In her book Uneasy Virtue, Julia Driver presents an account of motive or trait utilitarianism, one that has been taken as “the most detailed and thoroughly defended recent formulation” of consequential virtue ethics. On Driver's account character traits are morally virtuous if and only if they generally lead to good consequences for society. Various commentators have taken Driver to task over this account of virtue, which she terms “pure evaluational externalism.” They object that, on Driver's account of virtue, it could (...) turn out that traits traditionally understood as pernicious are actually virtuous. While many writers have speculated about the forms new 'virtues' might take in a hypothetical world, I will argue that at least one trait that is seemingly pernicious but would have to be counted as virtuous by Driver already exists. (shrink)

Critical notice of Guy Fletcher's 'Dear Prudence: The Nature and Normativity of Prudential Discourse' and Dale Dorsey's 'A Theory of Prudence'.

The shape of a life hypothesis holds that the temporal sequence of good or bad times in a life can itself be a valuable feature of that life. This is generally thought to be incompatible with additivism about lifetime well-being, which holds that lifetime well-being is fully determined by momentary well-being. This paper examines Dale Dorsey’s recent argument that these views are in fact compatible. I argue that accepting the conjunction of these views requires stronger commitments than Dorsey recognizes. (...) After arguing that these commitments are problematic, I conclude that we should reject the compatibility claim. (shrink)

Metaphysics and psychology are two of Brentano’s main areas of interest in philosophy. His first writings, the dissertation On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862) and the habilitation thesis, The Psychology of Aristotle (1867), bear witness to the duality of his concerns. As such, these works were not only significant contributions to the German Aristotelianism of the second half of the XIXth century, but they also played an important role in the development of Brentano’s later philosophy and in (...) defining his school of thought. At the same time, the dissertation, now celebrating the sesquicentennial of its first publication, was received beyond the immediate sphere of the Brentanian school, for its reading played a significant role in young Heidegger’s thought on being, and thus in his development of a new type of phenomenology, distinct from the Husserlian one. The studies comprising this volume examine the relevance of Brentano’s dissertation, of his metaphysics and psychology for contemporary philosophical research. Generally, the papers emphasize a tendency in Brentanian research, which has become more conspicuous in the last two decades, and can be described as a gradual shift in focus from the specific problems of Brentano’s late philosophy, towards his earlier philosophy, especially his first writings and manuscripts. Taking into account both Brentano’s published works, and the manuscripts of the dissertation and the Psychology, the contributions of this volume manage to emphasise unexplored aspects of Brentano’s philosophy and stand witness to the complexity and the historical dimension of a legacy whose richness still awaits full discovery. -/- Table of Contents -/- Ion Tănăsescu, Foreword Edoardo Fugali, Trendelenburg, Brentano und die Aristoteles-Renaissance in der deutschen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Kategorien Dale Jacquette, Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories: First Philosophy and the Manifold Senses of Being Klaus Hedwig, „... eine gewisse kongeniale Denkweise“. Brentanos Rückgriffe auf Thomas von Aquin in seiner Dissertation Susan Krantz Gabriel, Heidegger’s Question and the Fundamental Sense of Being in Brentano Ion Tănăsescu, Franz Brentano’s Dissertation and the Problem of Intentionality Josef Seifert, Über das notwendige Dasein Gottes. Eine kritische Antwort auf Franz Brentanos Kritik des ontologischen Gottesbeweises Paul Janssen, Die Gottesrede bei Brentano Robin Rollinger, Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint: Its Background and Conception Guillaume Fréchette, Deux aspects de l’intentionnalité dans la Psychologie de Brentano Denis Seron, The Fechner-Brentano Controversy on the Measurement of Sensation Carlo Ierna, Brentano and Mathematics Roberto Poli, Modes and Boundaries Federico Boccaccini, La vérité efficace. L’épistémologie de Brentano entre Evidenzphilosophie et pragmatisme Thomas Binder, Der Nachlass Franz Brentanos. Eine historische Annäherung an einen schwierigen Fall. (shrink)

