très différente sur l’histoire, les événements actuels, et comment les choses sont susceptibles d’aller dans les quelques centaines d’années. On pourrait commencer par noter que la diminution de la violence physique au cours de l’histoire a été compensée (et rendue possible) par le viol sans pitié de la planète (c’est-à-dire par la destruction par les gens de l’avenir de leur propre descendant). Pinker (comme la plupart des gens la plupart du temps) est souvent distrait par les superficialités de la culture quand c’est la biologie qui compte. Voir mes critiques récentes de Wilson 'The Social Conquest of Earth' et Nowak and Highfield’s 'SuperCooperators' ici et sur le net pour un bref résumé de la vacuité de «véritable altruisme»(sélection de groupe), et le fonctionnement de la sélection des parents et l’inutilité et la superficialité de décrire le comportement en termes culturels. C’est la question classique de la nature/nourrir et la nature l’emporte nourrir - infiniment. Ce qui importe vraiment, c’est la violence faite à la terre par l’augmentation incessante de la population et de la destruction des ressources (en raison de la médecine et de la technologie et de la répression des conflits par la police et l’armée). Environ 200.000 personnes de plus par jour (un autre Las Vegas tous les 10 jours, un autre Los Angeles chaque mois), les 6 tonnes ou plus de la base va dans la mer / personne / année - environ 1% du total du monde disparaissant chaque année, etc. signifie que si un miracle se produit la biosphère et la civilisation va largement s’effondrer au cours des deux prochains siècles, et il y aura la famine, la misère et la violence de tous les types. Les manières, les opinions et les tendances des gens à commettre des actes de violence ne sont d’aucune pertinence à moins qu’ils ne puissent faire quelque chose pour éviter cette catastrophe, et je ne vois pas comment cela va se produire. Il n’y a pas de place pour les arguments, et aucun point non plus (oui je suis un fataliste), donc je vais juste faire quelques commentaires comme s’ils étaient des faits. N’imaginez pas que j’ai un intérêt personnel dans la promotion d’un groupe au détriment des autres. J’ai 78, n’ont pas de descendants et pas de proches parents et ne s’identifient à aucun groupe politique, national ou religieux et considèrent ceux que j’appartiens par défaut aussi répugnant que tout le reste. Les parents sont les pires ennemis de la vie sur Terre et, compte tenu de la vue générale des choses, les femmes sont aussi violentes que les hommes quand on considère le fait que la violence des femmes (comme la plupart de celle faite par les hommes) se fait en grande partie au ralenti, à une distance dans le temps et l’espace et la plupart du temps effectuée par procuration -par leurs descendants et par les hommes. De plus en plus, les femmes portent des enfants, qu’elles aient un compagnon ou non et que l’effet d’empêcher une femme de se reproduire est en moyenne beaucoup plus important que d’arrêter un homme, car ils constituent le goulot d’étranglement reproducteur. On peut considérer que les gens et leur progéniture méritent richement toute la misère vient leur chemin et (à de rares exceptions près) les riches et les célèbres sont les pires délinquants. Meryl Streep ou Bill Gates ou J.K Rowling et chacun de leurs enfants peuvent détruire 50 tonnes de terre d’o re plus chaque année pendant des générations dans l’avenir, tandis qu’un fermier indien et son peut détruire 1 tonne. Si quelqu’un nie que c’est très bien, et à leurs descendants, je dis "Bienvenue à l’enfer sur Terre"(WTHOE). Aujourd’hui, l’accent est toujours mis sur les droits de l’homme, mais il est clair que si la civilisation doit avoir une chance, les responsabilités humaines doivent remplacer les droits de l’homme. Personne n’obtient des droits sans être un citoyen responsable et la première chose que cela signifie est la destruction de l’environnement minimal. La responsabilité la plus fondamentale n’est pas les enfants à moins que votre société vous demande de les produire. Une société ou un monde qui permet aux gens de se reproduire au hasard sera toujours exploité par des gènes égoïstes jusqu’à ce qu’il s’effondre (ou atteint un point où la vie est si horrible qu’il ne vaut pas la peine de vivre). Si la société continue à maintenir les droits de l’homme comme primaires, à leurs descendants, on peut dire avec confiance "WTHOE". Ceux qui souhaitent un cadre complet à jour pour le comportement humain de la vue moderne de deuxemssyst peuvent consulter mon livre 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Ceux qui s’intéressent à plus de mes écrits peuvent voir «Talking Monkeys --Philosophie, Psychologie, Science, Religion et Politique sur une planète condamnée --Articles et revues 2006-2019 3e ed (2019) et Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) et autres. (shrink)

