According to the iterative conception of set, each set is a collection of sets formed prior to it. The notion of priority here plays an essential role in explanations of why contradiction-inducing sets, such as the Russell set, do not exist. Consequently, these explanations are successful only to the extent that a satisfactory priority relation is made out. I argue that attempts to do this have fallen short: understanding priority in a straightforwardly constructivist sense threatens the coherence of the empty (...) set and raises serious epistemological concerns; but the leading realist interpretations---ontological and modal interpretations of priority---are deeply problematic as well. I conclude that the purported explanatory virtues of the iterative conception are, at present, unfounded. (shrink)

This paper proves a precisification of Hume’s Law—the thesis that one cannot get an ought from an is—as an instance of a more general theorem which establishes several other philosophically interesting, though less controversial, barriers to logical consequence.

ABSTRACT This paper argues for a version of sceptical invariantism about knowledge on which the acceptability of knowledge-attributing sentences varies with the context of assessment.

Review of *How Literature Changes the Way We Think*, by Michael Mack (Continuum, 2012).

As global business operations expand, managers need more knowledge of foreign cultures, in particular, information on the ethics of doing business across borders. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to share the Islamic perspective on business ethics, little known in the west, which may stimulate further thinking and debate on the relationships between ethics and business, and to provide some knowledge of Islamic philosophy in order to help managers do business in Muslim cultures. The case of Egypt illustrates some (...) divergence between Islamic philosophy and practice in economic life. The paper concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

A critical survey of Quine's arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction.

Philosophy in the City (or PinC, as it came to be known) is an outreach programme led by student volunteers from the University of Sheffield's Department of Philosophy. It aims to bring philosophy out of the university and into the wider urban community, stimulating young and older minds through events and activities organised with local partners, including schools, charities, and a homeless shelter. Since its inception in 2006, the project has seen hundreds of student volunteers from the university engage in (...) philosophical conversations with thousands of local residents from a wide variety of backgrounds. Sixteen years on, what can we learn from the achievements and shortfalls of this initiative? The present paper is not a systematic review of the project’s history, but a retrospective dialogue between the two authors who both participated in its foundation and its early development: Alexis Artaud de la Ferrière was the project’s first President and Joshua Forstenzer its third. In the course of this dialogue, they revisit the initial motivations and ambitions undergirding the project, discuss the obstacles faced throughout their respective tenures of leadership, and analyse the evolving mission of the project against the backdrop of historic changes in English higher education which occurred during this period. (shrink)

I argue that absolutism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is possible, is to blame for both the paradoxes that arise in naive set theory and variants of these paradoxes that arise in plural logic and in semantics. The solution is restrictivism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is not possible. -/- It is generally thought that absolutism is true and that restrictivism is not only false, but inexpressible. As a result, the paradoxes are blamed, not on illicit quantification, but (...) on the logical conception of set which motivates naive set theory. The accepted solution is to replace this with the iterative conception of set. -/- I show that this picture is doubly mistaken. After a close examination of the paradoxes in chapters 2--3, I argue in chapters 4 and 5 that it is possible to rescue naive set theory by restricting quantification over sets and that the resulting restrictivist set theory is expressible. In chapters 6 and 7, I argue that it is the iterative conception of set and the thesis of absolutism that should be rejected. (shrink)

In this paper, we apply the perspective of intra-organismal ecology by investigating a family of ecological models suitable to describe a gene therapy to a particular metabolic disorder, the adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID). The gene therapy is modeled as the prospective ecological invasion of an organ (here, bone marrow) by genetically modified stem cells, which then operate niche construction in the cellular environment by releasing an enzyme they synthesize. We show that depending on the chosen order (a choice that cannot (...) be made on \textit{a priori} assumptions), different kinds of dynamics are expected, possibly leading to different therapeutic strategies. This drives us to discuss several features of the extension of ecology to intra-organismal ecology. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one logic. Logical normativism is the view that logic is normative. These positions have often been assumed to go hand-in-hand, but we show that one can be a logical pluralist without being a logical normativist. We begin by arguing directly against logical normativism. Then we reformulate one popular version of pluralism—due to Beall and Restall—to avoid a normativist commitment. We give three non-normativist pluralist views, the most promising of which depends (...) not on logic’s normativity but on epistemic goals. (shrink)

