While there has been significant discussion in the health sciences and ethics literatures about problems associated with publication practices (e.g., ghost- and gift-authorship, conflicts of interest), there has been relatively little practical guidance developed to help researchers determine how they should fairly allocate credit for multi-authored publications. Fair allocation of credit requires that participating authors be acknowledged for their contribution and responsibilities, but it is not obvious what contributions should warrant authorship, nor who should be responsible for the quality and (...) content of the scientific research findings presented in a publication. In this paper, we review arguments presented in the ethics and health science literatures, and the policies or guidelines proposed by learned societies and journals, in order to explore the link between author contribution and responsibility in multi-author multidisciplinary health science publications. We then critically examine the various procedures used in the field to help researchers fairly allocate authorship. (shrink)

Can agents rationally inquire into things that they know? On my view, the answer is yes. Call this view the Compatibility Thesis. One challenge to this thesis is to explain why assertions like “I know that p, but I’m wondering whether p” sound odd, if not Moore-Paradoxical. In response to this challenge, I argue that we can reject one or both premises that give rise to it. First, we can deny that inquiry requires interrogative attitudes. Second, we can deny the (...) ignorance norm, on which agents are not permitted to both know and have interrogative attitudes, such as wondering. I argue that there are compelling reasons to deny the former and reasons to question the latter. Both options pave the way for further work on further inquiry. (shrink)

Can you rationally double-check what you already know? In this paper, I argue that you can. Agents can know that something is true and rationally double-check it at the very same time. I defend my position by considering a wide variety of cases where agents double-check their beliefs to gain epistemic improvements beyond knowledge. These include certainty, epistemic resilience, and sensitivity to error. Although this phenomenon is widespread, my proposal faces two types of challenges. First, some have defended ignorance norms, (...) on which agents are only allowed to inquire about things they don’t already know. Second—motivated by strong conceptions of belief or pragmatic encroachment—some have argued that doublechecking destroys knowledge. I argue that these competing views fail to capture both the epistemic value of double-checking and the many reasons why agents might double-check. Moreover, they rely on overly strong assumptions about what inquiry, knowledge, or belief requires. Finally, I marshal linguistic data in favor of the compatibility of knowledge and doublechecking. (shrink)

When we think about agents who change a long-standing belief, we sometimes have conflicting reactions. On the one hand, such agents often epistemically improve. For example, their new belief may be better supported by the evidence or closer to the truth. On the other hand, such agents are often subject to criticism. Examples include politicians who change their minds on whether climate change is occurring or whether vaccines cause autism. What explains this criticism, and is it ever justified? To answer (...) these questions, I introduce the notion of epistemic atonement. By epistemic atonement, I mean the process of making up for one’s previous epistemic failures, including believing badly. Central to my account is the idea that epistemic atonement requires restoring trust and indicating trustworthiness. I flesh out my proposal by drawing on philosophical and empirical literature on apologies, demonstrating that epistemic blame and atonement parallels the moral domain in various under-appreciated respects. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that consent is a normative power. For instance, consent can make an impermissible act permissible. In the words of Heidi Hurd, it “turns a trespass into a dinner party... an invasion of privacy into an intimate moment.” In this chapter, I argue against the assumption that consent has such robust powers for moral transformation. In particular, I argue that there is a wide range of sex that harms or wrongs victims despite being consensual. Moreover, these cases (...) are not limited to those where con- sent is vitiated by background conditions. I start by calling this category of consensual sex Bad Sex. I then distinguish subspecies of this category, including psychological pressure, social coercion, and epistemically unsafe sex. I end by responding to an objection on which we should treat at least some subspecies of Bad Sex as rape. Though this alternative proposal is often motivated by ameliorative and strategic considerations, I argue that such considerations actually count against collapsing the categories of Bad Sex and rape. (shrink)