Joshua Greene has argued that the empirical findings of cognitive science have implications for ethics. In particular, he has argued (1) that people’s deontological judgments in response to trolley problems are strongly influenced by at least one morally irrelevant factor, personal force, and are therefore at least somewhat unreliable, and (2) that we ought to trust our consequentialist judgments more than our deontological judgments when making decisions about unfamiliar moral problems. While many cognitive scientists have rejected Greene’s dual-process theory of (...) moral judgment on empirical grounds, philosophers have mostly taken issue with his normative assertions. For the most part, these two discussions have occurred separately. The current analysis aims to remedy this situation by philosophically analyzing the implications of moral dilemma research using the CNI model of moral decision-making – a formalized, mathematical model that decomposes three distinct aspects of moral-dilemma judgments. In particular, we show how research guided by the CNI model reveals significant conceptual, empirical, and theoretical problems with Greene’s dual-process theory, thereby questioning the foundations of his normative conclusions. (shrink)

This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that ‘‘framework debate’’ in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled (...) by these points to explore existing literature on the topic. Despite this literature, pluralism has garnered very little attention from broader cognitive science. We end by briefly considering what it might mean for theoretical cognitive science. (shrink)

Hasker’s “social” Trinity theory is subject to considerable philosophical problems. More importantly, the theory clashes with the clear New Testament teaching that the one God just is the Father alone. Further, in light of five undeniable facts about the New Testament texts, we can know that the authors of the New Testament thought that the only God was just the Father himself, not the Trinity. Hasker can neither deny these facts nor defeat the strong evidence they provide that in affirming (...) a triune God in the late 4th century, catholic tradition departed from apostolic teaching about the one God. (shrink)

In his article “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality,” Joshua Greene argues that the empirical findings of cognitive neuroscience have implications for ethics. Specifically, he contends that we ought to trust our manual, conscious reasoning system more than our automatic, emotional system when confronting unfamiliar problems; and because cognitive neuroscience has shown that consequentialist judgments are generated by the manual system and deontological judgments are generated by the automatic system, we ought to trust the former more than the latter when facing unfamiliar moral (...) problems. In the present article, I analyze one of the premises of Greene’s argument. In particular, I ask what exactly an unfamiliar problem is and whether moral problems can be classified as unfamiliar. After exploring several different possible interpretations of familiarity and unfamiliarity, I conclude that the concepts are too problematic to be philosophically compelling, and thus should be abandoned. (shrink)

The causal premise of the evolutionary debunking argument contends that human moral beliefs are explained by the process of natural selection. While it is universally acknowledged that such a premise is fundamental to the debunker’s case, the vast majority of philosophers focus instead on the epistemic premise that natural selection does not track moral truth and the resulting skeptical conclusion. Recently, however, some have begun to concentrate on the causal premise. So far, the upshot of this small but growing literature (...) has been that the causal premise is likely false due to the seemingly persuasive evidence that our moral beliefs are in fact not the result of natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. Specifically, I advocate the Innate Biases Model, which contends that there is not only compelling evidence for an evolved cognitive capacity for acquiring norms but also for the existence of an evolutionarily instilled set of cognitive biases that make it either more or less likely that we adopt certain moral beliefs. (shrink)

The argument diagramming method developed by Monroe C. Beardsley in his (1950) book Practical Logic, which has since become the gold standard for diagramming arguments in informal logic, makes it possible to map the relation between premises and conclusions of a chain of reasoning in relatively complex ways. The method has since been adapted and developed in a number of directions by many contemporary informal logicians and argumentation theorists. It has proved useful in practical applications and especially pedagogically in teaching (...) basic logic and critical reasoning skills at all levels of scientific education. I propose in this essay to build on Beardsley diagramming techniques to refine and supplement their structural tools for visualizing logical relationships in a number of categories not originally accommodated by Beardsley diagramming, including circular reasoning, reductio ad absurdum arguments, and efforts to dispute and contradict arguments, with applications and analysis. (shrink)

In this paper I tell the story of the evolution of the climate change regime, locating its origins in "the dream of Rio," which supposed that the nations of the world would join in addressing the interlocking crises of environment and development. I describe the failure at Copenhagen and then go on to discuss the "reboot" of the climate negotiations advocated by Eric A. Posner and David Weisbach. I bring out some ambiguities in their notion of International Paretianism, which is (...) supposed to effectively limit the influence of moral ideals in international affairs, and pose a dilemma. I go on to discuss the foundations of their views regarding climate justice, arguing that the most reasonable understandings of their favored theoretical views would not lead to some of their conclusions. Finally, I return to the climate regime, and make some observations about the road ahead, concluding that for the foreseeable future the most important climate change action will be within countries rather than among them. (shrink)

