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.

Conceptual analyses can be subdivided into two classes, good and evil. Em- pirical analysis is the good kind, routinely practiced in the sciences. Orthodox analysis is the malevolent version that plagues philosophical discourse. In this paper, I will clarify the difference between them, provide some reasons to prefer good over evil, and illustrate their consequences for the metaphysics of causation. By conducting an empirical analysis of causation rather than an orthodox analysis, one can segregate the genuine metaphysical problems that need (...) to be addressed from the many pseudo-problems that have long dogged traditional accounts of causation. (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)

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)

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)

Loss of personal identity in dementia can raise a number of ethical considerations, including the applicability of advance directives and the validity of patient preferences that seem incongruous with a previous history of values. In this chapter, we first endorse the self-concept view as the most appropriate approach to personal continuity in healthcare. We briefly describe two different types of dementia, Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) and behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bv-FTD). We identify elements considered important for the continuation of a self-concept, including (...) continuation of memories, consistency in personality traits and personal preferences, and continued endorsement of certain moral tenets. We show that, depending on which element is considered most important for personal identity, continuity of a self-concept for individuals with distinct types of dementia will be affected and assessed differently. Utilizing a variety of empirical evidence, we argue that persistence of memory, personality traits, and preferences are not the most important for the maintenance of personal identity. Instead, as studies aimed to capture the folk-psychological view of personal continuity demonstrate, judgements about continuity depend primarily on the persistent commitment to widely shared moral beliefs. Because of that, we argue that individuals with bv-FTD are more likely to lose their sense of self than individuals whose dementia primarily affects memory, such as Alzheimer’s disease. We end the chapter by showing how the importance of moral beliefs for continuity of self can be used to provide guidance to health-care professionals when considering changes in preference by individuals with dementia. (shrink)

Birks and Buyx (2018) claim that, at least in the foreseeable future, nonconsensual neurointerventions will almost certainly suppress some valuable mental states and will thereby impose an objectionable harm to mental integrity—a harm that it is pro tanto wrong to impose. Of course, incarceration also interferes with valuable mental states, so might seem to be objectionable in the same way. However, Birks and Buyx block this result by maintaining that the negative mental effects of incarceration are merely foreseen, whereas those (...) of neurointerventions are intended. We dispute Birks and Buyx’s characterization of the descriptive difference between these effects. In both cases, the negative effects are caused, not constituted, by the act in question. (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)

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)

I argue that the blameworthy deserve to suffer in that they deserve to feel guilt, which is the unpleasant experience of appreciating one’s apparent culpability for having done wrong. I argue that the blameworthy deserve to feel guilt because they owe it to those whom they’ve culpably wronged to (a) hold themselves accountable, (b) manifest the proper regard for those whom they’ve wronged, and (c) appreciate their culpability for, and the moral significance of, their wrongdoing. And I argue that the (...) blameworthy must feel guilt to satisfy a–c. What’s more, I argue that, in thinking about whether the blameworthy deserve to feel guilt, we need to compare the world in which the blameworthy feel guilt to the world in which the non-blameworthy feel guilt, for, as I argue, it’s insufficient to compare only the world in which the blameworthy feel guilt to the world in which the blameworthy don’t feel guilt. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

Every day the news shows us provoking stories about what's going on in the world, about events which raise moral questions and problems. In Philosophers Take On the World a team of philosophers get to grips with a variety of these controversial issues, from the amusing to the shocking, in short, engaging, often controversial pieces. This chapter covers drug use, making you think again about the judgements we make on a daily basis and the ways in which we choose to (...) conduct our lives. (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)

Studies of visual event individuation often consider people's representations of activities involving agents performing complex tasks. Concomitantly, theories of event individuation emphasize predictions about agents' intentions. Studies that have examined simple, non-agential occurrences leave open the possiblity that principles of visual object individuation play a role in visual event individuation. Unearthing principles that may be sufficient for event individuation which are distinct both from predictions about agents' intentions and from visual object individuation, we draw on and extend studies that reveal (...) object and event representation to be deeply analogous in our cognitive economy. We provide evidence that ‘temporal shaping' is a sufficient low-level perceptual criterion for the visual individuation of events. In our study, temporal shaping is effected by the introduction of pauses into an otherwise continuous process. Future studies should address other visual mechanisms for introducing temporal shaping (e.g., color changes). (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.

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)

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)

"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)

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 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.

