Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutili- tarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people’s attitudes toward instrumental harm—that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate a (...) new scale—the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale—to dissociate individual differences in the ‘negative’ (permissive attitude toward instrumental harm) and ‘positive’ (impartial concern for the greater good) dimensions of utilitarian thinking as manifested in the general population. We show that these are two independent dimensions of proto-utilitarian tendencies in the lay population, each exhibiting a distinct psychological profile. Empathic concern, identification with the whole of humanity, and concern for future generations were positively associated with impartial beneficence but negatively associated with instrumental harm; and although instrumental harm was associated with subclinical psychopathy, impartial beneficence was associated with higher religiosity. Importantly, although these two dimensions were independent in the lay population, they were closely associated in a sample of moral philosophers. Acknowledging this dissociation between the instrumental harm and impartial beneficence components of utilitarian thinking in ordinary people can clarify existing debates about the nature of moral psychology and its relation to moral philosophy as well as generate fruitful avenues for further research. (shrink)

Résumé : Le thème de la Métaphysique de l’acte d’être a connu un succès jamais démenti au cours du siècle dernier, avec des auteurs comme Gilson, Maritain ou Fabro, pour ne citer que les plus célèbres. Pourtant, des questions de fond n’ont jamais reçu de réponse satisfaisante, et ont laissé le sentiment d’une doctrine inachevée et inachevable. Trois observations contribuent à cette insatisfaction : la quasi-absence d’une telle problématique chez Thomas d’Aquin, les désaccords entre certains points de la théorie ainsi (...) qu’entre les auteurs, et les incompatibilités avec certains thèmes centraux de la philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin. - Abstract: The theme of the Metaphysics of the act of being has known a never denied success over the last century, with authors like Gilson, Maritain or Fabro, to name only the most famous. Nevertheless, some important questions have never been fittingly answered, and have left the feeling of an unachieved and unachievable doctrine. Three observations contribute to this disappointment : a quasi-absence of such a problematic in Thomas Aquinas, contradictions between certain points of the theory as well as between the authors, and incompatibilities with certain central themes of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

La somme d’Humbrecht fait preuve d’une érudition peu commune et d’un réel amour de Thomas d’Aquin (mais au détriment d’Aristote, comme c’est de mode). Sa réflexion s’allonge au fil de la plume, en des méandres et des reflux quelquefois difficiles à suivre. Mais donne aussi le sentiment heureux d’une libre méditation de l’auteur voguant au gré de ses pensées, méditation à laquelle il nous invite avec amitié, pourvu que nous acceptions de nous laisser guider. Hélas, si nous branchons un GPS, (...) nous réalisons que nous nous promenons benoîtement au milieu de sables mouvants prêts à nous engloutir tout entiers à chaque pas. (shrink)

L'ordre des derniers livres de la Métaphysique, tel que Thomas d'Aquin le dégage dans son commentaire, ainsi que le début du livre XIII (Mu) invitent à repenser l'organisation de la fin de l'ouvrage. -/- The order of the last books of Metaphysics, as Thomas Aquinas highlights in his commentary, as well as the beginning of book XIII (Mu) invite to rethink the organization of the end of the work.

Le Commentaire du Traité de l’âme d’Aristote par Thomas d’Aquin, est le cinquième des commentaires fondamentaux des œuvres d’Aristote traduits en langue française. Avec celui des Physiques, de la Métaphysique, de l’Interprétation et des Analytiques, il fonde l’édifice de la philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin et assure les contreforts de sa théologie. Ce traité se présente comme un vaste essai de définition de l’âme et principalement de l’âme humaine, avec en filigrane, une question lancinante : cette âme est-elle immortelle ?