Deference in politics is often necessary. To answer questions like, “Should the government increase the federal minimum wage?” and “Should the state introduce a vaccine mandate?”, we need to know relevant scientific and economic facts, make complex value judgments, and answer questions about incentives and implementation. Lay citizens typically lack the time, resources, and competence to answer these questions on their own. Hence, they must defer to others. But to whom should they defer? A common answer is that they should—or (...) are at least permitted to—defer to co-partisans. This view initially seems attractive on both normative and empirical grounds. Against this, I argue that deference to co-partisans has overlooked moral and epistemic problems. In light of them, I propose several new ways to revise our expectations of citizens in a democracy both individually and institutionally. (shrink)

In this paper, I motivate a puzzle about epistemic rationality. On the one hand, there seems to be something problematic about frequently changing your mind. On the other hand, changing your mind once is often permissible. Why do one-off changes of mind seem rationally permissible, even admirable, while constant changes seem quintessentially irrational? The puzzle of fickleness is to explain this asymmetry. To solve the puzzle, I propose and defend the Ratifiable Reasoning Account. According to this solution, as agents redeliberate, (...) they gain two types of evidence. First, they gain inductive evidence that they will not stably settle their belief. Second, this inductive evidence affords higher-order evidence that they are unreliable at assessing the matter at hand. The fact that fickle agents gain this higher-order evidence explains why fickleness can be epistemically—not just practically—irrational. In addition to solving the puzzle, my account captures a wide range of contextual factors that are relevant for our judgments. (shrink)

Special issue: Philosophy and Mathematics at the Turn of the 18th Century: New Perspectives.

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the (...) compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on whether and to what extent we judge that people are responsible for the consequences of their forgetfulness. We ran a series of behavioral studies to measure judgments of responsibility for the consequences of forgetfulness. Our results show that we are disposed to hold others responsible for some of their forgetfulness. The level of stress that the forgetful agent is under modulates judgments of responsibility, though the level of care that the agent exhibits toward performing (...) the forgotten action does not. We argue that this result has important implications for a long-running debate about the nature of responsible agency. (shrink)

As part of a review symposium on DARWIN'S ARGUMENT BY ANALOGY: FROM ARTIFICIAL TO NATURAL SELECTION (2021), the journal METASCIENCE invited Roger White, Jon Hodge and me to submit a response to the thoughtful commentaries on our book by Andrea Sullivan-Clarke, David Depew and Andrew Inkpen.

Moral judgments about an action are influenced by the action’s intentionality. The reverse is also true: judgments of intentionality can be influenced by an action’s moral valence. For example, respondents judge a harmful side-effect of an intended outcome to be more intentional than a helpful side-effect. Debate continues regarding the mechanisms underlying this “side-effect effect” and the conditions under which it will persist. The research behind this chapter tested whether the side-effect effect is intact in adolescents with psychopathic traits, who (...) are characterized by persistent immoral behavior, deficient moral emotions, and impairments in some forms of moral judgment. Results showed no differences between healthy adolescents and those with psychopathic traits: both groups judged harmful side-effects to be more intentional than helpful side-effects by an approximately 2:1 ratio. The chapter discusses these results in light of hypothesized mechanisms underlying the side-effect effect, and in light of our current understanding of moral reasoning deficits in psychopathy. (shrink)

In paradigmatic cases of subtweeting, one Twitter user critically or mockingly tweets about another person without mentioning their username or their name. In this chapter, we give an account of the strategic aims of subtweeting and the mechanics through which it achieves them. We thereby hope to shed light on the distinctive communicative and moral texture of subtweeting while filling in a gap in the philosophical literature on strategic speech in social media. We first specify what subtweets are and identify (...) the central features that give rise to their strategic mechanics. Next, we draw attention to problematic aspects of subtweeting and consider conditions under which subtweeting can be justified on moral and prudential grounds. The chapter concludes by discussing practical upshots and noting avenues for future work. (shrink)