English interpretations, appropriations, and transpositions of the figure of Don Quixote play a pivotal role in eighteenth-century constructions of so-called English national character. A corpus of quixotic narratives worked to reinforce the centrality of Don Quixote and the practice of quixotism in the national literary landscape. They stressed the man from La Mancha’s eccentricity and melancholy in ways inextricable from English self-constructions of these traits.2 This is why Stuart Tave is able to write that eighteenth-century Britons could “recast” Don Quixote (...) in a fashion that followed “national pride” in the “freedom” of their humors.1 However, Don Quixote’s integral place in patriotic self-constructions was troubled by gender. While national character was construed as masculine by default, quixotism’s association with masculinity was complicated by the potential passive penetrability of quixotism and the proliferation of narratives about female quixotic readers. This essay will analyze these tensions. Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–67) are key examples of quixotic texts that respond to the figure of the female quixote by interrogating the relationship between Englishness, masculinity, and quixotism. (shrink)

In this article, I advance a novel hypothesis on the evolution of hominin bipedalism. I begin by arguing extensively for how the transition to bipedalism must have been problematic for hominins during the Neogene. Due to this and the fact that no other primate has made the unusual switch to bipedalism, it seems likely that the selection pressure towards bipedalism was unusually strong. With this in mind, I briefly lay out some of the most promising hypotheses on the evolutionary origin (...) of hominin bipedalism and show how most, if not all, fail in the face of the need for an unusually strong selection pressure. For example, some hypotheses maintain that hominins became bipedal so they could use their hands for carrying infants, food, or other valuable objects. But extant apes are able to carry objects in one of their front limbs (while walking with the other three), and thus it does not seem plausible that our hominin ancestors went through the troublesome transition to bipedalism just so they could carry objects a little more efficiently. After I show that past hypotheses are wanting in the face of this challenge, I argue that there is only one selection pressure powerful enough to instigate a strange and problematic evolutionary adaptation like bipedalism, and that is sexual selection. Specifically, from the fact that bipedal locomotion is an important strategy for intimidating others and ascending the dominance hierarchy in extant apes, I argue that for no particular selective reason bipedal locomotion became a signal for high fitness (much as a large and intricate tail became a signal for high fitness for peahens), and this led to the trait being continuously reinforced in spite of all its deleterious fitness consequences. (shrink)

The introduction (about 6,000 words) to _The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism_, in three sections: utilitarianism’s place in recent and contemporary moral philosophy (including the opinions of critics such as Rawls and Scanlon), a brief history of the view (again, including the opinions of critics, such as Marx and Nietzsche), and an overview of the chapters of the book.

One way to interpret the work of Joshua Greene (2001; 2008; 2014) is that the wave of empirical research into moral decision-making is a way for us to become more confident in our ability to gain moral knowledge. We argue that empirical research into moral judgment has shown (both survey-based and brain-based) that the grounds of moral judgment are opaque on several dimensions. We argue that we cannot firmly grasp what the morally relevant/irrelevant features of a decision context are, understand (...) which cognitive system responds to said features, and further know that we are actually basing our judgment upon what we take to be the morally relevant features. That is, we argue that moral judgment is very much like other kinds of judgment: Deeply influenced by facts about the decision-context and the decision-maker. However, if moral judgment is merely the exercise of our general judgment making faculty, we shouldn’t be surprised by this result. We conclude by considering what this means for our practice of making moral judgments. (shrink)

This World Bank Report offers a new conception of fair decision processes in health financing. It argues that such procedural fairness can contribute to fairer outcomes, strengthen the legitimacy of decision processes, build trust in authorities, and promote the sustainability of reforms on the path to health coverage for all.