Avec son traité de la démonstration intitulé Seconds Analytiques, c’est un véritable discours de la méthode qu’Aristote nous livre. L’auteur parvient au sommet de l’art logique dont il est l’inventeur. Pourtant, de l’avis unanime des interprètes anciens et actuels, nous sommes devant un de ses écrits les plus difficiles à comprendre. C’est pourquoi Thomas d’Aquin a voulu commenter minutieusement ce texte dont il juge la maîtrise essentielle au travail intellectuel. Tous ses écrits, tant philosophiques que théologiques sont, en effet, construits (...) sur cette trame méthodologique qui leur donne force de science. -/- C’est aussi grâce à cette discipline d’esprit partagée, qu’il a pu entrer en dialogue fécond avec les penseurs païens, musulmans et juifs qui l’ont précédé dans la voie ouverte par Aristote. Une invitation pour notre époque de conflits culturels et religieux ? Pour la première fois en langue française, nous en proposons une traduction qui permet à nos contemporains d’accéder à cette école de rigueur pour l’intelligence : la logique. (shrink)

« En écrivant son Traité de l’Interprétation, Aristote a trempé sa plume à l’encre de son esprit ! » L’antique remarque de Cassiodore vaut encore aujourd’hui tant la matière étudiée est complexe et le style ramassé. Aristote démonte les mécanismes du langage philosophique, aux confins de la linguistique et de la métaphysique. Il offre à cette occasion des développements fondateurs sur la formulation de la vérité, les règles de mise en contradiction, les propositions universelles, la contingence des jugements sur le (...) futur, ou encore les redoutables énonciations modales. S’appuyant sur ses prédécesseurs, Thomas d’Aquin en rédige un commentaire hautement structuré, reconnu comme l’un des plus explicites. Demeuré cependant inachevé, il est complété par Thomas de Vio, dit Cajetan, un des premiers grands thomistes et maître logicien. C’est de l’ensemble de ces deux parties de commentaires que nous proposons la traduction ; la seconde pour la première fois en langue française. (shrink)

Le Traité de l’âme d’Aristote joue, dans l’histoire de la philosophie, un rôle crucial. Assumant toute la conception de la vie et de l’homme, depuis l’aube de la réflexion jusqu’au déclin de la Grèce, il est à la source des plus riches développements de l’anthropologie musulmane et chrétienne du Moyen-Age. Hegel, Marx ou Darwin le connaissent bien et s’y réfèrent aisément. Les scientifiques de notre fin de siècle le redécouvrent avec intérêt. Mais aujourd’hui, de très nombreuses études spécialisées, des monographies (...) et des articles de revue, font de plus en plus rarement la synthèse des problèmes qu’il soulève. -/- L’intention de ce livre est de retrouver la perspective d’ensemble du Traité. Il ne s’est, en effet, plus produit depuis longtemps, d’étude globale et systématique de l’ouvrage. C’est ce créneau, abandonné parce que très exposé, que nous voudrions réoccuper. (shrink)

Pour la première fois en langue française, la traduction du Commentaire des huit livres des Physiques d'Aristote de Thomas d'Aquin, offre la quintessence de ce qu'on a appelé l' « aristotélo-thomisme ». Encore méconnue des spécialistes d'Aristote, l’œuvre constitue pourtant le sommet qui domine toute la tradition philosophique antique et médiévale. Traversant les aléas critiques du modernisme et du scientisme des trois derniers siècles, ce commentaire brille d'une actualité renouvelée grâce à l'évolution des sciences physiques et humaines les plus récentes, (...) avec lesquelles il est étonnamment en accord. Les Leçons sur la Nature (autre titre du livre) d'Aristote sont le porche d'entrée pour quiconque veut approfondir la philosophie et en vivre. Le métaphysicien reçoit d'elles le modèle méthodologique et l'assise conceptuelle pour sa contemplation ; le moraliste en hérite les principes d'une éthique rationnelle et sociale ; le théologien y puise les fondements naturels de sa discipline. En détachant le fonds philosophique de son apparat méthodologique, cette traduction met singulièrement l'un et l'autre en relief. La densité de réflexion se voit ainsi libérée des nombreuses coupures techniques, pour permettre une lecture ininterrompue, tandis que l'ordre de progression, dont Thomas d'Aquin avait un tel souci, est exhaussé pour lui-même. L'ensemble se veut donc autant une oeuvre de méditation qu'un instrument de travail. (shrink)

C’est un véritable Discours de la Méthode qu’Aristote nous livre avec son traité de la démonstration intitulé Seconds Analytiques. Avec lui, l’auteur parvient au sommet de l’art logique dont il est le véritable inventeur.