Spinoza’s attitude toward nonhuman animals is uncharacteristically cruel. This essay elaborates upon this ostensible idiosyncrasy in reference to Hasana Sharp’s commendable desire to revitalize a basis for animal ethics from within the bounds of his system. Despite our favoring an ethics beginning from animal affect, this essay argues that an animal ethic adequate to the demands of our historical moment cannot be developed from within the confines of strict adherence to Spinoza’s system—and this is not yet to speak of a (...) more robust animal ethics which would advocate actual care and compassion for the animals themselves. We argue that on the assumption of Spinoza’s ontological biocentrism, in the presence of Spinozist determinism and the absence of an axiological biocentrism, an anthropocentric axiology necessarily follows. Any Spinozist animal ethic must fall back, therefore, upon appeals to the maximization of human pleasure and power; hence Spinoza’s ruthless injunction to “use (the animals) at our pleasure.” These are the very ontological and ethical assumptions which have incited human self-exaltation in the modern period, in pursuit of power and pleasure even despite the destructive long-term consequences for all the living. We suggest that an adequate animal ethic would require either an abandonment of Spinoza’s ontological biocentrism or the adoption of an axiological biocentrism. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a social movement which encourages people to do as much good as they can when helping others, given limited money, time, effort, and other resources. This paper first identifies a minimal philosophical view that underpins this movement, and then argues that there is an analogous minimal philosophical view which might underpin Effective Justice, a possible social movement that would encourage promoting justice most effectively, given limited resources. The latter minimal view reflects an insight about justice, and our (...) non-diminishing moral reason to promote more of it, that surprisingly has gone largely unnoticed and undiscussed. The Effective Altruism movement has led many to reconsider how best to help others, but relatively little attention has been paid to the differences in degrees of cost-effectiveness of activities designed to decrease injustice. This paper therefore not only furthers philosophical understanding of justice, but has potentially major practical implications. (shrink)

Explaining the behaviour of ecosystems is one of the key challenges for the biological sciences. Since 2000, new-mechanicism has been the main model to account for the nature of scientific explanation in biology. The universality of the new-mechanist view in biology has been however put into question due to the existence of explanations that account for some biological phenomena in terms of their mathematical properties (mathematical explanations). Supporters of mathematical explanation have argued that the explanation of the behaviour of ecosystems (...) is usually provided in terms of their mathematical properties, and not in mechanistic terms. They have intensively studied the explanation of the properties of ecosystems that behave following the rules of a non-random network. However, no attention has been devoted to the study of the nature of the explanation in those that form a random network. In this paper, we cover that gap by analysing the explanation of the stability behaviour of the microbiome recently elaborated by Coyte and colleagues, to determine whether it fits with the model of explanation suggested by the new-mechanist or by the defenders of mathematical explanation. Our analysis of this case study supports three theses: (1) that the explanation is not given solely in terms of mechanisms, as the new-mechanists understand the concept; (2) that the mathematical properties that describe the system play an essential explanatory role, but they do not exhaust the explanation; (3) that a non-previously identified appeal to the type of interactions that the entities in the network can exhibit, as well as their abundance, is also necessary for Coyte and colleagues’ account to be fully explanatory. From the combination of these three theses we argue for the necessity of an integrative pluralist view of the nature of behaviour explanation when this is given by appealing to the existence of a random network. (shrink)

This paper aims to solve a puzzle for instrumental conceptions of epistemic normativity. The puzzle is this: if the usefulness of epistemic norms explains their normative grip on us, why does it seem improper to violate these norms even when doing so would benefit us? To solve this puzzle, we argue that epistemic instrumentalists must adopt a more social approach to normativity. In particular, they should not account for the nature of epistemic normativity by appealing to the goals of individual (...) agents. Rather, they should appeal to norms or rules of inquiry that serve our collective goals. We argue that epistemic normativity grows out of our need to promote a deep kind of coordination in our basic epistemic practices. By subscribing to an appropriate system of norms, we can coordinate epistemic rule-following across the community. This makes testimony more trustworthy and reliable. This account not only solves a puzzle about epistemic instrumentalism but also sheds new light on the foundations of normativity and emphasizes the need for a truly social epistemology. (shrink)