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)

Are the methods of synthetic biology capable of recreating authentic living members of an extinct species? An analogy with the restoration of destroyed natural landscapes suggests not. The restored version of a natural landscape will typically lack much of the aesthetic value of the original landscape because of the different historical processes that created it—processes that involved human intentions and actions, rather than natural forces acting over millennia. By the same token, it would appear that synthetically recreated versions of extinct (...) natural organisms will also be less aesthetically valuable than the originals; that they will be, in some strong sense, ‘inauthentic’, because of their peculiar history and mode of origin. I call this the ‘genesis argument’ against de-extinction. In this article I critically evaluate the genesis argument. I highlight an important disanalogy between living organisms and natural landscapes: viz., it is of the essence of the former, but not of the latter, to regularly reproduce and die. The process of iterated natural reproduction that sustains the continued existence of a species through time obviously does not undermine the authenticity of the species. I argue that the authenticity of a species will likewise be left intact by the kind of artificial copying of genes and traits that a de-extinction project entails. I conclude on this basis that the genesis argument is unsound. (shrink)

Australia, Canada, and New Zealand currently apply health requirements to prospective immigrants, denying residency to those with health conditions that are likely to impose an “excessive demand” on their publicly funded health and social service programs. In this paper, I investigate the charge that such policies are wrongfully discriminatory against persons with disabilities. I first provide a freedom-based account of the wrongness of discrimination according to which discrimination is wrong when and because it involves disadvantaging people in the exercise of (...) their freedom on the basis of morally arbitrary features of their identity. Discrimination is permissible, I suggest, when it is necessary to advance a valuable exercise of the discriminating agent’s freedom. I then apply this account to the case of social cost health requirements. Against critics of these requirements, I argue that it is sometimes permissible for states to discriminate against prospective immigrants with disabilities. States may do so, I suggest, when such discriminatory treatment is necessary to prevent an increase in rates of mortality and/or morbidity amongst citizens. Alongside critics of social cost health requirements however, I argue that existing policies are likely a form of wrongful discrimination insofar as they are too broad to satisfy this standard. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER, I make a presumptive case for moral rationalism: the view that agents can be morally required to do only what they have decisive reason to do, all things considered. And I argue that this view leads us to reject all traditional versions of act‐consequentialism. I begin by explaining how moral rationalism leads us to reject utilitarianism.

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)

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)

Is the flavor of mint reducible to the minty smell, the taste, and the menthol-like coolness on the roof of one’s mouth, or does it include something over and above these—something not properly associated with any one of the contributing senses? More generally, are there features of perceptual experiences—so-called novel features—that are not associated with any of our senses taken singly? This question has received a lot of attention of late. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the question (...) of what it means to say that a feature is associated with a sensory modality in the first place. Indeed, there is only one fully developed proposal in the literature, due to Casey O’Callaghan. I argue that this proposal is too permissive to inform the debate over novel features. I go on to argue that all attempts to formulate a better proposal along these lines fail. The corollary of my arguments is that the question of the existence of novel features is poorly formed. Furthermore, the problem generalizes, with the result that we should not rely on our pre-theoretical notions of the senses as the basis of theorizing about the features of perceptual experiences. (shrink)

Many high-income countries have skill-selective immigration policies, favoring prospective immigrants who are highly skilled. I investigate whether it is permissible for high-income countries to adopt such policies. Adopting what Joseph Carens calls a " realistic approach " to the ethics of immigration, I argue first that it is in principle permissible for high-income countries to take skill as a consideration in favor of selecting one prospective immigrant rather than another. I argue second that high-income countries must ensure that their skill-selective (...) immigration policies do not contribute to the non-fulfillment of their duty to aid residents of low-and middle-income countries. (shrink)

This article analyses the fallacy of wrenching from context, using the dialectical notions of commitment and implicature as tools. The data, a set of key examples, is used to sharpen the conceptual borderlines around the related fallacies of straw man, accent, misquotation, and neglect of qualifications. According to the analysis, the main characteristics of wrenching from context are the manipulation of the meaning of the other’s statement through devices such as the use of misquotations, selective quotations, and quoting out of (...) context. The theoretical tools employed in the analysis are pragmatic theories of meaning and a dialectical model of commitment, used to explain how and why a standpoint is distorted. The analysis is based on a conception of fallacies as deceptive strategic moves in a game of dialogue. As a consequence, our focus is not only on misquotations as distortions of meaning, but on how they are used as dialectical tools to attack an opponent or win a dispute. Wrenching from context is described as a fallacy of unfairly attributing a commitment to another party that he never held. Its power as a deceptive argumentation tactic is based on complex mechanisms of implicit commitments and on their misemployment to improperly suggest an attribution of commitment. (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)

In this paper we analyze the uses and misuses of argumentation schemes from verbal classification, and show how argument from definition supports argumentation based on argument from verbal classification. The inquiry has inevitably included the broader study of the concept of definition. The paper presents the schemes for argument from classification and for argument from definition, and shows how the latter type of argument so typically supports the former. The problem of analyzing arguments based on classification is framed in a (...) structure that reveals the crucial role it plays in the persuasion process. The survey of the literature includes the work of Hastings, Perelman, Kienpointner and Schiappa, but still finds much of value in Aristotle. Lessons drawn from Aristotle’s Topics are shown to be useful for developing new tools for assessing definitions and arguments from definition. (shrink)