This chapter sharpens the book’s criticism of exclusivist responsible to religious multiplicity, firstly through close critical attention to arguments which religious exclusivists provide, and secondly through the introduction of several new, formal arguments / dilemmas. Self-described ‘post-liberals’ like Paul Griffiths bid philosophers to accept exclusivist attitudes and beliefs as just one among other aspects of religious identity. They bid us to normalize the discourse Griffiths refers to as “polemical apologetics,” and to view its acceptance as the only viable form of (...) pluralism. This reasoning may seem initially plausible, but on closer examination his and other’s defence of the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity fall apart. Informed by our study of luck-leaning theological explanations of religious difference and the counter-inductive thinking they exemplify, I argue that exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are best explained by personal and group bias, and that a discourse between exclusivist authors or sects is beyond the pale of reasonable disagreement. Our study of descriptive (psychological) and prescriptive (religious) fideism in the first sections of Chapter Five suggests that we turn back to formal features of doxastic methods (i.e., of how people process), features that may be straightforwardly tested for in studies utilizing scales of religious orientation. These formal features allow us to better recognize not only the multiplicity of models of faith that religious adherents adhere to, but also that the relationship between forms of fideism is scalar: there is a spectrum of views running from rationalism to fideism, and at the fideistic end from moderate to strong forms of religious fideism. I further explain why developing tests and markers for a high degree of fideistic orientation is important to all those who study religion. The second half of the chapter turns to criticism or censure of exclusivist attitudes to religious multiplicity, in contrast to apologetic defenses of exclusivism. While we have examined the close connections between fideism and fundamentalism, and again between fundamentalism and exclusivism in earlier chapters, a sharper focus reveals an important but little-recognized distinction reflected in the literature: the distinction between religion-specific (or particularist) and mutualist exclusivism. The mutualist doesn’t talk just about the right of adherents of one specific religion to assert exclusivism, but the adherents of any and all “home” religions. I argue that some previously unrecognized problems for the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are brought to light when we make the distinction between the two basic ways to understand the claim that exclusivists are making. I put particularist (Barth, Lindbeck, Plantinga) and mutualist (Griffiths, Gellman, Margalit, D’Costa) defenses of exclusivism on the horns of a dilemma, and argue that despite the popularity it presently enjoys among post-liberal theologians, a close examination reveals that the very conceptual coherence of mutualist exclusivism is in serious doubt. (shrink)

This paper explores R. D. Laing's application of existential and phenomenological tradtions, specifically Hegel and Heidegger, to his groundbreaking work with psychotic process as well as psychotherapeutic practice more generally.

The object of our reflection is to examine whether Aristotle's proof of the eternity of the Universe has a scientific character or only a dialectical one, as Thomas Aquinas claims. On this response depends faith in Creation. -/- L’objet de notre réflexion est d’examiner si la preuve de l’éternité de l’Univers avancée par Aristote a un caractère scientifique ou bien seulement dialectique, comme le prétend Thomas d’Aquin. De cette réponse dépend la foi en la Création.

In this paper, we would like to share a view of Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysics which differs significantly from the “doxa of the act of being” currently widespread among Thomistic philosophers. -/- Nous voudrions faire part ici d’une vision de la métaphysique de Thomas d’Aquin qui diverge sensiblement de la “doxa de l’acte d’être” actuellement répandue parmi les philosophes thomistes.