When I was eleven, my form teacher, Mr Howard, showed some of my class how to punch. We were waiting for the rest of the class to finish changing after gym, and he took a stance that I would now call shizentai yoi and snapped his right fist forward into a head-level straight punch, pulling his left back to his side at the same time. Then he punched with his left, pulling back on his right. We all lined up in (...) our ties and sensible shoes (this was England) and copied him—left, right, left, right—and afterwards he told us that if we practised in the air with sufficient devotion for three years, then we would be able to use our punches to kill a bull with one blow. I worshipped Mr Howard (though I would sooner have died than told him that) and so, as a skinny, eleven-year-old girl, I came to believe that if I practised, I would be able to kill a bull with one blow by the time I was fourteen. This essay is about epistemic viciousness in the martial arts, and this story is illustrates just that. Though the word ‘viciousness’ normally suggests deliberate cruelty and violence, I will be using it here with the more old-fashioned meaning, possessing of vices. Vices (such as avarice, alcoholism and nail-biting) are common, and most of us struggle with a few, but ‘epistemic’ means ‘having to do with knowledge and the justification of belief’ and so epistemic viciousness is the possession of vices that make one bad at acquiring true beliefs, or give one a tendency to form false ones. My eleven-year-old self possessed the epistemic vice of gullibility and hence showed a streak of epistemic viciousness, which led to the formation of a false belief. Other kinds of epistemic vice can lead to us failing to form true beliefs when we ought to. Consider the internet-surfing karate-sensei who stumbles upon an article claiming that chocolate milk is better than water or sports drinks for promoting recovery after strenuous exercise, and describing an experiment using stationary bikes performed at the University of Indiana, purporting to support this claim.. (shrink)

I should like to offer my greatest thanks to Paul Griffiths for providing the opportunity for this exchange, and to commentators Gillian Brown, Steven Fuller, Stefan Linquist, and Erika Milam for their generous and thought-provoking comments. I shall do my best in this space to respond to some of their concerns.

Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...) of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions. (shrink)

In this brief, we argue that there is a diversity of ways in which humans (Homo sapiens) are ‘persons’ and there are no non-arbitrary conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can include all humans and exclude all nonhuman animals. To do so we describe and assess the four most prominent conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can be found in the rulings concerning Kiko and Tommy, with particular focus on the most recent decision, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc v Lavery.

Corruption is a ubiquitous problem. As Gillian Brock notes early on, it exists to one degree or another in all societies, no matter their stage of development, and is regularly identified by the public as one of the top problems in the world (2–3). Despite its importance and frequency, it hasn’t been a central topic for philoso- phers working on normative moral and political theory. This isn’t to say that it has been ignored, but it has mostly been seen (...) as a specialty topic in areas such as business ethics, criminal law theory focusing on white-collar crime, or certain sub- areas in democratic theory. However, as Brock points out, corruption has particular importance for questions of global justice, given that “corruption plays an enor- mous role in sustaining global injustice and hinders efforts aimed at remedying global deprivations” (17). This comes not only from the sort of large-scale corrup- tion by government officials that starves developing countries of funds needed to provide necessary services but also from more day-to-day corruption in the provi- sion of water, leaving many people without access to clean drinking water; in con- struction, where people must make do with substandard and unsafe buildings; in the provision of education and medical services; and so on. Despite the massive size of the global justice literature, Brock’s book is one of the first—perhaps the first— to focus specifically on corruption in relation to global justice. It would be an im- portant work for this reason alone, but it also has many other virtues which should make it the touchstone of the topic going forward. (shrink)

I was quite excited when I first read Restall and Russell’s (2010) paper. For two reasons. First, because the paper provides rigorous formulations and formal proofs of implication barrier the- ses, namely “theses [which] deny that one can derive sentences of one type from sentences of another”. Second (and primarily), because the paper proves a general theorem, the Barrier Con- struction Theorem, which unifies implication barrier theses concerning four topics: generality, necessity, time, and normativity. After thinking about the paper, I (...) am satisfied with its treatment of the first three topics, namely generality, necessity, and time. But I am not satisfied with its treatment of normativity, so my comments are exclusively on that topic. (shrink)

Critical review of Gillian Russell's "Truth in Virtue of Meaning".

A review article of Gillian Brock's Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account. Reviewed by Dara Salam. Public Reason, Vol.3, No.1, June 2011, pp. 114-117.

