The main argument of this paper is that the legal regulation of lobbying is an important factor for disciplining/curbing the undue (illicit) influence of different interest groups on the political-making process, especially in countries with post-communist and nonconsolidated democracies such as Albania. In three decades of political and economic transition from a one-party communist system to a democratic one and towards a market economy, the democratization of Albania has faced various problems, which have often led to a loss of public (...) confidence in the political class and apathy of citizens towards the political system. In many cases, this has come as a result of the perception or even the disclosure by the media and the public of corruption scandals, political clientelism, or undue influences in the decision-making processes in Albania. Surely, it can be said that political scandals of trading or exercising illicit influences on public officials can affect, as numerous cases have shown, every democratic political system in the world. However, they are more likely to occur in new democracies (post-communist) countries that face weak state structures and a legal environment that is not yet well consolidated and where a culture of informality exists alongside written rules and laws. For this purpose, that of disciplining and controlling the influences that specific interests exert on the decision-making process of governments, legislatures, or other regulatory agencies, a good part of European countries have considered undertaking legal regulatory initiatives for lobbying activity in their environments. (shrink)

Awarding rights to rivers, forests, and other environmental entities (EEs) is a new and increasingly popular approach to environmental protection. The distinctive feature of such rights of nature (RoN) legislation is that direct duties are owed to the EEs. This paper presents a novel rebuttal of the strongest argument against RoN: the no interest argument. The crux of this argument is that because EEs are not sentient, they cannot possess the kinds of interests necessary to ground direct duties. Therefore, (...) they cannot be legitimate rights-bearers. After considering and rejecting standard responses to this argument, the paper challenges its fundamental assumption: that rights-correlative duties must be grounded in the interests of the rights-bearer. The paper then presents the RoN critic with a dilemma. The critic must either accept that EEs are legitimate rights-bearers, or delegitimise many well-established rights-bearers along with EEs. Either way, the no interest argument loses its force. (shrink)

In 1937 Joan Robinson proposed that “when capitalism is rightly understood, the rate of interest will be set at zero and the major evils of capitalism will disappear”. A permanent zero rate would abolish capitalist profit except in limited cases, leaving nearly all output to be claimed by labour as wages. It would allow capital to be allocated on the basis of prospective social benefit rather than short-term profitability and a collateral basis that favours the wealthy. It would remove some (...) of the economic pressure to use resources unsustainably. So why not do this? I argue that the few available philosophical arguments for positive interest rates are unsatisfactory. Those who want a just and sustainable form of capitalism should target net zero for the interest rate. (shrink)

I consider Agnes Callard's _Aspiration_, primarily with regard to its characterization of aspirants as having a partial grasp of a value and being oriented toward their own self-improvement, and to its descriptions of individual case studies, primarily those of Alcibiades and the "good music student" who wishes to learn more about music for its own sake. While she surely has a real phenomenon in view, her theorization of it is more baffling than enlightening, hemmed in by bizarre side conditions on (...) what could count as a reason for pursuing something and by curiously anhedonic exemplars. Her agents have no actual desire to engage in their pursuits, only intellectual respect for them, and no reason to do so: Callard substitutes for "partial grasp of a reason" the idea of two-faced "proleptic reason", whose two faces are a non-aspirational reason the agent has and an aspirational reason the agent doesn't have. Despite the book's subtitle and occasional obiter dicta, she has no concept of becoming, or agents who understand themselves as deepening their engagement with something out of interest in it. (shrink)

I argue that Henry Heine's assessment of the English - that they are either universal geniuses or self-interested mediocrities - is prone to an objection that draws upon his own characterization. I tried to write this in an Edwardian style but the result is a mishmash.

The future of health research will be characterised by three continuing trends: rising demand for health data; increasing impracticability of obtaining specific consent for secondary research; and decreasing capacity to effectively anonymise data. In this context, governments, clinicians and the research community must demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of health data. IRBs and RECs sit at heart of this process because in many jurisdictions they have the capacity to grant consent waivers when research is judged to be of (...) particular value. However, several different terms are used to refer to this value, indicating a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the appropriate test for access to health data for research without consent. In this paper we do three things. First we describe the current confusion and instability in terminology relating to public interest in the context of consent waivers. Second we argue for harmonisation of terminology on the grounds of clarity, transparency and consistency. Third we argue that the term ‘public interest’ best reflects the normative work required to justify consent waivers because it is the broadest of the competing terms. ‘Public interest’ contains within its scope positive and negative implications of a study, as well as welfare, justice and rights considerations. In making this argument, we explain the normative basis for consent waivers, and provide a starting place for further discussion about the precise conditions in which a given study can be said to advance the public interest. Ipsos MORI study found that: … the public would be broadly happy with administrative data linking for research projects provided Those projects have social value, broadly defined. Data are de-identified. Data are kept secure. Businesses are not able to access the data for profit. (shrink)

An opinionated survey of the state of the literature on interest-relative invariantism.