Une lecture d'Aristote se rattachant à un courant de pensée averroïste conclut à l'ignorance de Dieu sur tout autre objet que Lui-même. Thomas d'Aquin affirme au contraire que Dieu, se connaissant, connaît toutes choses. Un courant actuel du néo-thomisme veut expliquer cette réponse de Thomas par le fait que Dieu connaît ce qu'il cause, or, ce qu'il cause des choses, c'est leur acte d'être. Donc Dieu connaît l'acte d'être de toutes choses. -/- Cette explication est-elle suffisante ou n'est-ce qu'une variante (...) de celle d'Averroes ? N'hésitez pas à donner votre avis. (shrink)

La quête de la “Métaphysique de l’acte d’être” passe inévitablement par Cornelio Fabro. La “Bibliothèque de la Revue Thomiste”, avec le concours des éditions “Parole et Silence”, a eu la bonne idée de rééditer son maître ouvrage : Participation et causalité selon Saint Thomas d’Aquin. Je m’attendais, comme dans mes explorations précédentes chez Gilson, Mercier et autres, à découvrir un auteur didactique, plus dialecticien et historien que philosophe, pour qui les pétitions de principe pèsent peu devant la faconde des dissertations. (...) Mais au contraire, je dois reconnaître que nous avons devant les yeux un exercice de philosophie de très grande classe, sans comparaison avec les précités. Tout le mal que j’en pourrai dire par la suite, à cause de mon tempérament atrabilaire, doit être mesuré à l’aune de ce jugement premier. (shrink)

Critical notice of Guy Fletcher's 'Dear Prudence: The Nature and Normativity of Prudential Discourse' and Dale Dorsey's 'A Theory of Prudence'.

As far as the relationship between The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle (1988) is concerned, one either acknowledges Guy Debord's self interpretation, according to which these books complement each other, or one is forced to concede, on the contrary, the existence of an "epistemological cut", undermining, therefore, the revolutionary unity of Debord’s work. According to the first hypothesis, Machiavelli and Marx will eventually be linked up in a Situationist project to overthrow spectacular (...) society. However, the second hypothesis involves dismissing political economy analysis, whose field is apparently occupied by police logic. Because Debord’s interpretation seems to us to be more plausible, even though its defence is not an easy task, we will endorse his point of view. (shrink)

In English, as in many other languages, male-gendered pronouns are sometimes used to refer not only to men, but to individuals whose gender is unknown or unspecified, to human beings in general (as in ―mankind‖) and sometimes even to females (as when the casual ―Hey guys‖ is spoken to a group of women). These so-called he/man or masculine generics have come under fire in recent decades for being sexist, even archaic, and positively harmful to women and girls; and advocates of (...) gender-neutral (or nonsexist) language have put forward serious efforts to discourage their use. Have they been successful, and to what extent? In this paper, I review some of the main arguments in favor of abolishing sexist male generics. I then present three studies tracking the use of he/man terminology in academic, popular, and personal discourse over the past several decades. I show that the use of these terms has fallen dramatically in recent years, while nonsexist alternatives have gradually taken their place. We may be paying witness to the early stages of the ultimate extinction of masculine generics. (shrink)

Neuroscience and psychology have recently turned their attention to the study of the subpersonal underpinnings of moral judgment. In this article we critically examine an influential strand of research originating in Greene's neuroimaging studies of ‘utilitarian’ and ‘non-utilitarian’ moral judgement. We argue that given that the explananda of this research are specific personal-level states—moral judgments with certain propositional contents—its methodology has to be sensitive to criteria for ascribing states with such contents to subjects. We argue that current research has often (...) failed to meet this constraint by failing to correctly ‘fix’ key aspects of moral judgment, criticism we support by detailed examples from the scientific literature. (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)

