There is a major debate as to whether there are non-causal mathematical explanations of physical facts that show how the facts under question arise from a degree of mathematical necessity considered stronger than that of contingent causal laws. We focus on Marc Lange’s account of distinctively mathematical explanations to argue that purported mathematical explanations are essentially causal explanations in disguise and are no different from ordinary applications of mathematics. This is because these explanations work not by appealing to what the (...) world must be like as a matter of mathematical necessity but by appealing to various contingent causal facts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that composer John Cage’s so-called ‘silent piece’, 4’33”, is music. I first defend it against the charge that it does not involve the organization of sound, which has been taken to be a necessary feature of music. I then argue that 4’33” satisfies the only other condition that must be met for it to be music: it bears the right socio-historical connections to its predecessors within its tradition (Western art music). I argue further that one (...) cannot understand the organized sound condition and the socio-historical condition separately and that understanding their interaction has theoretical benefits—not least of which is providing a groundwork for a more culturally inclusive philosophy of music. Finally, I consider a number of outstanding questions concerning the content of the organized sound condition for Western art music in the wake of 4’33”. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has motivated medical ethicists and several task forces to revisit or issue new guidelines on allocating scarce medical resources. Such guidelines are relevant for the allocation of scarce therapeutics and vaccines and for allocation of ICU beds, ventilators, and other life-sustaining treatments or potentially scarce interventions. Principles underlying these guidelines, like saving the most lives, mitigating disparities, reciprocity to those who assume additional risk (eg, essential workers and clinical trial participants), and equal access may (...) compete with one another. We propose the use of a “categorized priority system” (also known as a “reserve system”) as an improvement over existing allocation methods, particularly because it may be able to achieve disparity mitigation better than other methods. (shrink)

Blame is multifarious. It can be passionate or dispassionate. It can be expressed or kept private. We blame both the living and the dead. And we blame ourselves as well as others. What’s more, we blame ourselves, not only for our moral failings, but also for our non-moral failings: for our aesthetic bad taste, gustatory self-indulgence, or poor athletic performance. And we blame ourselves both for things over which we exerted agential control (e.g., our voluntary acts) and for things over (...) which we lacked such control (e.g., our desires, beliefs, and intentions). I argue that, despite this manifest diversity in our blaming practices, it’s possible to provide comprehensive account of blame. Indeed, I propose a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that aims to specify blame’s extension in terms of its constitution as opposed to its function. And I argue that this proposal has a number of advantages beyond accounting for blame in all its disparate forms. For one, it can account for the fact that one’s having had control over whether one was to φ is a necessary condition for one’s being fittingly blamed for having φ-ed. For another, it can account for why, unlike fitting shame, fitting blame is always deserved, which in turn explains why there is something morally problematic about ridding oneself of one’s fitting self-blame (e.g., one’s fitting guilt). (shrink)

There is, on a given moral view, an agent-centered restriction against performing acts of a certain type if that view prohibits agents from performing an instance of that act-type even to prevent two or more others from each performing a morally comparable instance of that act-type. The fact that commonsense morality includes many such agent-centered restrictions has been seen by several philosophers as a decisive objection against consequentialism. Despite this, I argue that agent-centered restrictions are more plausibly accommodated within a (...) consequentialist framework than within the more standard side-constraint framework. For I argue that when we combine agent-relative consequentialism with a Kantian theory of value, we arrive at a version of consequentialism, which I call 'Kantsequentialism', that has several advantages over the standard side-constraint approach to accommodating constraints. What’s more, I argue that Kantsequentialism doesn’t have any of the disadvantages that critics of consequentializing have presumed that such a theory must have. (shrink)

This paper explains the importance of classifying argumentation schemes, and outlines how schemes are being used in current research in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics on argument mining. It provides a survey of the literature on scheme classification. What are so far generally taken to represent a set of the most widely useful defeasible argumentation schemes are surveyed and explained systematically, including some that are difficult to classify. A new classification system covering these centrally important schemes is built.