This paper argues for a treatment of belief as essentially sensitive to certain features of context. The first part gives an argument that we must take belief to be context-sensitive in the same way that assertion is, if we are to preserve appealing principles tying belief to sincere assertion. In particular, whether an agent counts as believing that p in a context depends on the space of alternative possibilities the agent is considering in that context. One and the same doxastic (...) state may amount to belief that p in one context but not another. The second part of the paper gives a formal treatment of doxastic states, according to which belief is context-sensitive along just these lines. The model is applied to characterize (but not to refute) skeptical arguments. (shrink)

In her book Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Ann Hartle argues that Montaigne’s thought is dialectical in the Hegelian sense. Unlike Hegel’s progressive dialectic, however, Montaigne’s thought is, according to Hartle, circular in that the reconciliation of opposed terms comes not in the form of a newly emergent term, but in a return to the first term, where the meaning of the first is transformed as a result of its dialectical interaction with the second. This analysis motivates Hartle’s claim that (...) Montaigne is not a skeptic at all, let alone a Pyrrhonian skeptic. In this paper, I argue that Hartle’s circular-dialectical interpretation of Montaigne is not only compatible with Pyrrhonism, but is in fact an ideal model for understanding Sextus Empiricus’s skeptical therapy. (shrink)

Animal protectionists condemn speciesism for motivating the practices protectionists condemn. This misconceives both speciesism and the morality condoning those practices. Actually, animal protectionists can be and generally are speciesists. The specifically speciesist aspects of people’s beliefs are in principle compatible with all but the most radical protectionist proposals. Humanity’s speciesism is an inclusivist ideal encompassing all human beings, not an exclusionary ethos opposing moral concern for nonhumans. Anti-speciesist rhetoric is akin to anti-racist rhetoric that condemned racists for regarding people as (...) moral inferiors because of their skincolor. Actually, racists never thought that skin color is itself a reason for discounting someone’s interests, just as humans have never thought that only a human can be a proper object of moral concern. Some speciesists have great concern for animal suffering; some don’t. Animal protectionists have yet to show that a lack of concern is due to some false assumptions. (shrink)

Thompson Clarke’s seminal paper “The Legacy of Skepticism” (1972) is notoriously difficult in both substance and presentation. Despite the paper’s importance to skepticism studies in the nearly half-century since its publication, no attempt has been made in the secondary literature to provide an account, based on a close reading of the text, of just what Clarke’s argument is. Furthermore, much of the existing literature betrays (or so it seems to me) fundamental misunderstandings of Clarke’s thought. In this essay, I attempt (...) to explain—concisely but comprehensively—Clarke’s overall argument in “The Legacy of Skepticism.”. (shrink)

Is God a person, like you and me eventually, but only much better and without our human deficiencies? When you read some of the philosophers of religion, including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or Open Theists, God appears as such a person, in a sense closer to Superman than to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It is also a theory that a Christian pastoral theology today tends to impose, insisting that God is close to us and attentive to all of (...) us. But this modern account of God could be a deep and even tragic mistake. One God in three persons, the formula of the Trinity, does not mean that God is a person. On this matters we need an effort in the epistemology of theology to examine more precisely what we can pretend to know about God, and especially how we could pretend to know that God is person. (shrink)

Speciesism defended against common misrepresentations of what people actually believe about human moral status.

Analyticity is a bogus explanatory concept, and is so even granting genuine synonomy. Definitions can't explain the truth of a statement, let alone its necessity and/or our a priori knowledge of it. The illusion of an explanation is revealed by exposing diverse confusions: e.g., between nominal, conceptual and real definitions, and correspondingly between notational, conceptual, and objectual readings of alleged analytic truths, and between speaking a language and operating a calculus. The putative explananda of analyticity are (alleged) truths about essential (...) properties. Real definitions (a la Socrates) are the (alleged) explananda, not the explanans of analyticity. Their truth can be explained neither by conceptual definitions (a la Kant), nor by nominal definitions (a la Frege). The Quinean assault on synonomy is unsuccessful and in any case misplaced, because analyticity turns on the explanatory import of synonomy, not its existence. Synonym substitution in a logical truth cannot yield a necessary truth for it doesn't preserve logical form. Self-identity statements (for properties and/or individuals) differ in logical form from alter-identity statements. (shrink)