Within the United States, the most prominent justification for criminal punishment is retributivism. This retributivist justification for punishment maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason that she deserves something bad to happen to her just because she has knowingly done wrong—this could include pain, deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the basic desert attached to the criminal’s immoral action alone that provides the justification for punishment. This means that the retributivist position is not reducible (...) to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society or the moral improvement of those being punished. A number of sentencing guidelines in the U.S. have adopted desert as their distributive principle, and it is increasingly given deference in the “purposes” section of state criminal codes, where it can be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the code’s provisions. Indeed, the American Law Institute recently revised the Model Penal Code so as to set desert as the official dominate principle for sentencing. And courts have identified desert as the guiding principle in a variety of contexts, as with the Supreme Court’s enthroning retributivism as the “primary justification for the death penalty.” While retributivism provides one of the main sources of justification for punishment within the criminal justice system, there are good philosophical and practical reasons for rejecting it. One such reason is that it is unclear that agents truly deserve to suffer for the wrongs they have done in the sense required by retributivism. In the first section, I explore the retributivist justification of punishment and explain why it is inconsistent with free will skepticism. In the second section, I then argue that even if one is not convinced by the arguments for free will skepticism, there remains a strong epistemic argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that undermines both libertarian and compatibilist attempts to justify it. I maintain that this argument provides sufficient reason for rejecting the retributive justification of criminal punishment. I conclude in the third section by briefly sketching my public health-quarantine model, a non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behavior that draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. I argue that the model is not only consistent with free will skepticism and the epistemic argument against retributivism, it also provides the most justified, humane, and effective way of dealing with criminal behavior. (shrink)

In this chapter, we introduce the notion of “moral neuroenhancement,” offering a novel definition as well as spelling out three conditions under which we expect that such neuroenhancement would be most likely to be permissible (or even desirable). Furthermore, we draw a distinction between first-order moral capacities, which we suggest are less promising targets for neurointervention, and second-order moral capacities, which we suggest are more promising. We conclude by discussing concerns that moral neuroenhancement might restrict freedom or otherwise “misfire,” and (...) argue that these concerns are not as damning as they may seem at first. (shrink)

This paper examines perfectionist attempts to explain the prudential badness of pain (its badness for those who experience it). It starts by considering simple perfectionist explanations, finding them wanting, before considering the most sophisticated perfectionist attempt to explain prudential badness: Gwen Bradford’s tripartite perfectionism. The paper argues that Bradford’s view, though an improvement on earlier perfectionist proposals, still does not satisfactorily explain the full set of prudentially bad pains. It ends by showing how this provides grounds for a general kind (...) of pessimism about perfectionism and the badness of pain and how this case undermines a general purported advantage of perfectionism over the objective list theory. (shrink)

I present a recent historical case from cosmology—the story of inflationary cosmology—and on its basis argue that solving explanatory problems is a reliable method for making progress in science. In particular, I claim that the success of inflationary theory at solving its predecessor’s explanatory problems justified the theory epistemically, even in advance of the development of novel predictions from the theory and the later confirmation of those predictions.

Four Challenges to Epistemic Scientific Realism—and the Socratic Alternative.

IPCC SPECIAL REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND LAND (SRCCL) -/- Chapter 3: Climate Change and Land: An IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems.

The impetus theory of motion states that to be in motion is to have a non-zero velocity. The at-at theory of motion states that to be in motion is to be at different places at different times, which in classical physics is naturally understood as the reduction of velocities to position developments. I first defend the at-at theory against the criticism raised by Arntzenius that it renders determinism impossible. I then develop a novel impetus theory of motion that reduces positions (...) to velocity developments. As this impetus theory of motion is by construction a mirror image of the at-at theory of motion, I claim that the two theories of motion are in fact epistemically on par—despite the unfamiliar metaphysical picture of the world furnished by the impetus version. (shrink)

Reportedly ever since Pythagoras, but possibly much earlier, humans have been concerned about the way non human animals (henceforward “animals” for convenience) should be treated. By late antiquity all main traditions with regard to this issue had already been established and consolidated, and were only slightly modified during the centuries that followed. Until the nineteenth century philosophers tended to focus primarily on the ontological status of animals, to wit on whether – and to what degree – animals are actually rational (...) beings; accordingly they allowed – or denied – them some kind of moral standing. This modus operandi was for the first time seriously questioned by Jeremy Bentham, who put the issue on a different track. If the question, as Bentham suggested, is not if animals can think or speak, but if they can suffer1, then it seems plausible that moral agents ought to abstain from inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals; in other words, humans might have at least one – even limited – moral duty towards animals. And if this, in turn, is true, then animals should arguably be allowed the commensurate moral right, namely the right not to be inflicted unnecessary pain. Then, if animals possess this right, they could probably possess others, as well. This is how grosso modo the issue of animal rights became a pivotal part of the discussion concerning animal ethics. Bentham himself, of course, wouldn’t have gone that far; to him even the idea of human rights sounded like “simple… rhetorical nonsense upon stilts”.2 It was mostly due to his views, however, that the debate was moved from the way things actually are to the way things should ideally be – thus merging into what, in my view, should always have been: one primarily concerning ethics. (shrink)