With an eye on the future of global ethics, I argue that social-media technologies are not morally neutral tools but are, for all intents and purposes, a kind of agent. They nudge us to do things that are bad for us. Moreover, I argue that we have a duty to quit using social-media platforms, not just on account of possible duties to preserve our own well-being but because users are akin to test subjects on whom developers are testing new nudges, (...) and we ought to deprive them of their test subjects. (shrink)

This paper explains the importance of classifying argumentation schemes, and outlines how schemes are being used in current research in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics on argument mining. It provides a survey of the literature on scheme classification. What are so far generally taken to represent a set of the most widely useful defeasible argumentation schemes are surveyed and explained systematically, including some that are difficult to classify. A new classification system covering these centrally important schemes is built.

In this article, I approach some phenomena seen predominantly on social-media sites that are grouped together as cancel culture with guidance from two major themes in Plato’s thought. In the first section, I argue that shame can play a constructive and valuable role in a person’s improvement, just as we see Socrates throughout Plato’s dialogues use shame to help his interlocutors improve. This insight can help us understand the value of shaming people online for, among other things, their morally reprehensible (...) views. In the second section, I argue that it is required for the proper functioning of democratic institutions that some views be excluded from the public sphere, which follows some Platonic ideas from the Laws. In neither case do I argue that this approach is good in an unqualified sense or even ultima facie good. However, I maintain that these important insights from Plato’s dialogues illuminate crucial aspects of how we should think about cancel culture. (shrink)

Katz denies that organisms created in a lab as part of a de-extinction attempt will be authentic members of the extinct species, on the basis that they will lack the original species’ defining biological and evolutionary history. Against Katz, I note that an evolutionary lineage is conferred on an organism through its inheriting genes from forebears already possessed of such a lineage, and that de-extinction amounts to a delayed, human-assisted reproductive process, in which genes are inherited from forebears long dead. (...) My conclusion is that de-extinct organisms can perfectly well have an ancient evolutionary history, contrary to what Katz claims. (shrink)

This is an encyclopedia entry on consequentializing. It explains what consequentializing is, what makes it possible, why someone might be motivated to consequentialize, and how to consequentialize a non-consequentialist theory.

Soda taxes are controversial. While proponents point to their potential health benefits and the public projects that could be funded with their revenue, critics argue that they are paternalistic and regressive. In this paper, we explore the prospects for designing a just soda tax, one that appropriately balances the often-competing ethical considerations of promoting social welfare, respecting people’s autonomy, and ensuring distributive fairness. We argue that policymakers have several paths forward for designing a just soda tax, but that the considerations (...) relevant to ethical policy design are more complicated than is sometimes acknowledged. (shrink)

This paper explains the importance of classifying argumentation schemes, and outlines how schemes are being used in current research in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics on argument mining. It provides a survey of the literature on scheme classification. What are so far generally taken to represent a set of the most widely useful defeasible argumentation schemes are surveyed and explained systematically, including some that are difficult to classify. A new classification system covering these centrally important schemes is built.

We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood—one invoking genetic resemblance, and the other genetic inheritance—and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes’ second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.

In order to improve our understanding of the components that reflect functionally important processes during reward anticipation and consumption, we used principle components analyses (PCA) to separate and quantify averaged ERP data obtained from each stage of a modified monetary incentive delay (MID) task. Although a small number of recent ERP studies have reported that reward and loss cues potentiate ERPs during anticipation, action preparation, and consummatory stages of reward processing, these findings are inconsistent due to temporal and spatial overlap (...) between the relevant electrophysiological components. Our results show three components following cue presentation are sensitive to incentive cues (N1, P3a, P3b). In contrast to previous research, reward‐related enhancement occurred only in the P3b, with earlier components more sensitive to break‐even and loss cues. During feedback anticipation, we observed a lateralized centroparietal negativity that was sensitive to response hand but not cue type. We also show that use of PCA on ERPs reflecting reward consumption successfully separates the reward positivity from the independently modulated feedback‐P3. Last, we observe for the first time a new reward consumption component: a late negativity distributed over the left frontal pole. This component appears to be sensitive to response hand, especially in the context of monetary gain. These results illustrate that the time course and sensitivities of electrophysiological activity that follows incentive cues do not follow a simple heuristic in which reward incentive cues produce enhanced activity at all stages and substages. (shrink)