The appeal to mechanisms in scientific explanation is commonplace in contemporary philosophy of science. In short, mechanists argue that an explanation of a phenomenon consists of citing the mechanism that brings the phenomenon about. In this paper, we present an argument that challenges the universality of mechanistic explanation: in explanations of the contemporary features of the eukaryotic cell, biologists appeal to its symbiogenetic origin and therefore the notion of symbiogenesis plays the main explanatory role. We defend the notion that symbiogenesis (...) is non-mechanistic in nature and that any attempt to explain some of the contemporary features of the eukaryotic cell mechanistically turns out to be at least insufficient and sometimes fails to address the question that is asked. Finally, we suggest that symbiogenesis is better understood as a pragmatic scientific law and present an alternative non-mechanistic model of scientific explanation. In the model we present, the use of scientific laws is supposed to be a minimal requirement of all scientific explanations, since the purpose of a scientific explanation is to make phenomena expectable. Therefore, this model would help to understand biologists’ appeal to the notion of symbiosis and thus is shown to be better, for the case under examination, than the mechanistic alternative. (shrink)

Experimental work on free will typically relies on deterministic stimuli to elicit judgments of free will. We call this the Vignette-Judgment model. We outline a problem with research based on this model. It seems that people either fail to respond to the deterministic aspects of vignettes when making judgments or that their understanding of determinism differs from researcher expectations. We provide some empirical evidence for this claim. In the end, we argue that people seem to lack facility with the concept (...) of determinism, which calls into question the validity of experimental work operating under the Vignette-Judgment model. We also argue that alternative experimental paradigms are unlikely to elicit judgments that are philosophically relevant to questions about the metaphysics of free will. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty suggests in his Nature lectures that myth provides the best way into thinking the relation of strange kinship between humanity and animality. He goes on to refigure Husserl’s paradigm of the two hands touching to extend beyond merely human-to-human relations, invoking in the process the myth of Narcissus. By carefully examining Merleau-Ponty’s late refiguration of that paradigm, alongside the revised conception of narcissism that it helps him to develop, we find that while human-animal empathy is made possible by a (...) ground of intercorporeal kinship, human-animal estrangement makes possible the emergence of an ethical relation to other animals, contingent upon the sublimation of animal desire. Holding human-animal kinship and estrangement in tension reveals a nascent ideal present implicitly in the early stages of childhood development: a vision of the possibility of interspecies harmony, rooted in the bodily reciprocity that drives the process of self-maturation. (shrink)

critical analyses of the arguments and attitudes favoring the various popular datings of the inception of a human being's life.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Schweitzer end up defending radically similar, yet critically opposed conclusions about the human animal and its place in nature, particularly with regard to the ethical awareness that does or does not follow from this situatedness. Arthur Schopenhauer’s notion of the will accounts for their similar foundational assumptions. But what accounts for the fact that their shared desire to affirm the will to life leads to fundamentally opposed ethical conclusions? What keeps Schweitzer’s ascetic ethic of reverence for (...) life from evolving into Nietzsche’s anti-ascetic vision of a second innocence beyond good and evil? We argue that situating the notion of reverence for life within an environmental virtue ethics, as one environmental virtue among many, aiming at ecological conversion, better articulates and motivates the disposition demanded by the ethics of reverence for life. (shrink)

Between Schelling’s Über Dante in philosophischer Beziehung (1803) and the Dantean drafts of die Weltalter (1811-1815) stand the transitional texts of his middle period, the Philosophie und Religion (1804) and Freiheitsschrift (1809). His short essay on Dante contrasts an ancient conception of the closed cosmos with the modern universe as dynamic and expanding, then claims to extract from the Divine Comedy its eternal, threefold form. This article considers these schemata as they relate to the Philosophie und Religion and the Freiheitsschrift, (...) disclosing an enduring Dantean influence which first predicts, then persists throughout this stage of Schelling’s philosophical development. (shrink)