This article traces a growing interest among epistemologists in the intellectuals of epistemic virtues. These are cognitive dispositions exercised in the formation of beliefs. Attempts to give intellectual virtues a central normative and/or explanatory role in epistemology occur together with renewed interest in the ethics/epistemology analogy, and in the role of intellectual virtue in Aristotle's epistemology. The central distinction drawn here is between two opposed forms of virtue epistemology, virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. The article develops the shared and distinctive (...) claims made by contemporary proponents of each form, in their respective treatments of knowledge and justification. (shrink)

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)

So-called theories of well-being (prudential value, welfare) are under-represented in discussions of well-being. I do four things in this article to redress this. First, I develop a new taxonomy of theories of well-being, one that divides theories in a more subtle and illuminating way. Second, I use this taxonomy to undermine some misconceptions that have made people reluctant to hold objective-list theories. Third, I provide a new objective-list theory and show that it captures a powerful motivation for the main competitor (...) theory of well-being (the desire-fulfilment theory). Fourth, I try to defuse the worry that objective-list theories are problematically arbitrary and show how the theory can and should be developed. (shrink)

A great deal of research has focused on the question of whether or not concepts are embodied as a rule. Supporters of embodiment have pointed to studies that implicate affective and sensorimotor systems in cognitive tasks, while critics of embodiment have offered nonembodied explanations of these results and pointed to studies that implicate amodal systems. Abstract concepts have tended to be viewed as an important test case in this polemical debate. This essay argues that we need to move beyond a (...) pretheoretical notion of abstraction. Against the background of current research and theory, abstract concepts do not pose a single, unified problem for embodied cognition but, instead, three distinct problems: the problem of generalization, the problem of flexibility, and the problem of disembodiment. Identifying these problems provides a conceptual framework for critically evaluating, and perhaps improving upon, recent theoretical proposals. (shrink)

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong tendency (...) among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.]. (shrink)

Today’s culture tells us to respect, even celebrate, the many ways in which we are different from each other. These are moral claims about how to relate to people, given that they are different. But does it also matter whether we are different in the first place? I argue for the intrinsic value to us of individuality, understood in terms of our differences from others. Past defences of individuality often unhelpfully conflate it with autonomy or authenticity, but these can come (...) apart from individuality. Individuality is also distinct from numerical identity and moral status, and cannot be fully captured in terms of rarity, diversity, or irreplaceability. Most current theories of well-being leave it open that lives utterly lacking in individuality might be wonderfully good. These theories, I argue, fail to account for what Valéry called ‘the evil of not being unique’. (shrink)

Some lives are more meaningful than others. Some lives are more important than others. What is the relationship between meaning in life and importance? Because both can be described as relating to significance, the two are often conflated. But these are rather different concepts and the meaningful and the important can easily come apart. They do, however, interact in important ways. When importance also meets the conditions for meaningfulness, it amplifies it, and importance on a large scale is a key, (...) and perhaps the only, source of superlative meaningfulness. When contrasted with the quest for meaning, the desire for importance can seem shallow and egocentric. But the desire to make an important contribution reflects a legitimate existential concern. And, in their best form, both the desire for importance, and that for meaningfulness, similarly combine outward-looking and self-regarding aspects. (shrink)