This chapter proposes a dialectical approach to legal interpretation, consisting of three dimensions: a formalization of the canons of interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes; a dialectical classification of interpretive schemes; and a logical and computational model for comparing the arguments pro and contra an interpretation. The traditional interpretive maxims or canons used in both common and civil law are translated into defeasible patterns of arguments, which can be evaluated through sets of corresponding critical questions. These interpretive argumentation schemes are (...) classified in general categories and a distinction is drawn between schemes supporting and rebutting an interpretation. This framework allows conceiving statutory interpretation as a dialectical procedure consisting in weighing arguments pro and contra an interpretation. This procedure is formalized and represented computationally through tools from formal argumentation systems. (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.

We contend that it is possible to argue reasonably for and against arguments from classifications and definitions, provided they are seen as defeasible (subject to exceptions and critical questioning). Arguments from classification of the most common sorts are shown to be based on defeasible reasoning of various kinds represented by patterns of logical reasoning called defeasible argumentation schemes. We show how such schemes can be identified with heuristics, or short-cut solutions to a problem. We examine a variety of arguments of (...) this sort, including argument from abductive classification, argument from causal classification, argument from analogy-based classification and arguments from classification based on generalizations. (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.

Governments are increasingly using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate policy interventions. RCTs are often understood to provide the highest quality evidence regarding the causal efficacy of an intervention. While randomization plays an essential epistemic role in the context of policy RCTs however, it also plays an important distributive role. By randomly assigning participants to either the intervention or control arm of an RCT, people are subject to different policies and so, often, to different types and levels of benefits. In (...) this paper, I identify one necessary condition as well as a set of sufficient conditions for the permissible use of random assignment by government agencies. I argue first that random assignment is permissible only if it is consistent with governments’ duty to realize morally important outcomes. I argue second that random assignment is permissible in cases where investigators are in a state of genuine equipoise regarding all arms of the experiment and the policy to which people have a claim of justice. Finally, I defend a set of conditions under which random assignment is permissible in cases where one or more arms of a policy RCT are reasonably expected to be either superior or inferior to this policy. (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 I have both reason to bake a pie and reason to bake a pumpkin pie. This raises the question: Which, if either, is more fundamental than the other? Do I have reason to bake a pie because I have reason to (...) perform some instance of pie-baking—perhaps, pumpkin-pie baking? Or do I have reason to bake a pumpkin pie because I have reason to bake a pie? Or are they equally fundamental, as they would be if, say, I had reason to do each because each would have optimal consequences? The aim of this paper is to compare two possible answers to this question—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 feature (such as that of having optimal consequences), whereas omnism is the view that all options are to be assessed in terms of whether they have this feature. I argue that there are at least two reasons to prefer maximalism, for it is able to overcome two critical problems with omnism. (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)

The field of public policy is dominated by the social sciences. Schools and departments of public policy and public administration are largely populated by economists, political scientists, and sociologists, and the vast majority of work in prestigious public policy journals employs empirical methods. This is unsurprising, in one respect, for collecting data, predicting and identifying the causal impacts of policies, and understanding political institutions and processes are massive, important tasks that require the tools of the social sciences. It is surprising, (...) in another respect however, since much policy scholarship and analysis aspires to offer recommendations to policymakers, and recommendations necessarily involve evaluative judgments, for example, that the status quo is deficient and that a certain course of action will make things better. To defend such judgments, policy scholars and analysts cannot appeal to the social sciences alone for these judgments concern the realm of values, not facts. Instead, careful ethical reflection and analysis is required. This need for ethical reflection in public policy is particularly evident in the practice of policy analysis, a principal analytic tool of the field. Policy analyses involve the identification of policy problems, the specification of criteria for evaluating possible solutions, and the recommendation that a policy option offers the best balance of trade offs. This identification of bads, the specification of goods policies should realize, and the weighing of these goods with the judgment that policymakers should or ought to pursue this course of action or that, are all deeply ethical activities. Ethical reflection and analysis is thus a constituent feature of policy analysis, and like the amassing of evidence and projection of outcomes, this reflection and analysis may be performed well or badly. The overall aim of this book is to provide students, scholars, and practitioners of public policy with guidance regarding the ethical dimensions of policy analysis. My aim in this chapter is to set the stage, providing an overview of these dimensions. After providing a brief overview of the practice of policy analysis, I identify the steps of an analysis where analysts must make ethical judgments in order to move forward, and fully articulate the ethical questions they must confront and take a position on. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

For a symposium on Douglas W. Portmore's Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality.

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)

An explanation of our seeming inability to influence the past.

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)