Objective We reviewed human–robot interaction (HRI) participatory design (PD) research with older adults. The goal was to identify methods used, determine their value for design of robots with older adults, and provide guidance for best practices. Background Assistive robots may promote aging-in-place and quality of life for older adults. However, the robots must be designed to meet older adults’ specific needs and preferences. PD and other user-centered methods may be used to engage older adults in the robot development process to (...) accommodate their needs and preferences and to assure usability of emergent assistive robots. Method This targeted review of HRI PD studies with older adults draws on a detailed review of 26 articles. Our assessment focused on the HRI methods and their utility for use with older adults who have a range of needs and capabilities. Results Our review highlighted the importance of using mixed methods and including multiple stakeholders throughout the design process. These approaches can encourage mutual learning (to improve design by developers and to increase acceptance by users). We identified key phases used in HRI PD workshops (e.g., initial interview phase, series of focus groups phase, and presentation phase). These approaches can provide inspiration for future efforts. Conclusion HRI PD strategies can support designers in developing assistive robots that meet older adults’ needs, capabilities, and preferences to promote acceptance. More HRI research is needed to understand potential implications for aging-in-place. PD methods provide a promising approach. (shrink)

The Greek constructions of Zoroaster relate to the historical Zoroaster and to the Zoroaster of the Zoroastrian faith in one respect only. The Greeks knew that Zoroaster was the “prophet,” in the sense of the human founder, of the national Persian religion of their times. That, of course, is a cardinal fact, but it is one fact only. For the rest, the Greek Zoroasters — for there were many — were fantasies of their own imaginations. Since the Greeks were a (...) curious and inventive people, these multiple Zoroasters are interesting creations in their own right. Of more importance, they are elements in the “West’s” construction — or misconstruction — of a major “oriental” religion. -/- . (shrink)

Research on the folk psychology of free will suggests that people believe free will is incompatible with determinism and that human decision-making cannot be exhaustively characterized by physical processes. Some suggest that certain elements of Western cultural history, especially Christianity, have helped to entrench these beliefs in the folk conceptual economy. Thus, on the basis of this explanation, one should expect to find three things: (1) a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, (2) that people (...) with predominantly incompatibilist commitments are likely to exhibit stronger dualist beliefs than people with predominantly compatibilist commitments, and (3) people who self-identify as Christians are more likely to be dualists and incompatibilists than people who do not self-identify as Christians. We present the results of two studies (n = 378) that challenge two of these expectations. While we do find a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, we found no significant difference in dualist tendencies between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Moreover, we found that self-identifying as Christian did not significantly predict preference for a particular metaphysical conception of free will. This calls into question assumptions about the relationship between beliefs about free will, dualism, and Christianity. (shrink)

View more Abstract If logical truth is necessitated by sheer syntax, mathematics is categorially unlike logic even if all mathematics derives from definitions and logical principles. This contrast gets obscured by the plausibility of the Synonym Substitution Principle implicit in conceptions of analyticity: synonym substitution cannot alter sentence sense. The Principle obviously fails with intercepting: nonuniform term substitution in logical sentences. ‘Televisions are televisions’ and ‘TVs are televisions’ neither sound alike nor are used interchangeably. Interception synonymy gets assumed because logical (...) sentences and their synomic interceptions have identical factual content, which seems to exhaust semantic content. However, intercepting alters syntax by eliminating term recurrence, the sole strictly syntactic means of ensuring necessary term coextension, and thereby syntactically securing necessary truth. Interceptional necessity is lexical, a notational artifact. The denial of interception nonsynonymy and the disregard of term recurrence in logic link with many misconceptions about propositions, logical form, conventions, and metalanguages. Mathematics is distinct from logic: its truth is not syntactic; it is transmitted by synonym substitution; term recurrence has no essential role. The ‘=’ of mathematics is an objectual relation between numbers; the ‘=’ of logic marks a syntactic relation of coreferring terms. -/- . (shrink)