Advancements in artificial intelligence and (social) robotics raise pertinent questions as to how these technologies may help shape the society of the future. The main aim of the chapter is to consider the social and conceptual disruptions that might be associated with social robots, and humanoid social robots in particular. This chapter starts by comparing the concepts of robots and artificial intelligence and briefly explores the origins of these expressions. It then explains the definition of a social robot, as well (...) as the definition of humanoid robots. A key notion in this context is the idea of anthropomorphism: the human tendency to attribute human qualities, not only to our fellow human beings, but also to parts of nature and to technologies. This tendency to anthropomorphize technologies by responding to and interacting with them as if they have human qualities is one of the reasons why social robots (in particular social robots designed to look and behave like human beings) can be socially disruptive. As is explained in the chapter, while some ethics researchers believe that anthropomorphization is a mistake that can lead to various forms of deception, others — including both ethics researchers and social roboticists — believe it can be useful or fitting to treat robots in anthropomorphizing ways. The chapter explores that disagreement by, among other things, considering recent philosophical debates about whether social robots can be moral patients, that is, whether it can make sense to treat them with moral consideration. Where one stands on this issue will depend either on one’s views about whether social robots can have, imitate, or represent morally relevant properties, or on how people relate to social robots in their interactions with them. Lastly, the chapter urges that the ethics of social robots should explore intercultural perspectives, and highlights some recent research on Ubuntu ethics and social robots. (shrink)

An elementary algebra identifies conceptual and corresponding applicational limitations in John Kemeny and Paul Oppenheim’s (K-O) 1956 model of theoretical reduction in the sciences. The K-O model was once widely accepted, at least in spirit, but seems afterward to have been discredited, or in any event superceeded. Today, the K-O reduction model is seldom mentioned, except to clarify when a reduction in the Kemeny-Oppenheim sense is not intended. The present essay takes a fresh look at the basic mathematics of K-O (...) comparative vocabulary theoretical term reductions, from historical and philosophical standpoints, as a contribution to the history of the philosophy of science. The K-O theoretical reduction model qualifies a theory replacement as a successful reduction when preconditions of explanatory adequacy and comparable systematicization are met, and there occur fewer numbers of theoretical terms identified as replicable syntax types in the most economical statement of a theory’s putative propositional truths, as compared with the theoretical term count for the theory it replaces. The challenge to the historical model developed here, to help explain its scope and limitations, involves the potential for equivocal theoretical meanings of multiple theoretical term tokens of the same syntactical type. (shrink)

In his eleventh century dialogue De Casu Diaboli, Anselm seeks to avoid the problem of evil for theodicy and explain the fall of Satan as attributable to Satan’s own self-creating wrongful will. It is something, as such, for which God as Satan’s divine Creator cannot be held causally or morally responsible. The distinctions on which Anselm relies presuppose an interesting metaphysics of nonbeing, and of the nonbeing of evil in particular as a privation of good, worthy of critical philosophical investigation (...) in its own right. Anselm’s concept of nonbeing does not resolve the philosophical problem of evil implied by Satan’s fall from grace, but is shown perhaps more unexpectedly to enable Anselm’s proof for the inconceivable nonexistence of God as the greatest conceivable intended object of thought to avoid Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason objection to the general category of ”ontological’ arguments. (shrink)

In Ruling Passions, Simon Blackburn contends that we should reject sensibility theory because it serves to support a conservative complacency. Blackburn's strategy is attractive in that it seeks to win this metaethical dispute – which ultimately stems from a deep disagreement over antireductionism – on the basis of an uncontroversial normative consideration. Therefore, Blackburn seems to offer an easy solution to an apparently intractable debate. We will show, however, that Blackburn's argument against sensibility theory does not succeed; it is no (...) more supportive of conservative complacency than Blackburn's noncognitivism. A victory for noncognitivism cannot be so easily won. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, virtue has become increasingly important in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and education. However, as each of these disciplines approaches virtue from a decidedly different perspective, it has proven difficult to come up with an understanding of virtue that satisfies the standards of all four disciplines. In their book, Jennifer Wright, Michael Warren, and Nancy Snow attempt to put forward such an understanding.

