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)

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)

Coronavirus disease 2019 can lead to respiratory failure. Some patients require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. During the current pandemic, health care resources in some cities have been overwhelmed, and doctors have faced complex decisions about resource allocation. We present a case in which a pediatric hospital caring for both children and adults seeks to establish guidelines for the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation if there are not enough resources to treat every patient. Experts in critical care, end-of-life care, bioethics, and (...) health policy discuss if age should guide rationing decisions. (shrink)

: Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to (...) the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Übergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution. (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)

I argue that when determining whether an agent ought to perform an act, we should not hold fixed the fact that she’s going to form certain attitudes (and, here, I’m concerned with only reasons-responsive attitudes such as beliefs, desires, and intentions). For, as I argue, agents have, in the relevant sense, just as much control over which attitudes they form as which acts they perform. This is important because what effect an act will have on the world depends not only (...) on which acts the agent will simultaneously and subsequently perform, but also on which attitudes she will simultaneously and subsequently form. And this all leads me to adopt a new type of practical theory, which I call rational possibilism. On this theory, we first evaluate the entire set of things over which the agent exerts control, where this includes the formation of certain attitudes as well as the performance of certain acts. And, then, we evaluate individual acts as being permissible if and only if, and because, there is such a set that is itself permissible and that includes that act as a proper part. Importantly, this theory has two unusual features. First, it is not exclusively act-orientated, for it requires more from us than just the performance of certain voluntary acts. It requires, in addition, that we involuntarily form certain attitudes. Second, it is attitude-dependent in that it holds that which acts we’re required to perform depends on which attitudes we’re required to form. I then show how these two features can help us both to address certain puzzling cases of rational choice and to understand why most typical practical theories (utilitarianism, virtue ethics, rational egoism, Rossian deontology, etc.) are problematic. (shrink)

Famous examples of conceivability arguments include (i) Descartes’ argument for mind-body dualism, (ii) Kripke's ‘modal argument’ against psychophysical identity theory, (iii) Chalmers’ ‘zombie argument’ against materialism, and (iv) modal versions of the ontological argument for theism. In this paper, we show that for any such conceivability argument, C, there is a corresponding ‘mirror argument’, M. M is deductively valid and has a conclusion that contradicts C's conclusion. Hence, a proponent of C—henceforth, a ‘conceivabilist’—can be warranted in holding that C's premises (...) are conjointly true only if she can find fault with one of M's premises. But M's premises are modelled on a pair of C's premises. The same reasoning that supports the latter supports the former. For this reason, a conceivabilist can repudiate M's premises only on pain of severely undermining C's premises. We conclude on this basis that all conceivability arguments, including each of (i)–(iv), are fallacious. (shrink)

The performance of one option can entail the performance of another. For instance, I have the option of baking a pumpkin pie as well as the option of baking a pie, and the former entails the latter. Now, suppose that both of these options are permissible. This raises the issue of which, if either, is more fundamental than the other. Is baking a pie permissible because it’s permissible to perform some instance of pie-baking, such as pumpkin-pie baking? Or is baking (...) a pumpkin pie permissible because it’s permissible to bake a pie? Or are they equally fundamental, as they would be if they were both permissible because, say, they both have optimal consequences? The aim of this paper is to compare two alternative responses to this issue—omnism and maximalism—and to argue that the latter is preferable. Roughly speaking, maximalism is the view that only those options that are not entailed by any other option are to be assessed in terms of whether they have some right-making feature F (such as that of having optimal consequences), whereas omnism is the view that all options are to be assessed in terms of whether they are F. I argue that maximalism is preferable to omnism because it provides a more plausible solution to the problem of act versions and is not subject to any problems of its own. And if I’m right about maximalism’s being preferable to omnism, then most moral theories, which are all versions of omnism, need significant revision. (shrink)