Antithetical desires displayed throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship indicate the disjunctive assumption that the individual exists either in a state of increasing autonomy, expressed negatively as striving for freedom from divine constraint, or in a state of self-annihilating submission, expressed positively in terms of kenotic unification. Proximity to the divine thereby entails forfeiture of individuality, contrary to the explicit aim of Kierkegaard’s authorial project, and aversion to materiality. This essay enunciates the conflict (I), traces the crescendo of loss that births the pseudonymous (...) authorship and ends in realized longing for death (II), and approaches a more holistic vision of psycho-spiritual development (III). (shrink)

Our culture is conflicted about morally judging and condemning. We can't avoid it altogether, yet many layfolk today are loathe to do it for reasons neither they nor philosophers well understand. Their resistance is often confused (by themselves and by theorists) with some species of antiobjectivism. But unlike a nonobjectivist, most people think that (a) for us to judge and condemn is generally (objectively) morally wrong , yet (b) for God to do so is (objectively) proper, and (c) so too (...) for certain persons in certain relations (e.g., self-condemnation, parental child rearing.) Certainly, religious (e.g., Christian) critics of judging and condemning without doubting the objective truth of their tradition's core moral teachings. Most puzzling is that (a) merely judging and condemning in one's heart may be improper, and (b) someone else with no more evidence or expertise might properly judge and condemn the same action. The answer is in condemning's complex structure of presuppostions. Condemning and judging are acts, and attitudes initiated by the act. Condemnation is motivated by two judgments presumed to justify it, a criticism of a target, and a judgment that the criticism justifies some negative response toward the target. Unlike nonpunitive penalties, punishments are motivated and explained by condemnation. Condemnation is an act of a hostile will, wishing some evil for its target, not (just) as a means to some good. Its root is in damning, an act akin to cursing. It declares a degraded status. The hostility makes it harder to justify condemnation than criticism, and punishment than nonpunitive penalties. Condemning claims objectivity and authority. It involves reflexive evaluation, regarding itself justified, approving its hostile feelings toward the target. Condemners presume themselves entitled to sit in judgment, pass judgment, and cast the condemned down. Those presumptions inhere in sitting in judgment, assuming jurisdiction. Unlike mathematical or scientific judgments, passing moral judgment seems to be a political act subject to extraepistemic constraints. "Who are you to judge?" may properly challenge your right to pass judgment. (shrink)

A resolution to the Russell Paradox is presented that is similar to Russell's “theory of types” method but is instead based on the definition of why a thing exists as described in previous work by this author. In that work, it was proposed that a thing exists if it is a grouping tying "stuff" together into a new unit whole. In tying stuff together, this grouping defines what is contained within the new existent entity. A corollary is that a thing, (...) such as a set, does not exist until after the stuff is tied together, or said another way, until what is contained within is completely defined. A second corollary is that after a grouping defining what is contained within is present and the thing exists, if one then alters what is tied together (e.g., alters what is contained within), the first existent entity is destroyed and a different existent entity is created. A third corollary is that a thing exists only where and when its grouping exists. Based on this, the Russell Paradox's set R of all sets that aren't members of themselves does not even exist until after the list of the elements it contains (e.g. the list of all sets that aren't members of themselves) is defined. Once this list of elements is completely defined, R then springs into existence. Therefore, because it doesn't exist until after its list of elements is defined, R obviously can't be in this list of elements and, thus, cannot be a member of itself; so, the paradox is resolved. This same type of reasoning is then applied to Godel's first Incompleteness Theorem. Briefly, while writing a Godel Sentence, one makes reference to a future, not yet completed and not yet existent sentence, G, that claims its unprovability. However, only once the sentence is finished does it become a new unit whole and existent entity called sentence G. If one then goes back in and replaces the reference to the future sentence with the future sentence itself, a totally different sentence, G1, is created. This new sentence G1 does not assert its unprovability. An objection might be that all the possibly infinite number of possible G-type sentences or their corresponding Godel numbers already exist somehow, so one doesn't have to worry about references to future sentences and springing into existence. But, if so, where do they exist? If they exist in a Platonic realm, where is this realm? If they exist pre-formed in the mind, this would seem to require a possibly infinite-sized brain to hold all these sentences. This is not the case. What does exist in the mind is the system for creating G-type sentences and their corresponding numbers. This mental system for making a G-type sentence is not the same as the G-type sentence itself just as an assembly line is not the same as a finished car. In conclusion, a new resolution of the Russell Paradox and some issues with proofs of Godel's First Incompleteness Theorem are described. (shrink)