We initially characterize what we’ll call existence problems as problems where there is evidence that a putative entity exists and this evidence is not easily dismissed; however, the evidence is not adequate to justify the claim that the entity exists, and in particular the entity hasn’t been detected. The putative entity is elusive. We then offer a strategy for determining whether an existence problem is philosophical or scientific. According to this strategy (1) existence problems are characterized in terms of causal (...) roles, and (2) these problems are categorized as scientific or philosophical on the basis of the epistemic context of putative realizers. We argue that the first step of the strategy is necessary to avoid begging the question with regard to categorization of existence problems, and the second step categorizes existence problems on the basis of a distinction between two ways in which an entity can be elusive. This distinction between kinds of elusiveness takes as background a standard account of inference to the best explanation. Applying this strategy, we argue that the existence of a multiverse is a scientific problem. (shrink)

The current chapter provides an overview of research on responses in moral dilemmas where maximization of outcomes for the greater good (utilitarianism) conflicts with adherence to moral norms (deontology). Expanding on a description of the traditional paradigm to study moral-dilemma judgments (i.e., the trolley problem), the chapter reviews the most prominent dual-process account of moral-dilemma judgments, normative conclusions that have been derived from this account, and criticisms raised against this line of work. The following sections review advances in the development (...) of alternative approaches that aim to address shortcomings of the traditional dilemma paradigm as well as the implications of this work for psychological theories of moral-dilemma judgments and philosophical inferences about the normative implications of moral-dilemma research. The chapter concludes with a review of research on the links between moral-dilemma judgments and social impressions. (shrink)

Cognitive flexibility, the adaptation of representations and responses to new task demands, improves dramatically in early childhood. It is unclear, however, whether flexibility is a coherent, unitary cognitive trait, or is an emergent dimension of task-specific performance that varies across populations with divergent experiences. Three-to 5-year-old English-speaking U.S. children and Tswana-speaking South African children completed two distinct language-processing cognitive flexibility tests: the FIM-Animates, a word-learning test, and the 3DCCS, a rule-switching test. U.S. and South African children did not differ in (...) word-learning flexibility but showed similar age-related increases. In contrast, U.S. preschoolers showed an age-related increase in rule-switching flexibility but South African children did not. Verbal recall explained additional variance in both tests but did not modulate the interaction between population sample (i.e., country) and task. We hypothesize that rule-switching flexibility might be more dependent upon particular kinds of cultural experiences, whereas word-learning flexibility is less cross-culturally variable. (shrink)

As part of the development of the Symbolic and Sub-symbolic Robotics Intelligence Control System, we have implemented a memory store to allow a robot to retain knowledge from previous exp...

Le but de ce texte est de mettre en évidence les équi­valences entre la façon dont le concept de conatus résout, dans l'Éthique, le problème de l'unité modale complexe. en rendant consis­tant le concept de chose singulière en tant que celle-ci doit être consi­dérée comme un légitime sujet d'attribution d'états, et la façon dont ce même concept dessine le rapport cognitif de l'esprit avec lui-même, rapport par lequel l'esprit se saisit comme sujet de ses états et qui ca­ractérise la notion (...) moderne de subjectivité. Ainsi, en éclairant cet as­pect du concept spinoziste de chose singulière. on comprendra aussi, de façon indirecte, l'une des conditions par lesquelles les choses peuvent, dans la doctrine spinoziste, devenir des objets ou des signes pour la connaissance humaine. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil: moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, (...) a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics. It is argued that this goes some way towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE’s concerns; and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent’s action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil but conversely to ‘receive’ or ‘suffer from’ it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively, in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics is proposed for that theory. It is argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Philosophy East and West Douglas Berger defends a new reading of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XXIV : 18, arguing that most contemporary translators mistranslate the important term prajñaptir upādāya, misreading it as a compound indicating "dependent designation" or something of the sort, instead of taking it simply to mean "this notion, once acquired." He attributes this alleged error, pervasive in modern scholarship, to Candrakīrti, who, Berger correctly notes, argues for the interpretation he rejects.Berger's analysis, and the reading of (...) the text he suggests is grounded on that analysis, is insightful and fascinating, and certainly generates an understanding of Nāgārjuna's enterprise that is welcome .. (shrink)

If you utter sentence (1) ‘Obama was born in 1961’ now, you say something true about the past. Since the past will always be such that the year 1961 has the property of being a time in which Obama was born, it seems impossible that could ever be false in a future context of utterance. We shall consider the case of a sentence about the past exactly like (1), but which was true when uttered a few years ago and is (...) no longer true now. On this basis, we shall conclude that the past has changed. (shrink)

Many hold that distributing healthcare according to medical need is a requirement of equality. Most egalitarians believe, however, that people ought to be equal on the whole, by some overall measure of well-being or life-prospects; it would be a massive coincidence if distributing healthcare according to medical need turned out to be an effective way of promoting equality overall. I argue that distributing healthcare according to medical need is important for reducing individuals' uncertainty surrounding their future medical needs. In other (...) words, distributing healthcare according to medical need is a natural feature of healthcare insurance; it is about indemnity, not equality. (shrink)

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.