This paper concerns Warren Quinn’s famous “The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer.” I argue that even if we accept his assumption that practical rationality is purely instrumental such that what he ought to do is simply a function of how the relevant options compare to each other in terms of satisfying his actual preferences that doesn’t mean that every explanation as to why he shouldn’t advance to the next level must appeal to the idea that so advancing would be suboptimal in (...) terms of the satisfaction of his actual preferences. Rather, we can admit that his advancing would always be optimal, but argue that advancing isn’t always what he ought to do given that advancing sometimes fails to meet some necessary condition for being what he ought to do. For instance, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s an option for him. What’s more, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s something that he can do without responding inappropriately to his reasons—or, so, I argue. Thus, the solution to the puzzle is, I argue, to realize that, in certain circumstances, advancing is not what the self-torturer ought to do given that he can do so only by responding inappropriately to his reasons. (shrink)

Following Axel Honneth, I accept that recognition is integral to individuals’ self-realization and to social justice and that instances of misrecognition are injustices that cause moral injuries. The change in approach to misrecognition that I advocate is to replace a macrosocial top-down picture of misrecognition, such as Honneth’s typology, with a fine-grained phenomenological picture of multiple dimensions in misrecognition behaviors that offers greater explanatory power. This paper explains why a multidimensional view of misrecognition is needed and explores the various ways (...) that engagement with pathological norms or disengagement from individuals lead to injustices of misrecognition and how understanding behaviors in terms of these two dimensions—norms and individuals—illuminates causes of injustice. The multidimensional view of misrecognition replaces Honneth’s binary view of misrecognition as the contrary to recognition without replacing Honneth’s conceptions of the value of recognition. (shrink)

Maximalism is the view that an agent is permitted to perform a certain type of action if and only if she is permitted to perform some instance of this type, where φ-ing is an instance of ψ-ing if and only if φ-ing entails ψ-ing but not vice versa. Now, the aim of this paper is not to defend maximalism, but to defend a certain account of our options that when combined with maximalism results in a theory that accommodates the idea (...) that a moral theory ought to be morally harmonious—that is, ought to be such that the agents who satisfy the theory, whoever and however numerous they may be, are guaranteed to produce the morally best world that they have the option of producing. I argue that, for something to count as an option for an agent, it must, in the relevant sense, be under her control. And I argue that the relevant sort of control is the sort that we exercise over our reasons-responsive attitudes by being both receptive and reactive to reasons. I call this sort of control rational control, and I call the view that φ-ing is an option for a subject if and only if she has rational control over whether she φs rationalism. When we combine this view with maximalism, we get rationalist maximalism, which I argue is a promising moral theory. (shrink)

I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian discrimination (...) (krisis), and that there is therefore no completely unintelligent, evil soul in the cosmos that can explain disorderly motions; as a result, the soul is not the principle of all motion but only motion in the cosmos after it has been ordered by the Demiurge. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that online echo chambers are in some cases and in some respects good. I do not attempt to refute arguments that they are harmful, but I argue that they are sometimes beneficial. In the first section, I argue that it is sometimes good to be insulated from views with which one disagrees. In the second section, I argue that the software-design principles that give rise to online echo chambers have a lot to recommend them. Further, (...) the opposing principle, serendipity, could give rise to serious harm, in light of the conclusion of the first section that sometimes we are better off being insulated from some content online. In the third section, I argue that polarization can be a useful tool for inculcating the appropriate attitudes in a person. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that philosophers have not clearly introduced the concept of a body in terms of which the problem of other minds and its solutions have been traditionally stated; that one can raise fatal objections to attempts to introduce this concept; and that the particular form of the problem of other minds which is stated in terms of the concept is confused and requires no solution. The concept of a "body" which may or may not be the (...) body of a person, which is required to state the traditional problem, is, on close examination, incoherent and cannot be introduced into a reasonable philosophical discussion. Also published in The Philosophy of the Body, Rejections of Cartesian Dualism, ed. Stuart F. Spicker. (shrink)

In 1937 Joan Robinson proposed that “when capitalism is rightly understood, the rate of interest will be set at zero and the major evils of capitalism will disappear”. A permanent zero rate would abolish capitalist profit except in limited cases, leaving nearly all output to be claimed by labour as wages. It would allow capital to be allocated on the basis of prospective social benefit rather than short-term profitability and a collateral basis that favours the wealthy. It would remove some (...) of the economic pressure to use resources unsustainably. So why not do this? I argue that the few available philosophical arguments for positive interest rates are unsatisfactory. Those who want a just and sustainable form of capitalism should target net zero for the interest rate. (shrink)