Philosophers have long theorized about which things make people’s lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. Yet little time has been spent on meta-prudential questions, questions about prudential discourse. This is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a normative form of discourse and, as such, cries out for further investigation. Chapter 4 takes up two major meta-prudential questions. It first examines whether there is a set of prudential reasons, generated by (...) evaluative prudential properties, and defends the view that evaluative well-being facts generate agent-relative reasons for the relevant agent. It also investigates whether prudential discourse is normative. It is proposed that prudential discourse is normative by arguing that prudential judgements are normative judgements. The case for this is presented by analogy with moral discourse by showing that the features of moral judgements that metaethicists appeal to when articulating, explaining, and justifying the claim that moral judgements are normative are also possessed by prudential judgements. Various objections to the analogy are also considered. (shrink)

This paper was written for and presented at a symposium on Multiple Realizability at the Central Division of the APA in 2022. It's in somewhat rough shape, especially the later parts. I hope to be in a position soon to post a revised and more carefully worked out version. The basic argument of the first half is this: Realization of the interesting sort (and thus MR of the interesting sort) requires tidy separation of levels (with realizers being at a lower (...) level than that which they realize). The success of mixed-scale, mixed-resource (i.e., multi-grain) modeling strongly suggests that such a tidy separation of levels is not in the cards. Thus, MR is (likely) not a widespread phenomenon in our universe. The second half of the paper develops a relation of "multiple explainability" that is meant to play the role, in many contexts, of MR, while being metaphysically and methodologically messier than MR. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism demands that political decisions be publicly justified to the citizens who are subjected to them. Much recent literature emphasises the differences between the two main interpretations of this requirement, justificatory and political liberalism. In this paper, I show that both views share structural democratic deficits. They fail to guarantee political autonomy, the expressive quality of law, and the justification to citizens, because they allow collective decisions made by incompletely theorised agreements. I argue that the result can only (...) be avoided by changing public reason’s role in collective decision-making. Instead of incompletely theorised agreements, we should demand agreement both on the public reasons themselves and on the other premises that justify political decisions. In this way, it is always possible to point to a procedure-independent reason that justifies democratic decisions, and the reasoning of the state is public and contestable. Finally, I explain how this, in turn, implies that only political liberalism can be rescued—by accepting what I will call strong political liberalism. Modifying justificatory liberalism in the necessary way will inevitably open the door to an objectionable form of perfectionism. (shrink)

This chapter is divided into three parts. First I outline what makes something an objective list theory of well-being. I then go on to look at the motivations for holding such a view before turning to objections to these theories of well-being.

Robert Nozick famously raised the possibility that there is a sense in which both deontology and utilitarianism are true: deontology applies to humans while utilitarianism applies to animals. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in such a hybrid views of ethics. Discussions of this Nozickian Hybrid View, and similar approaches to animal ethics, often assume that such an approach reflects the commonsense view, and best captures common moral intuitions. However, recent psychological work challenges this empirical assumption. We review (...) evidence suggesting that the folk is deontological all the way down—it is just that the moral side constraints that protect animals from harm are much weaker than those that protect humans. In fact, it appears that people even attribute some deontological protections, albeit extremely weak ones, to inanimate objects. We call this view Multi-level Weighted Deontology. While such empirical findings cannot show that the Nozickian Hybrid View is false, or that it is unjustified, they do remove its core intuitive support. That support belongs to Multi-level Weighted Deontology, a view that is also in line with the view that Nozick himself seemed to favour. To complicate things, however, we also review evidence that our intuitions about the moral status of humans are, at least in significant part, shaped by factors relating to mere species membership that seem morally irrelevant. We end by considering the potential debunking upshot of such findings about the sources of common moral intuitions about the moral status of animals. (shrink)

Some people are deeply dissatisfied by the universe that modern science reveals to us. They long for the world described by traditional religion. They do not believe in God, but they wish He had existed. I argue that this is a mistake. The naturalist world we inhabit is admittedly rather bleak. It is very far from being the best of all possible worlds. But an alternative governed by God is also unwelcome, and the things that might make God’s existence attractive—cosmic (...) justice or the afterlife—could also be had without God. The most desirable of all possible worlds are therefore godless. (shrink)