The ontological paradigms of Schelling and the late Merleau-Ponty bear striking resemblances to Spinoza’s ontology. Both were developed in response to transcendental models of a Cartesian mold, resisting tendencies to exalt the human ego to the neglect or the detriment of the more-than-human world. As such, thinkers with environmental concerns have sought to derive favorable ethical prescriptions on their basis. We begin by discerning a deadlock between two such thinkers: Ted Toadvine and Sean McGrath. With ecological responsibility in mind, both (...) actually resist Spinozist reduction of the human being to the status of a mere mode among modes. But despite having the same general aim, they end up endorsing contrary practical conclusions. Our objective is to pinpoint the reasons behind this deadlock, indicative of two strands of post-Spinozist environmental thought which stand in tension, and to begin to propose an integrative way forward. The ethical weight afforded by Toadvine to the notion of resistance in the work of the late Merleau-Ponty, namely nature’s resistance to harmonizing, unifying pretensions, invites inquiry into two Merleau-Pontean notions he does not address: the barbarian principle, and the proposal to “Do a Psychoanalysis of Nature.” We trace these to their origins in the works of Schelling’s middle period, arguing that the Schellingian location of resistance in Spirit’s dark ground—alternately conceived as primordial Dionysiac madness, bottled-up within the substratum of consciousness—lends to an understanding of the human, and human responsibility, that harbors favorable implications for environmental ethics. (shrink)

Many healthcare practices expose people to risks of harmful outcomes. However, the major theories of moral philosophy struggle to assess whether, when and why it is ethically justifiable to expose individuals to risks, as opposed to actually harming them. Sven Ove Hansson has proposed an approach to the ethical assessment of risk imposition that encourages attention to factors including questions of justice in the distribution of advantage and risk, people’s acceptance or otherwise of risks, and the scope individuals have to (...) influence the practices that generate risk. This paper investigates the ethical justifiability of preventive healthcare practices that expose people to risks including overdiagnosis. We applied Hansson’s framework to three such practices: an ‘ideal’ breast screening service, a commercial personal genome testing service, and a guideline that lowers the diagnostic threshold for hypertension. The framework was challenging to apply, not least because healthcare has unclear boundaries and involves highly complex practices. Nonetheless, the framework encouraged attention to issues that would be widely recognised as morally pertinent. Our assessment supports the view that at least some preventive healthcare practices that impose risks including that of overdiagnosis are not ethically justifiable. Further work is however needed to develop and/or test refined assessment criteria and guidance for applying them. (shrink)

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which (...) allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's doxastic state. (shrink)

Anthology introduction Intro to Empowering Our Military Conscience.

This essay argues that Schelling's late transition from Negative to Positive Philosophy constitutes a pointed inversion of the path of systematic ascent mapped by Hegel for the first time in the Phenomenology's Preface, which itself establishes Hegel's development out of and beyond Schelling's early philosophy; that a key notion to inspire the Hegelian vision articulated in the Preface returns to cap off the critique implicit in Schelling's late inversion, where this notion emerges from their divergent readings of Aristotle's Metaphysics; and (...) finally, that while Hegel's theorization of the end of all philosophizing represents his innovative enlargement from within the framework he finds in Aristotle, Schelling's vision of this same end facilitates the crisis of reason which opens unto revelation, and so is akin to the vision which carries Aquinas beyond Aristotle, albeit in Schelling's post‐Spinozist mode of thought. (shrink)