I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at Timaeus 86b in an ambiguous sentence that has been widely misunderstood by translators and commentators. The goal of this article is to offer a new understanding of Plato’s text and view. In the first section, I argue that although the body is the result of the gods’ best efforts, their sub-optimal materials meant that the soul is constantly vulnerable to the (...) body’s influences. In the second section, I argue that every psychic disorder is a disruption of the motions of the inner psychic circles by the body; moreover, I defend my translation of 86b. In the final section, I argue that the goal of education is to restore the circles to their original orbits, and I disarm a possible objection that bad education is also a cause of psychic disorder. (shrink)

This article concerns the place of Plato’s eschatology in his philosophy. I argue that the theory of reincarnation appeals to Plato due to its power to explain how non-human animals came to be. Further, the outlines of this theory are entailed by other commitments, such as that embodiment disrupts psychic functioning, that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, and that the soul is immortal. I conclude by arguing that Plato develops a view of reincarnation as the chief tool that (...) the gods have to ensure that virtue is victorious over vice throughout the whole cosmos. (shrink)

A principal rationale for public policy is to address market failures. Pareto efficiency is therefore a highly common and relatively non-controversial evaluative criterion for many policy analyses and is discussed at length in policy analysis texts. This makes sense, for Pareto improvements involve making at least one person better off without making anyone worse off. Who could object to that? But does efficiency deserve the prominence it enjoys in public policy? Is one policy option better than another, at least in (...) one respect, simply because it is more Pareto efficient? Or, is efficiency valuable for some other reason? In this chapter, I discuss Pareto efficiency as an evaluative criterion and argue that it is a stand-in for a more foundational criterion: wellbeing. I begin with an overview of Pareto efficiency, discuss the various ways in which it is operationalized to evaluate policy options, and argue that it is valuable insofar as more efficient states of affairs promise more wellbeing than less efficient states of affairs. I then raise questions regarding whether the conception of wellbeing presupposed by Pareto efficiency – preference satisfaction – is a defensible conception of wellbeing. I go on to introduce three alternative conceptions of wellbeing which have been proposed and defended by both philosophers and policy scholars, namely, hedonism, objective goods views, and the capability approach, and suggest ways in which each can be operationalized as an evaluative criterion. I close by discussing four ‘theory-free’ approaches to thinking about the impact of policies on the quality of people’s lives. Such approaches reject the idea that there is one single theory of wellbeing that should be used to evaluate policy options, and instead develop ways to evaluate the impact of policies on people’s lives that are not grounded in a specific theory. (shrink)

Statutory interpretation involves the reconstruction of the meaning of a legal statement when it cannot be considered as accepted or granted. This phenomenon needs to be considered not only from the legal and linguistic perspective, but also from the argumentative one - which focuses on the strategies for defending a controversial or doubtful viewpoint. This book draws upon linguistics, legal theory, computing, and dialectics to present an argumentation-based approach to statutory interpretation. By translating and summarizing the existing legal interpretative canons (...) into eleven patterns of natural arguments - called argumentation schemes - the authors offer a system of argumentation strategies for developing, defending, assessing, and attacking an interpretation. Illustrated through major cases from both common and civil law, this methodology is summarized in diagrams and maps for application to computer sciences. These visuals help make the structures, strategies, and vulnerabilities of legal reasoning accessible to both legal professionals and laypeople. (shrink)

It seems that we can be directly accountable for our reasons-responsive attitudes—e.g., our beliefs, desires, and intentions. Yet, we rarely, if ever, have volitional control over such attitudes, volitional control being the sort of control that we exert over our intentional actions. This presents a trilemma: (Horn 1) deny that we can be directly accountable for our reasons-responsive attitudes, (Horn 2) deny that φ’s being under our control is necessary for our being directly accountable for φ-ing, or (Horn 3) deny (...) that the relevant sort of control is volitional control. This paper argues that we should take Horn 3. (shrink)