The evolutionary process involved the suffering of quadrillions of sentient beings over millions of years. I argue that when we take this into account, then it is likely that when the first humans appeared, the world was already at an enormous axiological deficit, and that even on favorable assumptions about humanity, it is doubtful that we have overturned this deficit or ever will. Even if there’s no such deficit or we can overturn it, it remains the case that everything of (...) value associated with humanity was made possible by our evolutionary history and all that animal suffering. It can seem indecent to regard all that past suffering as having been worth it simply because it was a causal precondition for our existence. But when we consider the realistic alternatives to the way evolution in fact unfolded, there is nevertheless a conditional case for regarding past sentient suffering as a kind of necessary evil. (shrink)

The past is deeply important to many of us. But our concern about history can seem puzzling and needs justification. After all, the past cannot be changed: we can help the living needy, but the tears we shed for the long dead victims of past tragedies help no one. Attempts to justify our concern about history typically take one of two opposing forms. It is assumed either that such concern must be justified in instrumental or otherwise self-centered and present-centered terms (...) or that our interest in history must be utterly disinterested and pursued for its own sake. But neither approach can fully explain, or justify, our concern about the past. I propose a third approach, on which the past matters because it contains much that is of value—all those past people and the things they did or had endured—and this value calls for our fitting response. In short: the significance of the past is past significance. (shrink)

Many believe that because we are so small, we must be utterly insignificant on the cosmic scale. But whether this is so depends on what it takes to be important. On one view, what matters for importance is the difference to value that something makes. On this view, what determines our cosmic importance is not our size, but what else of value is out there. But a rival view also seems plausible: that importance requires sufficient causal impact on the relevant (...) scale; since we have no such impact on the grand scale, that would entail our cosmic insignificance. I argue that despite appearances, causal impact is neither necessary nor sufficient for importance. All that matters is impact on value. Since parts can have non-causal impact on the value of the wholes that contain them, this means that we might have great impact on the grandest scale without ever leaving our little planet. (shrink)

Virtue theories can plausibly be argued to have important advantages over normative ethical theories which prescribe a strict impartialism in moral judgment, or which neglect people’s special roles and relationships. However, there are clear examples of both virtuous and vicious partiality in people’s moral judgments, and virtue theorists may struggle to adequately distinguish them, much as proponents of other normative ethical theories do. This paper first adapts the “expanding moral circle” concept and some literary examples to illustrate the difficulty of (...) adequately distinguishing virtuous from vicious partiality. Later sections aim to show how an adequate philosophical ethics will be able to both a) attribute virtue (and hence praiseworthiness) to agents whose actions may directly serve only their special interests, roles, or special relationships; and b) attribute vice (and hence censure) where an agent’s attitudes and/or actions mirror known personal biases (for instance, an egoistic attitude) or social biases (for instance, and ethnocentric attitude). This dual ability leaves space for much virtuous partiality, while also reflecting a “risk-aware” approach, recognizing the deleterious consequences of our human penchant for constructing and imbuing moral significance to oftentimes factitious us/them dichotomies. (shrink)

The possibility that nothing really matters can cause much anxiety, but what would it mean for that to be true? Since it couldn’t be bad that nothing matters, fearing nihilism makes little sense. However, the consequences of belief in nihilism will be far more dramatic than often thought. Many metaethicists assume that even if nothing matters, we should, and would, go on more or less as before. But if nihilism is true in an unqualified way, it can’t be the case (...) that we should go on as before. And given some plausible assumptions about our psychology, it’s also unlikely that we would go on as before: belief in nihilism will lead to loss of evaluative belief, and that will lead to loss or deflation of our corresponding subjective concerns. Now if nothing matters, then this consequence also wouldn’t matter. But this consequence will be extremely harmful if we believe in nihilism but things do matter, an asymmetry that gives us, in Pascalian fashion, pragmatic reasons not to believe in nihilism, and reasons not to try to find out whether it is really true. (shrink)