Je cherche à explorer comment l'expérience de la temporalité est multiforme et fortement perturbée à l'époque de la pandémie Covid-19 et des politiques de confinement, générant une expérience d'hétérochronie, qui remet en question notre rapport à la vie.

The genetic modification of pigs as a source of transplantable organs is one of several possible solutions to the chronic organ shortage. This paper describes existing ethical tensions in xenotransplantation (XTx) that argue against pursuing it. Recommendations for lifelong infectious disease surveillance and notification of close contacts of recipients are in tension with the rights of human research subjects. Parental/guardian consent for pediatric xenograft recipients is in tension with a child’s right to an open future. Individual consent to transplant is (...) in tension with public health threats that include zoonotic diseases. XTx amplifies concerns about justice in organ transplantation and could exacerbate existing inequities. The prevention of infectious disease in source animals is in tension with the best practices of animal care and animal welfare, requiring isolation, ethologically inappropriate housing, and invasive reproductive procedures that would severely impact the well-being of intelligent social creatures like pigs. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

This discussion revises and extends Jonny Anomaly's ‘public goods’ account of public health ethics in light of recent criticism from Richard Dees. Public goods are goods that are both non-rival and non-excludable. What is significant about such goods is that they are not always provided efficiently by the market. Indeed, the state can sometimes realize efficiency gains either by supplying such goods directly or by compelling private purchase. But public goods are not the only goods that the market may fail (...) to provide efficiently. This point to a way of broadening the public goods account of public health to accommodate Dees' counterexamples, without abandoning its distinctive appeal. On the market failures approach to public health ethics, the role of public health is to correct public health-related market failures of all kinds, so far as possible. The underlying moral commitment is to economic efficiency in the sense of Pareto: if we can re-allocate resources in the economy so as to raise the welfare of some without lowering the welfare of any other, we ought to do so. (shrink)

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking (...) prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your future selves. (shrink)

Philosophers of experiment have acknowledged that experiments are often more than mere hypothesis-tests, once thought to be an experiment's exclusive calling. Drawing on examples from contemporary biology, I make an additional amendment to our understanding of experiment by examining the way that `wide' instrumentation can, for reasons of efficiency, lead scientists away from traditional hypothesis-directed methods of experimentation and towards exploratory methods.

Recently Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux have attacked the core of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition: its commitment to the finitude of human understanding. If accurate, this critique threatens to render the whole tradition a topic of merely historical interest. Given the depth of the criticism, this essay aims to establish a provisional defense of hermeneutics. After briefly reviewing each critique, it is argued that Badiou and Meillassoux themselves face rather intractable difficulties. These difficulties, then, open the space for a hermeneutic (...) response, which is accomplished largely by drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur. We close with a suggested program for hermeneutic thought. (shrink)

Critics of Dewey’s metaphysics point to his dismissal of any philosophy which locates ideals in a realm beyond experience. However, Dewey’s sustained critique of dualistic philosophies is but a first step in his reconstruction and recovery of the function of the metaphysical. Detaching the discussion of values from inquiry, whether scientific, philosophical or educational, produces the same end as relegating values to a transcendent realm that is beyond ordinary human discourse. Dewey’s naturalistic metaphysics supports his progressive educational philosophy. The duty (...) of education is grounded in its service to democracy; it must help students develop the ability to express, discuss, and develop their moral reasoning through experiential and experimental learning. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Ethics: A Radical-constructivist Approach” by Andreas Quale. Upshot: The first of my two main goals in this commentary is to establish thinking of ethics as concepts rather than as non-cognitive knowledge. The second is to argue that establishing models of individuals’ ethical concepts is a scientific enterprise that is quite similar to establishing models of individuals’ mathematical concepts. To accomplish these two primary goals, I draw from my experience of working scientifically with von Glasersfeld (...) for 25 years while he was developing radical constructivism as a coherent model of knowing, and appeal to several of his basic insights to establish constructing models of ethical concepts as a scientific enterprise. (shrink)