With the advent of the semantic web, the problem of ambiguity is becoming more and more urging. Semantic analysis is necessary for explaining and resolving some sorts of ambiguity by inquiring into the relation between possibilities of predication and definition of a concept in order to solve problems such as interpretation and ambiguity. If computing is now approaching such problems of linguistic analysis, what is worth inquiring into is how the development of linguistic studies can be useful for developing the (...) theoretical background of ontologies. Our proposal is to develop a theory of definition alternative to the traditional metaphysical approach and the modern relativistic account. We interpret the ancient notion of essential definition in a dialectical perspective, and show how the dialectical definition by genus and difference corresponds to the semantic analysis of the definiendum. The dialectical definition is shown to be grounded on the deepest endoxa (shared knowledge) of a community, and to be the argumentatively strongest definition. After presenting the most common types of definition used in argumentation, the linguistic and logical characteristics of the notion of definition by genus and difference are set out in a pragmatic framework. (shrink)

An act that accords with duty has moral worth if and only if the agent’s reason for performing it is the same as what would have motivated a perfectly virtuous agent to perform it. On one of the two leading accounts of moral worth, an act that accords with duty has moral worth if and only if the agent’s reason for performing it is the fact that it’s obligatory. On the other, an act that accords with duty has moral worth (...) if and only if the agent’s reason for performing it is the fact that it has that feature of obligatory acts that makes them obligatory. I argue that both views are incorrect, providing counterexamples to each. I then argue that, on the correct account, an act can have moral worth only if its agent is motivated out of a fundamental concern for the things that ultimately matter. (shrink)

In his article "Thoughts" (MIND, July 1960) William Ginnane argues that "thought is pure intentionality," and that our thoughts are not embodied essentially in the mental imagery and other elements of phenomenology that cross our minds along with the thoughts. Such images merely illustrate out thoughts. In my discussion I resist this claim pointing out that our thoughts are often embodied in events that can be described in phenomenological terms, especially when our reports of our thinking are introduced by the (...) colorful phrases that Ginnane himself suggests, such as "It crossed my mind that.." or "It occurred to me that…" It is true that we also have a mode of speech in which we report what we have thought in well-formed sentences. Sometimes the very utterance of such sentences is what we call thinking out loud. More often than not, however, our thoughts are fragmentary enough so that if someone asks us what we were thinking, we must stop and rather carefully formulate the expression of those thoughts. In this case there has been nothing running through our minds which can be phenomenologically described as complete sentences, yet in formulating the significance of what has been passing through our minds we do use complete sentences. It is true that one of the confusions we have been bothered by in the past is the idea that in describing the contents of our minds we must somehow find there a proto-type of the report we give in propositional form. The philosopher's phrase "entertaining a proposition" only encourages this confusion, as it looks like an attempt to describe one's mental history phenomenologically. Nevertheless, the successive phenomenological events that occur in our minds often seem to be not merely illustrations accompanying our thoughts, but to embody what we say occurred to us. (shrink)

This essay was completed in January 2016 and accepted for publication in a collection on occasionalism by Nazif Muhtaroglu. It attempts to update the doctrine of occasionalism to make it independent of theism and fit better with contemporary physics and a modern understanding of causation. We find that modern physics provides an avenue to support the essential core of occasionalism.

Relativistic quantum theories are equipped with a background Minkowski spacetime and non-relativistic quantum theories with a Galilean space-time. Traditional investigations have distinguished their distinct space-time structures and have examined ways in which relativistic theories become sufficiently like Galilean theories in a low velocity approximation or limit. A different way to look at their relationship is to see that both kinds of theories are special cases of a certain five-dimensional generalization involving no limiting procedures or approximations. When one compares them, striking (...) features emerge that bear on philosophical questions, including the ontological status of the wave function and time reversal invariance. (shrink)

The paper considers contemporary models of presumption in terms of their ability to contribute to a working theory of presumption for argumentation. Beginning with the Whatelian model, we consider its contemporary developments and alternatives, as proposed by Sidgwick, Kauffeld, Cronkhite, Rescher, Walton, Freeman, Ullmann-Margalit, and Hansen. Based on these accounts, we present a picture of presumptions characterized by their nature, function, foundation and force. On our account, presumption is a modal status that is attached to a claim and has the (...) effect of shifting, in a dialogue, a burden of proof set at a local level. Presumptions can be analysed and evaluated inferentially as components of rule-based structures. Presumptions are defeasible, and the force of a presumption is a function of its normative foundation. This picture seeks to provide a framework to guide the development of specific theories of presumption. (shrink)

In this issue, Elizabeth Shaw and Gulzaar Barn offer a number of replies to my arguments in ‘Criminal Rehabilitation Through Medical Intervention: Moral Liability and the Right to Bodily Integrity’, Journal of Ethics. In this article I respond to some of their criticisms.