How to respond to unauthorized migration and migrants is one of the most difficult questions in relation to migration theory and policy. In this commentary on Gillian Brock’s discussion of “irregular” migration, I do not attempt to give a fully satisfactory account of how to respond to unauthorized migration, but rather, using Brock’s discussion, try to highlight what I see as the most important difficulties in crafting an acceptable account, and raise some problems with the approach that Brock takes. (...) In thinking about unauthorized migration, both while trying to craft positive policies and while critiquing existing practices, we need to ask if we are most interested in a general account of how to respond to unauthorized migration, one that would apply to the large majority of cases and provide us a default approach, or if we are better served by taking a piecemeal approach, looking at why certain people or certain groups should be exempt from removal, even if they would otherwise be liable to it. In this paper, I will focus primarily on this distinction, and argue that it is at least important to provide an account of the "generic unauthorized". (shrink)

Gillian Russell has recently proposed counterexamples to such elementary argument forms as Conjunction Introduction and Identity. These purported counterexamples involve expressions that are sensitive to linguistic context—for example, a sentence which is true when it appears alone but false when embedded in a larger sentence. If they are genuine counterexamples, it looks as though logical nihilism—the view that there are no valid argument forms—might be true. In this paper, I argue that the purported counterexamples are not genuine, on the (...) grounds that they equivocate. Having defused the threat of logical nihilism, I argue that the kind of linguistic context sensitivity at work in Russell’s purported counterexamples, if taken seriously, far from leading to logical nihilism, reveals new, previously undreamt-of valid forms. By way of proof of concept I present a simple logic, Solo-Only Propositional Logic, designed to capture some of them. Along the way, some interesting subtleties about the fallacy of equivocation are revealed. (shrink)

Gillian Brock's "Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account" and Darrel Moellendorf's "Global Inequality Matters" present carefully crafted accounts of the obligations we have to non-compatriots and offer practical proposals for how we might get closer to meeting these obligations.

This article brings Gillian Brock and Alex Sager's recently published books into conversation with my book, Immigration and Democracy. It begins with a summary of the main normative arguments of my book to set the stage for critical engagement with Brock and Sager's books. While I agree with Brock's Justice for People on the Move that state power must be justified to both insiders and outsiders, I think she gives too little weight to the value of collective self-determination. I (...) distinguish between justice and collective self-determination and argue that each is an important component of legitimacy. Sager's Against Borders focuses on immigration enforcement and contends that violence is inherent in border controls. Every legal system is backed by the threat of the use of force; the question is whether the use of force by state agents is justified. In contrast to Sager, I argue that the proper response to the injustices of current immigration enforcement is reform, not abolition, of the immigration system. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, physiologists such as David Ferrier, Eduard Hitzig, and Hermann Munk argued that cerebral brain functions are localized in discrete structures. By the early 20th century, this became the dominant position. However, another prominent physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, rejected theories of cerebral localization and argued against these physiologists until his death in 1902. I argue in this paper that previous historical accounts have failed to comprehend why Goltz rejected cerebral localization. I show that Goltz adhered to (...) a falsificationist methodology, and I reconstruct how he designed his experiments and weighted different kinds of evidence. I then draw on the exploratory experimentation literature from recent philosophy of science to trace one root of the debate to differences in how the German localizers designed their experiments and reasoned about evidence. While Goltz designed his experiments to test hypotheses about the functions of predetermined cerebral structures, the localizers explored new functions and structures in the process of constructing new theories. I argue that the localizers relied on untested background conjectures to justify their inferences about functional organization. These background conjectures collapsed a distinction between phenomena they produced direct evidence for (localized symptoms) and what they reached conclusions about (localized functions). (shrink)

In the course of presenting a compelling and comprehensive framework for immigration justice, Brock addresses discriminatory immigration policies, focusing on recent attempts by the Trump administration to exclude Muslims from the U.S.. This essay critically assesses Brock’s treatment of the issue, and in particular the question of what made the Muslim ban and similar policies unjust. Through examining these issues, further questions regarding the immigration justice framework on offer arise.

In her debate with Michael Blake, Gillian Brock sets out to justify emigration restrictions on medical workers from poor states on the basis of their free-riding on the public investment that their states have made in them in form of a publicly funded education. For this purpose, Brock aims to isolate the question of emigration restrictions from the larger question of responsibilities for remedying global inequalities. I argue that this approach is misguided because it is blind to decisive factors (...) at play in the problem of medical brain drain and consequently distorts the different responsibilities this problem generates. Brock’s strategy, if successful, would effectively lead to punishing emigrating workers from poor states for the free-riding and exploitation that is committed by affluent states – which is a counter-intuitive result. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans like Gillian Brock, Charles Beitz, and Thomas Pogge argue that the principles of justice selected and arranged in lexical priority in Rawls’ first original position would—and should for the same reasons as in the first—also be selected in Rawls’ second original position. After all, the argument goes, what reasons other than morally arbitrary ones do we have for selecting a second set of principles? A different, though undoubtedly related, point of contention is the cosmopolitan charge that Rawls fails (...) to consider the unfavorable conditions that owe themselves to global factors. Perhaps there was a time when interconnectedness and interdependency between states was not a factor, but in the current global order, this is certainly not the case. While this paper will address other related cosmopolitan concerns mentioned in Brock’s work, it is these two points that are perhaps the two biggest threats to the Rawlsian project and, as such, it is these two points that will be the primary focus of this paper. (shrink)