During the past decades, the culture industries have multiplied media spectacles in novel spaces and sites, and spectacle itself is becoming one of the organizing principles of the economy, polity, society, and everyday life. An Internet-based economy has been developing hi-tech spectacle as a means of promotion, reproduction, and the circulation and selling of commodities, using multimedia and increasingly sophisticated technology to dazzle consumers. M edia culture proliferates ever more technologically sophisticated spectacles to seize audiences and augment their power and (...) profit. The forms of entertainment permeate news and information, and a tablodized infotainment culture is more and more popular. New multimedia that synthesize forms of radio, film, TV news and entertainment, and the mushrooming domain of cyberspace, become spectacles of technoculture, generating expanding sites of information and entertainment, while intensifying the spectacle-form of media culture. Political and social life is also shaped more and more by media spectacle. Social and political conflicts are increasingly played out on the screens of media culture, which display spectacles like sensational murder cases, terrorist bombings, celebrity and political sex scandals, and the explosive violence of everyday life. M edia culture not only takes up expanding moments of contemporary experience, but also provides ever more material for fantasy, dreaming, modeling thought and behavior, and constructing identities. Of course, there have been spectacles since premodern times. Classical Greece had its Olympics, thespian and poetry festivals, its public rhetorical battles, and bloody and violent wars. Ancient Rome had its public offerings of bread and circuses, its orgies, its titanic political battles, and the spectacle of Empire with parades and monuments for triumphant Caesars and their armies, extravaganzas put on display in the 2000 film Gladiator.. (shrink)

Tropes is a systematic investigation into the metaphysics of properties, aiming to motivate and defend trope theory, and more specifically Natural Class Trope Nominalism (NCTN). Ehring’s book treats an impressive span of relevant positions, considerations, debates and objections with charity and clarity; it’s also a real page-turner, at least if one has (as I do) a taste for analytic twists and turns.

Non-cognitivists are known to face a problem in extending their account of straightforward predicative moral judgments to logically complex moral judgments. This paper presents a related problem concerning how non-cognitivists might extend their accounts of moral judgments to other kinds of moral attitudes, such as moral hopes and moral intuitions. Non-cognitivists must solve three separate challenges: they must explain the natures of these other attitudes, they must explain why they count as moral attitudes, and they must explain why the moral (...) attitudes are systematically correlated with ordinary propositional attitudes. After presenting the problem, this paper examines several contemporary theories with some initial promise for solving it, and argues that they are insufficient. (shrink)

It has recently been alleged that expressivism cannot account for the obvious fact that normative sentences and their negations express inconsistent kinds of attitudes. I explain how the expressivist can respond to this objection. I offer an account of attitudinal inconsistency that takes it to be a combination of descriptive and normative relations. The account I offer to explain these relations relies on a combination of functionalism about normative judgments and expressivism about the norms governing them. It holds that the (...) inconsistency of normative judgments is primitive. One potential problem for this view is that the large number of normative primitives that the expressivist will allegedly need to accept will render the view grossly unparsimonious. In defending this thesis, I suggest that it is a mistake to hold the lack of normative parsimony of expressivism against its core psychological claims. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim has developed an argument that interactionist dualists cannot account for the causal relations between minds and brains. This paper develops a closely related argument that focuses instead on the causal relations between minds and neurons. While there are several promising responses to Kim’s argument, their plausibility relies on a relatively simple understanding of mind–brain relations. Once we shift our focus to neurons, these responses lose their appeal. The problem is that even if mind–brain causal pairing can be explained (...) at no great theoretical cost, the complex interactions non-physical minds would need to have with neurons cannot. (shrink)

If it is within our power to provide a significantly better world for future generations at a comparatively small cost to ourselves, we have a strong moral reason to do so. One way of providing a significantly better world may involve replacing our species with something better. It is plausible that in the not‐too‐distant future, we will be able to create artificially intelligent creatures with whatever physical and psychological traits we choose. Granted this assumption, it is argued that we should (...) engineer our extinction so that our planet's resources can be devoted to making artificial creatures with better lives. (shrink)

This paper offers a noncognitivist characterization of moral attitudes, according to which moral attitudes count as such because of their inclusion of moral concepts. Moral concepts are distinguished by their contribution to the functional roles of some of the attitudes in which they can occur. They have no particular functional role in other attitudes, and should instead be viewed as evolutionary spandrels. In order to make the counter-intuitive implications of the view more palatable, the paper ends with an account of (...) the evolution of normative judgments as exaptations of the cognitive structures that underlie beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that those who reject higher-order theories of consciousness should not rule out the possibility of having conscious experiences that they cannot introspect. I begin by offering four arguments that such non-introspectible conscious experiences are possible. Next, I offer two arguments for thinking that we actually have such experiences. According to the first argument, it is unlikely that evolution would have furnished us with a faculty of introspection that worked flawlessly. According to the second argument, there (...) are many plausible potential sources of non-introspectible experiences. Given that all of these sources are at least somewhat plausible, it is fairly probable that we have some kind or other. Finally, I consider whether we might be justified in believing that we can introspect all of our conscious experiences if in fact we can. I show that current approaches to justifying belief in epiphenomenal qualia do not carry over. The upshot of these arguments is that we should be less certain that we really know what it feels like to be us. There may be much more to our experiences than we are aware of. (shrink)