This paper proposes an argumentation-based procedure for legal interpretation, by reinterpreting the traditional canons of textual interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes, which are then classified, formalized, and represented through argument visualization and evaluation tools. The problem of statutory interpretation is framed as one of weighing contested interpretations as pro and con arguments. The paper builds an interpretation procedure by formulating a set of argumentation schemes that can be used to comparatively evaluate the types of arguments used in cases of (...) contested statutory interpretation in law. A simplified version of the Carneades Argumentation System is applied in a case analysis showing how the procedure works. A logical model for statutory interpretation is finally presented, covering pro-tanto and all-things-considered interpretive conclusions. (shrink)

I provide a comprehensive metaphysics of causation based on the idea that fundamentally things are governed by the laws of physics, and that derivatively difference-making can be assessed in terms of what fundamental laws of physics imply for hypothesized events. Highlights include a general philosophical methodology, the fundamental/derivative distinction, and my mature account of causal asymmetry.

It is often argued that the indispensability of continuum models comes from their empirical adequacy despite their decoupling from the microscopic details of the modelled physical system. There is thus a commonly held misconception that temperature varying across a region of space or time can always be accurately represented as a continuous function. We discuss three inter-related cases of temperature modelling — in phase transitions, thermal boundary resistance and slip flows — and show that the continuum view is fallacious on (...) the ground that the microscopic details of a physical system are not necessarily decoupled from continuum models. We show how temperature discontinuities are present in both data (experiments and simulations) and phenomena (theory and models) and how discontinuum models of temperature variation may have greater empirical adequacy and explanatory power. The conclusions of our paper are: a) continuum idealisations are not indispensable to modelling physical phenomena and both continuous and discontinuous representations of phenomena work depending on the context; b) temperature is not necessarily a continuously defined function in our best scientific representations of the world; and c) that its continuity, where applicable, is a contingent matter. We also raise a question as to whether discontinuous representations should be considered truly de-idealised descriptions of physical phenomena. (shrink)

This paper uses argument diagrams, argumentation schemes, and some tools from formal argumentation systems developed in artificial intelligence to build a graph-theoretic model of relevance shown to be applicable as a practical method for helping a third party judge issues of relevance or irrelevance of an argument in real examples. Examples used to illustrate how the method works are drawn from disputes about relevance in natural language discourse, including a criminal trial and a parliamentary debate.

I suggest that the social justice issues raised by Internet regulation can be exposed and examined by using a methodology adapted from that described by John Rawls in 'A Theory of Justice'. Rawls' theory uses the hypothetical scenario of people deliberating about the justice of social institutions from the 'original position' as a method of removing bias in decision-making about justice. The original position imposes a 'veil of ignorance' that hides the particular circumstances of individuals from them so that they (...) will not be influenced by self-interest. I adapt Rawls' methodology by introducing an abstract description of information technology to those deliberating about justice from within the original position. This abstract description focuses on computing devices that users can use to access information and information networks that information devices use to communicate. The abstractness of this description prevents the particular characteristics of the Internet and the computing devices in use from influencing the decisions about the just use and regulation of information technology and networks. From this abstract position, the principles of justice that the participants accept for the rest of society will also apply to the computing devices people use to communicate, and to Internet regulation. (shrink)

As Socrates famously noted, there is no more important question than how we ought to live. The answer to this question depends on how the reasons that we have for living in various different ways combine and compete. To illustrate, suppose that I've just received a substantial raise. What should I do with the extra money? I have most moral reason to donate it to effective charities but most self-interested reason to spend it on luxuries for myself. So, whether I (...) should live my life as I have most moral reason to live it or as I have most self-interested reason to live it depends on how these and other sorts of reasons combine and compete to determine what I have most reason to do, all things considered. This Element seeks to figure out how different sorts of reasons combine and compete to determine how we ought to live. (shrink)