Depuis Gintis est un économiste senior et j’ai lu certains de ses livres précédents avec intérêt, je m’attendais à un peu plus de perspicacité dans le comportement. Malheureusement, il fait les mains mortes de la sélection de groupe et la phénoménologie dans les pièces maîtresses de ses théories du comportement, et cela invalide en grande partie le travail. Pire encore, puisqu’il montre un si mauvais jugement ici, il remet en question tout son travail précédent. La tentative de ressusciter la sélection (...) de groupe par ses amis à Harvard, Nowak et Wilson, il y a quelques années, c’était l’un des principaux scandales en biologie au cours de la dernière décennie, et j’ai raconté la triste histoire dans mon article 'Altruism, Jesus and the End of the World-how the Templeton Foundation bought a Harvard Professorship and attacked Evolution, Rationality and Civilization -- A review of E.O. Wilson 'The Social Conquest of Earth' (2012) et Nowak and Highfield 'SuperCooperators' (2012).' Contrairement à Nowak, Gintis ne semble pas être motivé par le fanatisme religieux, mais par le fort désir de générer une alternative aux sombres réalités de la nature humaine, facilitée par le manque (quasi universel) de compréhension de la biologie humaine fondamentale et le slateisme vierge des scientifiques comportementaux, d’autres universitaires et du grand public. Gintis attaque à juste titre (comme il l’a fait à maintes reprises) les économistes, les sociologues et d’autres scientifiques du comportement pour ne pas avoir un cadre cohérent pour décrire le comportement. Bien sûr, le cadre nécessaire pour comprendre le comportement est évolutif. Malheureusement, il ne parvient pas à en fournir un lui-même (selon ses nombreux critiques et je suis d’accord), et la tentative de greffer le cadavre pourri de la sélection de groupe sur toutes les théories économiques et psychologiques qu’il a généré dans ses décennies de travail, n’a fait qu’invalider tout son projet. Bien que Gintis fasse un vaillant effort pour comprendre et expliquer la génétique, comme Wilson et Nowak, il est loin d’être un expert, et comme eux, le calcul l’aveugle juste aux impossibilités biologiques et bien sûr c’est la norme en science. Comme Wittgenstein l’a noté sur la première page de la culture et de la valeur « Il n’y a pas de dénomination religieuse dans laquelle l’utilisation abusive des expressions métaphysiques a été responsable de tant de péchés qu’il l’a en mathématiques. » Il a toujours été clair que un gène qui provoque un comportement qui diminue sa propre fréquence ne peut pas persister, mais c’est le cœur de la notion de sélection de groupe. En outre, il a été bien connu et souvent démontré que la sélection de groupe réduit juste à la condition physique inclusive (sélection de parents), qui, comme Dawkins l’a noté, est juste un autre nom pour l’évolution par sélection naturelle. Comme Wilson, Gintis a travaillé dans cette arène pendant environ 50 ans et n’a toujours pas compris, mais après le scandale a éclaté, il ne m’a fallu que 3 jours pour trouver, lire et comprendre le travail professionnel le plus pertinent, comme détaillé dans mon article. Il est ahurissant de se rendre compte que Gintis et Wilson n’ont pas été en mesure d’y parvenir en près d’un demi-siècle. Je discute des erreurs de sélection de groupe et de phénoménologie qui sont la norme dans le milieu universitaire comme des cas spéciaux de l’échec quasi universel de comprendre la nature humaine qui détruisent l’Amérique et le monde. Ceux qui souhaitent un cadre complet à jour pour le comportement humain de la vue moderne de deux systemes peuvent consulter mon livre 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Ceux qui s’intéressent à plus de mes écrits peuvent voir «Talking Monkeys --Philosophie, Psychologie, Science, Religion et Politique sur une planète condamnée --Articles et revues 2006-2019 3e ed (2019) et Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2020) et autres. (shrink)

Automated Influence is the use of Artificial Intelligence to collect, integrate, and analyse people’s data in order to deliver targeted interventions that shape their behaviour. We consider three central objections against Automated Influence, focusing on privacy, exploitation, and manipulation, showing in each case how a structural version of that objection has more purchase than its interactional counterpart. By rejecting the interactional focus of “AI Ethics” in favour of a more structural, political philosophy of AI, we show that the real problem (...) with Automated Influence is the crisis of legitimacy that it precipitates. (shrink)

A familiar part of debates about supererogatory actions concerns the role that cost should play. Two camps have emerged: one claiming that extreme cost is a necessary condition for when an action is supererogatory, while the other denies that it should be part of our definition of supererogation. In this paper, I propose an alternative position. I argue that it is comparative cost that is central to the supererogatory and that it is needed to explain a feature that all accounts (...) agree is central to the very notion of supererogation: optionality. Perhaps because of this agreement on its importance, few attempts have been made to clarify and explain the notion of optionality. I argue that giving an account of the optionality of supererogatory requires drawing a line between doing the bare minimum permissible and going beyond the bare minimum and that this line ought to be drawn based on comparative cost of alternative permissible acts. Having outlined my account and motivated it, I discuss and reject two concerns that might be raised: firstly, that it is extreme cost, not comparative cost, that matters and, secondly, that in fact no cost is needed for an act to be supererogatory. (shrink)