It is regrettably common for theorists to attempt to characterize the Humean dictum that one can’t get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ just in broadly logical terms. We here address an important new class of such approaches which appeal to model-theoretic machinery. Our complaint about these recent attempts is that they interfere with substantive debates about the nature of the ethical. This problem, developed in detail for Daniel Singer’s and Gillian Russell and Greg Restall’s accounts of Hume’s dictum, is (...) of a general type arising for the use of model-theoretic structures in cashing out substantive philosophical claims: the question of whether an abstract model-theoretic structure successfully interprets something often involves taking a stand on non-trivial issues surrounding the thing. In the particular case of Hume’s dictum, given reasonable conceptual or metaphysical claims about the ethical, Singer’s and Russell and Restall’s accounts treat obviously ethical claims as descriptive and vice versa. Consequently, their model-theoretic characterizations of Hume’s dictum are not metaethically neutral. This encourages skepticism about whether model-theoretic machinery suffices to provide an illuminating distinction between the ethical and the descriptive. (shrink)

Aestheticians in the tradition of Critical Theory have claimed that the or a purpose of musical interpretation is somehow to save or salvage or rescue ("retten") the musical work. What sense, if any, can be made of this claim? The notion of salvage or rescue presupposes the concept of danger. Threats to works of art emerge from two sources: from outside and from inside. Whilst the former problem is only touched upon, the latter is discussed in some detail, using the (...) example of Brahms' Alto Rhapsody op. 53. Kathleen Ferrier's and Clemens Krauss' interpretation of 1947 deals with rather than ignores the composer's crumbly attempt at fusing art and religion. Salvage as their attitude vis-a-vis the work is distinguished from cover-up on the one hand and exposure on the other hand. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of science have long discussed the importance of taking situatedness into account in scientific practices to avoid erasing important aspects of lived experience. Through the example of Gillian Einstein’s [2012] situated neuroscience, I will add support to Gallagher’s [2019] claims that intertheoretic reduction is problematic and provide reason to think pluralistic methodologies are explanatorily and ethically preferable.

I revisit themes from Against Borders: Why the World Needs Free Movement of People (2020) in dialogue with Gillian Brock's Justice of People on the Move (2020) and Sarah Song's Immigration and Democracy (2019). We share the conviction that current border regimes are deeply unjust but differ in what migration justice requires. Brock and Song continue to give states significant discretion to exclude people from entering and settling in their territories, whereas I contend that migration justice demands open borders. (...) I reject the claim that state self-determination justifies migration restrictions. Central arguments for open borders highlight the role that restrictive border controls and the state category of ‘immigrant’ play in upholding racialised hierarchies and exploitative economic relations, as well as in inflicting violence against mobile people. (shrink)

Normativism is the view that logic provides rules for correct reasoning. Some influential critics of normativism, such as Gilbert Harman, claim that logical rules provide reasoners with bad or misleading standards. Others, such as Gillian Russell, claim that logic is a descriptive subject and thus cannot, given Hume’s law, provide rules for reasoning. We think these critics are mistaken. Our aim in this paper is to defend normativism by sketching an alternative way of thinking about the normative force of (...) logical rules. On our view, logical rules are best characterized, in a broadly Rossian manner, as intellectual prima facie duties; i.e., they provide standards for evaluating reasoning and reasoners that are universal and authoritative, but not absolute. This position accommodates the inherent normativity of logic, contra Russell, while circumventing the challenges to normativism raised by Harman. (shrink)

One of the main questions Gillian Brock takes up in Justice for People on the Move (2020) is whether it is morally permissible for states to enact migration policies that discriminate on the basis of religion against those who wish to enter. The main focus of her discussion is on the United States context, and, in particular, the so-called ‘Muslim Ban’ enacted by President Donald Trump in 2017. While Brock offers a powerful critique of this policy, I argue that (...) it is insufficient on its own to support her claim that migration policies that discriminate on the basis of religion in general undermine the legitimacy of the states that enact them. I argue that this claim can be supported within her framework by showing that such policies necessarily display disregard for the human rights of existing members of the discriminating state. I conclude with some reflections on the strength of this account of the moral impermissibility of religious discrimination at the border. (shrink)