In 1935, A. G. Tansley, who was knighted later, proposed the ecosystem concept. Nevertheless, this concept was not without predecessors. Why did Tansley’s ecosystem prevail and not one of its competitors? The purpose of this article is to pin the distinguishing features of Tansley’s ecosystem down, as far as the published record allows. It is an exercise in finding the difference that made a difference. Besides being a pioneering ecologist, Tansley was an adept of psychoanalysis. His interest even led him (...) to visit Sigmund Freud in Vienna for a while. Psychologists had to regard the mind as an entity in its own right, while knowing that it truly was part of a larger whole (body + mind), because the causal relation between body and mind was unknown. This lead Tansley to conclude that psychologists must not objectify the system under study, have to search for causes within their own field, and must not speculate unless this serves a scientific purpose. In 1925, Tansley defended psychoanalysis in a prolonged controversy against a concerted attack criticizing its speculative content and poor scientific standing. This could have been the reason why Tansley kept his ecosystem free of speculative content and unscientific connotation. The competing ecosystem-like concepts, however, have contained philosophical speculation, non-deterministic properties like vitalism or entelechy, or have been burdened with unscientific connotations. Hence, rigorous restraint distinguished the ecosystem concept and made it ready for use by later researchers. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 165-189, May 2022. It is generally acknowledged that a certain amount of state intervention in health and health care is needed to address the significant market failures in these sectors; however, it is also thought that the primary rationale for state involvement in health must lie elsewhere, for example in an egalitarian commitment to equalizing access to health care for all citizens. This paper argues that a complete theory of justice in (...) health can be derived from a commitment to correcting market failure, or in other words promoting Pareto-efficiency, in the domain of health. This approach can address familiar problems around access to care, as well as problems related to resource allocation and rationing, the control of health care costs, and the foundations of public health. Egalitarian theories of justice in health cannot make sense of the depth and pervasiveness of state involvement in health and health care; only a theory rooted in the need to correct market failure can. (shrink)

Rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons. Given the independence of appearance and reality, why think that apparent normative reasons necessarily provide real normative reasons? And if they do not, why think that mistakes of rationality are necessarily real mistakes? This paper gives a novel answer to these questions. I argue first that in the moral domain, there are objective duties of respect that we violate whenever we do what appears to violate our first-order duties. The existence of (...) these duties of respect, I argue, ensures that apparent moral reasons are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality. I then extend these arguments to the domain of overall reason. Just as there are objective duties of respect for moral reasons that explain moral blameworthiness, so there are objective duties of respect for reasons that explain blameworthiness in the court of overall reason. The existence of these duties ensures that apparent reasons are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality. (shrink)

The self can be understood in objective metaphysical terms as a bundle of properties, as a substance, or as some other kind of entity on our metaphysical list of what there is. Such an approach explores the metaphysical nature of the self when regarded from a suitably impersonal, ontological perspective. It explores the nature and structure of the self in objective reality, that is, the nature and structure of the self from without. This is the objective self. I am taking (...) a different approach. In addition to objective reality, which is usually understood and explored from an impersonal, quasi-observational and metaphysically realist perspective, we can also explore the nature and structure of subjective reality. The nature and structure of subjective reality is defined by the nature and structure of first-personal, conscious experience. Subjective reality is as real as objective reality, and a metaphysical realist such as myself can endorse the existence of both kinds of ontology. The mental states that, as experienced from the first-personal or subjective perspective, capture the nature and structure of subjective reality, are included in objective reality. The questions to explore in a subjective ontology of the self concern the nature and structure of the self from the first-personal or subjective perspective, that is, the nature and structure of the self from within. This is the subjective self. (shrink)

The tripartite account of propositional, fallibilist knowledge that p as justified true belief can become adequate only if it can solve the Gettier Problem. However, the latter can be solved only if the problem of a successful coordination of the resources (at least truth and justification) necessary and sufficient to deliver propositional, fallibilist knowledge that p can be solved. In this paper, the coordination problem is proved to be insolvable by showing that it is equivalent to the ''''coordinated attack'''' problem, (...) which is demonstrably insolvable in epistemic logic. It follows that the tripartite account is not merely inadequate as it stands, as proved by Gettier-type counterexamples, but demonstrably irreparable in principle, so that efforts to improve it can never succeed. (shrink)