This paper compares current ways of modeling the inferential structure of practical reasoning arguments, and proposes a new approach in which it is regarded in a modular way. Practical reasoning is not simply seen as reasoning from a goal and a means to an action using the basic argumentation scheme. Instead, it is conceived as a complex structure of classificatory, evaluative, and practical inferences, which is formalized as a cluster of three types of distinct and interlocked argumentation schemes. Using two (...) real examples, we show how applying the three types of schemes to a cluster of practical argumentation allows an argument analyst to reconstruct the tacit premises presupposed and evaluate the argumentative reasoning steps involved. This approach will be shown to overcome the limitations of the existing models of practical reasoning arguments within the BDI and commitment theoretical frameworks, providing a useful tool for discourse analysis and other disciplines. In particular, applying this method brings to light the crucial role of classification in practical argumentation, showing how the ordering of values and preferences is only one of the possible areas of deep disagreement. (shrink)

In this article, I make the case for the continued relevance of Plato’s Timaeus. I begin by sketching Allan Bloom’s picture of the natural sciences today in The Closing of the American Mind, according to which the natural sciences are, objectionably, increasingly specialized and have ejected humans qua humans from their purview. I argue that Plato’s Timaeus, despite the falsity of virtually all of its scientific claims, provides a model for how we can pursue scientific questions in a comprehensive way (...) that stresses their connections to other disciplines, including the humanities, and that puts humanity qua humanity back in the picture. I then argue that being led by Plato’s philosophy to return humanity conceptually to the natural world can improve our thinking regarding climate change and other important environmental crises. (shrink)

The Quest for Understanding: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy is a fresh approach to teaching philosophy for a new millennium. It presents philosophy as a long conversation of people seeking to understand who we are, what the world is really like, and how we can build a better life. -/- Based on the author’s 20-plus years of teaching philosophy and seeing what works for students, the book is designed to connect with students to help them understand philosophy and why it (...) matters to them, regardless of their major. Its straightforward conversational presentation of philosophy is easy for students, instructors, and general readers to use. -/- Key unique benefits: -/- Never talks down to students but includes them in philosophy’s long conversation Gives a historical presentation that places philosophers in their historical context, showing how philosophers built on the ideas of their predecessors and responded to their times Avoids the disconnected and fragmented view offered by topically arranged textbooks by using a chronological, contextual approach Shows students how philosophy connects to their personal lives by explaining how innovations in philosophy have interacted with and changed history, leading to who we are today Focuses on explaining the ideas of the philosophers, allowing instructors to choose, at their option, primary texts from the plentifully available royalty-free sources Extensively covers vital areas of philosophy ignored by most textbooks, including phenomenology, social and political philosophy, postmodernism, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and 21st century trends in philosophy Provides clear text unencumbered by bells and whistles and extraneous materials -/- The Quest for Understanding provides students with a clear and whole understanding of philosophy and its role in history and society. It shows that philosophy is not dry or obscure, but exciting and alive, and reveals how we are all philosophers. Related ISBN's: 9781792457609, 9781792460692 . (shrink)

This article is featured in a special issue dedicated to theme, "the human being in the digital era: awareness, critical thinking and political space in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence." In this article, I consider the way that social-media companies nudge us to spend more time on their platforms, and I argue that, in principle, these nudges are morally permissible: they are not manipulative and do not violate any obvious moral rules. The moral problem, I argue, is (...) not with nudging in principle but is instead with the fact that users are being nudged towards something bad for them. In practice, this often involves being nudged to spend an unhealthy amount of time using a social-media app or being nudged towards content that is bad for us, such as by promoting eating-disorder content to young girls. Since nudging is morally permissible, it is open to these companies to use the same technologies to nudge us towards the good. (shrink)

"The enterprise initiative is probably the most significant political and cultural influence to have affected Western and Eastern Europe in the last decade. In this book, academics from a range of disciplines debate Mary Douglas's distinctive Grid Group cultural theory and examine how it allows us to analyse the complex relation between the culture of enterprise and its institutions. Mary Douglas, Britain's leading cultural anthropologist, contributes several chapters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights (...) Reserved. (shrink)