Standing in San Marco Cathedral in Venice, you immediately notice the exquisitely decorated spandrels: the triangular spaces bounded on either side by adjoining arches and by the dome above. You would be forgiven for seeing them as the starting point from which to understand the surrounding architecture. To do so would, however, be a mistake. It is a similar mistaken inference that evolutionary biologists have been accused of making in assuming a special adaptive purpose for such biological features as fingerprints (...) and chins. I argue that a mistake of just this sort is being made by ethicists who appeal to the intrinsic value of supererogatory acts in their efforts to make space for supererogation in ethical theory. Many cases of supererogatory action are simply spandrels: by-products of uncontroversial commitments elsewhere in our moral thought. This is not to downplay their value but rather to show that their value need not be the justification for making room for the supererogatory. I demonstrate this by examining two areas: rights and the distribution of burdens among a group. My argument has significance for those who take themselves to be defends of the possibility of supererogatory actions, as well as those who are committed to the contrary and those who believe themselves to be indifferent on the matter. (shrink)

There has been some debate as to whether or not it is possible to keep a promise, and thus fulfil a duty, to supererogate. In this paper, I argue, in agreement with Jason Kawall, that such promises cannot be kept. However, I disagree with Kawall’s diagnosis of the problem and provide an alternative account. In the first section, I examine the debate between Kawall and David Heyd, who rejects Kawall’s claim that promises to supererogate cannot be kept. I disagree with (...) Heyd’s argument, as it fails to get to the heart of the problem Kawall articulates. Kawall’s argument however fails to make clear the problem with promising to supererogate because his discussion relies on the plausibility of the following claim: that supererogatory actions cannot also fulfil obligations. I argue that this view is mistaken because there are clear examples of supererogatory actions that also fulfil obligations. In the final section, I give my alternative account of the problem, identifying exactly what is wrong with fulfilling a duty, and thus keeping a promise, to supererogate. My diagnosis emphasises the importance of identifying non-supererogatory actions when it comes to understanding the way in which supererogatory actions go above and beyond the call of duty. (shrink)

Amy saves a man from drowning despite the risk to herself, because she is moved by his plight. This is a quintessentially supererogatory act: an act that goes above and beyond the call of duty. Beth, on the other hand, saves a man from drowning because she wants to get her name in the paper. On this second example, opinions differ. One view of supererogation holds that, despite being optional and good, Beth’s act is not supererogatory because she is not (...) praiseworthy; the other agrees that Beth is not praiseworthy but holds that her act is nevertheless supererogatory because, while supererogatory actions are generally performed by praiseworthy agents, an individual need not be praiseworthy for their act to be supererogatory. In this paper, I raise a problem for this latter position, which I shall call the Anti-Motivation View of supererogation. While the Anti-Motivation View rejects the claim that the agent’s motivations are important, it accepts that the agent’s intentions are. Thus, this view assumes that a clear, coherent distinction can be drawn between intentions and motivations in the context of supererogation. This distinction is often attributed to Mill; however, his original discussion reveals an inconsistency. Consider Clara, who saves a man from drowning because she wants to torture him later. According to Mill, Clara’s act is not morally good; those who follow Mill will have to accept that it is therefore not supererogatory. Mill asserts that Clara’s act differs from Amy’s and Beth’s not just in motivation but also in intention. I question this explanation and demonstrate that the distinction between motivation and intention is not as clear as the Anti-Motivation View has supposed and that the gap between the Anti-Motivation View and the alternative Praise-Based View is either much greater or much smaller than previously thought. (shrink)

Moral theories that demand that we do what is morally best leave no room for the supererogatory. One argument against such theories is that they fail to realize the value of autonomy: supererogatory acts allow for the exercise of autonomy because their omissions are not accompanied by any threats of sanctions, unlike obligatory ones. While this argument fails, I use the distinction it draws – between omissions of obligatory and supererogatory acts in terms of appropriate sanctions – to draw a (...) parallel with psychological perfectionism. Through this parallel, I demonstrate that requiring what is morally best is in fact counter-productive. Thus, by its own lights, a theory that wants us to do what is best ought at the very least to tell us to believe that some actions are supererogatory. As the old adage goes, the best is the enemy of the good; I argue here that the supererogatory is the solution. (shrink)