ABSTRACT If the future is highly sensitive to the past, then many of our acts have long-term consequences whose significance well exceeds that of their foreseeable short-term consequences. According to an influential argument by James Lenman, we should think that the future is highly sensitive to acts that affect people’s identities. However, given the assumption that chancy events are ubiquitous, the effects that our acts have are likely to dissipate over a short span of time. The sets of possible futures (...) left open by alternative acts are typically very similar in the same way that large random samples drawn from the same population are typically very similar. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (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.

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)

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)

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.

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 much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (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)

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)

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.

On what I take to be the standard account of supererogation, an act is supererogatory if and only if it is morally optional and there is more moral reason to perform it than to perform some permissible alternative. And, on this account, an agent has more moral reason to perform one act than to perform another if and only if she morally ought to prefer how things would be if she were to perform the one to how things would be (...) if she were to perform the other. I argue that this account has two serious problems. The first, which I call the latitude problem, is that it has counterintuitive implications in cases where the duty to be exceeded is one that allows for significant latitude in how to comply with it. The second, which I call the transitivity problem, is that it runs afoul of the plausible idea that the one-reason-morally-justifies-acting-against-another relation is transitive. What’s more, I argue that both problems can be overcome by an alternative account, which I call the maximalist account. (shrink)

In this paper, I take it for granted both that there are two types of blameworthiness—accountability blameworthiness and attributability blameworthiness—and that avoidability is necessary only for the former. My task, then, is to explain why avoidability is necessary for accountability blameworthiness but not for attributability blameworthiness. I argue that what explains this is both the fact that these two types of blameworthiness make different sorts of reactive attitudes fitting and that only one of these two types of attitudes requires having (...) been able to refrain from φ-ing in order for them to be fitting. (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.

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)

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)

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)

The aim of the paper is to present a typology of argument schemes. In first place, we found it helpful to define what an argument scheme is. Since many argument schemes found in contemporary theories stem from the ancient tradition, we took in consideration classical and medieval dialectical studies and their relation with argumentation theory. This overview on the main works on topics and schemes provides a summary of the main principles of classification. In the second section, Walton’s theory is (...) briefly explained to introduce the schemes classification and its different levels. At least, the final part shows the main application of the schemes in computing and AI. -/- . (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)

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)

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)

An explanation of our seeming inability to influence the past.

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)

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)

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)

I defend what may loosely be called an eliminativist account of causation by showing how several of the main features of causation, namely asymmetry, transitivity, and necessitation, arise from the combination of fundamental dynamical laws and a special constraint on the macroscopic structure of matter in the past. At the microscopic level, the causal features of necessitation and transitivity are grounded, but not the asymmetry. At the coarse-grained level of the macroscopic physics, the causal asymmetry is grounded, but not the (...) necessitation or transitivity. Thus, at no single level of description does the physics justify the conditions that are taken to be constitutive of causation. Nevertheless, if we mix our reasoning about the microscopic and macroscopic descriptions, the structure provided by the dynamics and special initial conditions can justify the folk concept of causation to a significant extent. I explain why our causal concept works so well even though at bottom it is comprised of a patchwork of principles that don't mesh well. (shrink)

Using tools like argument diagrams and profiles of dialogue, this paper studies a number of examples of everyday conversational argumentation where determination of relevance and irrelevance can be assisted by means of adopting a new dialectical approach. According to the new dialectical theory, dialogue types are normative frameworks with specific goals and rules that can be applied to conversational argumentation. In this paper is shown how such dialectical models of reasonable argumentation can be applied to a determination of whether an (...) argument in a specific case is relevant are not in these examples. The approach is based on a linguistic account of dialogue and text from congruity theory, and on the notion of a dialectical shift. Such a shift occurs where an argument starts out as fitting into one type of dialogue, but then it only continues to makes sense as a coherent argument if it is taken to be a part of a different type of dialogue. (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)

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)