Policy analyses begin with a systematic overview of the policy problem they address. This includes a comprehensive discussion of the nature and context of the problem, and the institutional and behavioral factors responsible for its emergence. Problem statements must also explain why the status quo is bad or undesirable, why it is something that governments, rather than private actors, should address, and establish that the relevant government institutions have the legitimacy to intervene. In this chapter, I provide an overview of (...) the principal types of policy problems that it is morally appropriate for governments to address. Each type denotes a class of states of affairs that (1) are bad, undesirable, or unjust, (2) the government is particularly well-suited to address, and (3) arise from spheres of action over which the relevant government institutions have the right to intervene. I begin with a discussion of collective action problems, that is, states of affairs in which action by rational and self-interested private actors is collectively self-defeating. I then argue for two additional types of policy problems. First, since the goal of government action is the construction of a just legal order, not merely an efficient one, states of affairs which are unjust constitute an additional type of policy problem. Relatedly, second, whereas analyses of collective action problems typically presuppose the existence of effective government institutions which can address them, such institutions may be deficient and/or unjust. A third type of policy problem is therefore deficient government institutions. -/- . (shrink)

In this article, I ask whether a principle analogous to the principle of clinical equipoise should govern the design and conduct of RCTs evaluating the effectiveness of policy interventions. I answer this question affirmatively, and introduce and defend the principle of policy equipoise. According to this principle, all arms of a policy RCT must be, at minimum, in a state of equipoise with the best proven policy that is also morally and practically attainable and sustainable. For all arms of a (...) policy RCT, policy experts must either reasonably disagree about whether the trial arms are more effective than this policy, or know that they are. (shrink)

In his article "Thoughts" (MIND, July 1960) William Ginnane argues that "thought is pure intentionality," and that our thoughts are not embodied essentially in the mental imagery and other elements of phenomenology that cross our minds along with the thoughts. Such images merely illustrate out thoughts. In my discussion I resist this claim pointing out that our thoughts are often embodied in events that can be described in pheno¬menological terms, especially when our reports of our thinking are introduced by the (...) colorful phrases that Ginnane himself suggests, such as "It crossed my mind that.." or "It occurred to me that…" It is true that we also have a mode of speech in which we report what we have thought in well-formed sentences. Sometimes the very utterance of such sentences is what we call thinking out loud. More often than not, however, our thoughts are fragmentary enough so that if someone asks us what we were thinking, we must stop and rather carefully formulate the expression of those thoughts. In this case there has been nothing running through our minds which can be phenomenologically described as complete sentences, yet in formu¬lating the significance of what has been passing through our minds we do use complete sentences. It is true that one of the confusions we have been bothered by in the past is the idea that in describing the contents of our minds we must somehow find there a proto-type of the report we give in propositional form. The philosopher's phrase "entertaining a proposition" only encour¬ages this confusion, as it looks like an attempt to describe one's mental history phenomenologically. Nevertheless, the successive phenomenological events that occur in our minds often seem to be not merely illustrations accompanying our thoughts, but to embody what we say occurred to us. -/- . (shrink)

In most academic and non-academic circles throughout history, the world and its operation have been viewed in terms of cause and effect. The principles of causation have been applied, fruitfully, across the sciences, law, medicine, and in everyday life, despite the lack of any agreed-upon framework for understanding what causation ultimately amounts to. In this engaging and accessible introduction to the topic, Douglas Kutach explains and analyses the most prominent theories and examples in the philosophy of causation. The book (...) is organized so as to respect the various cross-cutting and interdisciplinary concerns about causation, such as the reducibility of causation, its application to scientific modeling, its connection to influence and laws of nature, and its role in causal explanation. Kutach begins by presenting the four recurring distinctions in the literature on causation, proceeding through an exploration of various accounts of causation including determination, difference making and probability-raising. He concludes by carefully considering their application to the mind-body problem. _Causation_ provides a straightforward and compact survey of contemporary approaches to causation and serves as a friendly and clear guide for anyone interested in exploring the complex jungle of ideas that surround this fundamental philosophical topic. (shrink)

Some right acts have what philosophers call moral worth. A right act has moral worth if and only if its agent deserves credit for having acted rightly in this instance. And I argue that an agent deserves credit for having acted rightly if and only if her act issues from an appropriate set of concerns, where the appropriateness of these concerns is a function what her ultimate moral concerns should be. Two important upshots of the resulting account of moral worth (...) are that (1) an act can have moral worth even if it doesn’t manifest a concern for doing what’s right and that (2) an act can lack moral worth even if it is performed for the right reasons. (shrink)