The Enkratic Principle enjoys something of a protected status as a requirement of rationality. I argue that this status is undeserved, at least in the epistemic domain. Compliance with the principle should not be thought of as a requirement of epistemic rationality, but rather as defeasible indication of epistemic blamelessness. To show this, I present the Puzzle of Inconsistent Requirements, and argue that the best way to solve it is to distinguish two kinds of epistemic evaluation – requirement evaluations and (...) appraisal evaluations. This allows us to solve the puzzle while accommodating traditional motivations for thinking of the Enkratic Principle as a requirement of rationality. (shrink)

Can we make mistakes about what rationality requires? A natural answer is that we can, since it is a platitude that rational belief does not require truth; it is possible for a belief to be rational and mistaken, and this holds for any subject matter at all. However, the platitude causes trouble when applied to rationality itself. The possibility of rational mistakes about what rationality requires generates a puzzle. When combined with two further plausible claims – the enkratic principle, and (...) the claim that rational requirements apply universally – we get the result that rationality generates inconsistent requirements. One popular and attractive solution to the puzzle denies that it is possible to make rational mistakes about what rationality requires. I show why (contra Titelbaum (2015b), and Littlejohn (2015)) this solution is doomed to fail. (shrink)

Is logic normative for belief? A standard approach to answering this question has been to investigate bridge principles relating claims of logical consequence to norms for belief. Although the question is naturally an epistemic one, bridge principles have typically been investigated in isolation from epistemic debates over the correct norms for belief. In this paper we tackle the question of whether logic is normative for belief by proposing a Kripkean model theory accounting for the interaction between logical, doxastic, epistemic and (...) deontic notions and using this model theory to show which bridge principles are implied by epistemic norms that we have independent reason to accept, for example, theknowledge normand thetruth norm. We propose a preliminary theory of the interaction between logical, doxastic, epistemic and deontic notions that has among its commitments bridge principles expressing how logic is normative for belief. We also show how our framework suggests that logic is exceptionally normative. (shrink)

By drawing attention to these facts and to the relationship between Cantor’s and Husserl's ideas, I have tried to contribute to putting Frege's attack on Husserl "in the proper light" by providing some insight into some of the issues underling criticisms which Frege himself suggested were not purely aimed at Husserl's book. I have tried to undermine the popular idea that Frege's review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic is a straightforward, objective assessment of Husserl’s book, and to give some specific (...) reasons for thinking that the uncritical reading of Frege's review has unfairly distorted philosophers' perception of a work they do not know very well. (shrink)

I argue that there are some situations in which it is praiseworthy to be motivated only by moral rightness de dicto, even if this results in wrongdoing. I consider a set of cases that are challenging for views that dispute this, prioritising concern for what is morally important in moral evaluation. In these cases, the agent is not concerned about what is morally important, does the wrong thing, but nevertheless seems praiseworthy rather than blameworthy. I argue that the views under (...) discussion cannot accommodate this, and should be amended to recognise that it is often praiseworthy to be motivated to do what is right. (shrink)

De Re Significance accounts of moral appraisal consider an agent’s responsiveness to a particular kind of reason, normative moral reasons de re, to be of central significance for moral appraisal. Here, I argue that such accounts find it difficult to accommodate some neuroatypical agents. I offer an alternative account of how an agent’s responsiveness to normative moral reasons affects moral appraisal – the Reasonable Expectations Account. According to this account, what is significant for appraisal is not the content of the (...) reasons an agent is responsive to, but rather whether she is responsive to the reasons it is reasonable to expect her to be responsive to, irrespective of their content. I argue that this account does a better job of dealing with neuroatypical agents, while agreeing with the De Re Significance accounts on more ordinary cases. (shrink)

Is normative uncertainty like factual uncertainty? Should it have the same effects on our actions? Some have thought not. Those who defend an asymmetry between normative and factual uncertainty typically do so as part of the claim that our moral beliefs in general are irrelevant to both the moral value and the moral worth of our actions. Here I use the consideration of Jackson cases to challenge this view, arguing that we can explain away the apparent asymmetries between normative and (...) factual uncertainty by considering the particular features of the cases in greater detail. Such consideration shows that, in fact, normative and factual uncertainty are equally relevant to moral assessment. (shrink)

Incoherence is usually regarded as a bad thing. Incoherence suggests irrationality, confusion, paradox. Incoherentism disagrees: incoherence is not always a bad thing, sometimes we ought to be incoherent. If correct, Incoherentism has important and controversial implications. It implies that rationality does not always require coherence. Dilemmism and Incoherentism both embrace conflict in epistemology. After identifying some important differences between these two ways of embracing conflict, I offer some reasons to prefer Incoherentism over Dilemmism. Namely, that Incoherentism allows us to deliberate (...) about what we ought to believe using ordinary epistemology, and it does a better job of accommodating the positive features of incoherence. (shrink)