I argue that interesting experiences are experientially valuable in the same fashion as pleasant experiences, yet that the interesting is nonetheless a distinct value from the pleasant. Insofar as it challenges the hedonist’s assumption that pleasure and pain are the only evaluative dimensions of our phenomenological experiences, my argument here serves both as a defense of the value of the interesting and as an important critique of hedonism.

(2017) 'Interest and Agency', in Gabriel, Markus and Rasmussen, Anders Moe (eds.) German Idealism Today. De Guyter Verlag. -/- Abstract: Undeterred by Kant’s cautionary advice, contemporary defenders of free will advance substantive metaphysical theses in support of their views. This is perhaps unsurprising given the mixed reception of Kant’s solution of the conflict between freedom and natural necessity, which is supposed to vindicate reason’s withdrawal from speculation. Kant argues that neither libertarians nor determinists can win, because they deal with concepts (...) of unrestricted scope, and proposes instead to regiment the reference conditions of each concept and to specify the domain, ‘world’, proper to each. However, the precise character of this solution, its conceptual and metaphysical commitments, continues to be a matter of controversy among Kant scholars. In particular, there is ever-renewed concern about the incipient dualism of the position. Although I will be examining some of this material, my primary aim in this paper is not to make a contribution to the interpretative debate about the antinomy. Rather, I want to draw on two lessons from Kant’s treatment of the antinomy to argue for the importance of a certain way of putting the problem of human freedom. (shrink)

Pragmatic encroachment theories have a problem with evidence. On the one hand, the arguments that knowledge is interest-relative look like they will generalise to show that evidence too is interest-relative. On the other hand, our best story of how interests affect knowledge presupposes an interest-invariant notion of evidence. -/- The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of evidence that is interest-relative, but which allows that ‘best story’ to go through with minimal changes. The core idea is (...) that the evidence someone has is just what evidence a radical interpreter says they have. And a radical interpreter is playing a kind of game with the person they are interpreting. The cases that pose problems for pragmatic encroachment theorists generate fascinating games between the interpreter and the interpretee. They are games with multiple equilibria. To resolve them we need to detour into the theory of equilibrium selection. I’ll argue that the theory we need is the theory of risk-dominant equilibria. That theory will tell us how the interpreter will play the game, which in turn will tell us what evidence the person has. The evidence will be interest-relative, because what the equilibrium of the game is will be interest-relative. But it will not undermine the story we tell about how interests usually affect knowledge. (shrink)

In defending his interest-relative account of knowledge in Knowledge and Practical Interests (2005), Jason Stanley relies heavily on intuitions about several bank cases. We experimentally test the empirical claims that Stanley seems to make concerning our common-sense intuitions about these bank cases. Additionally, we test the empirical claims that Jonathan Schaffer seems to make in his critique of Stanley. We argue that our data impugn what both Stanley and Schaffer claim our intuitions about such cases are. To account for (...) these results, one must develop a better conception of the connection between a subject's interests and her body of knowledge than those offered by Stanley and Schaffer. (shrink)

This chapter does not presume to outline a new economic theory, nor a novel perspective on Jewish approaches to economy. Rather, it suggests the concept of pragmatic interestedness (PI) as means for thinking on the search for conscious or moral forms of capitalism. In short, pragmatic interestedness means that having interests is basic to human nature, and that interestedness is or can be non-egoistic and pro-social. This chapter proposes that PI, which has a significant role in normative Jewish tradition, (...) can contribute to the articulation of conscious capitalism. The chapter first defines what pragmatic interestedness is, and its opposite, namely disinterestedness (DI), which demands total impartiality. The second section considers the influential Christian concept of Agape or universal and egalitarian love, which is arguably at tension with eros and particular commitments (and with PI in this regard). It is argued that prominent modern philosophies secularize the Agape, especially Karl Marx’s Communism and Peter Singer’s Sentientism, in a way that marginalizes PI. The third section explores the appearance of pragmatic interestedness within rabbinic Jewish tradition, by (i) presenting the complicated duality of the concept of interest, (ii) emphasizing the recognition of human needs and interests in Judaism and (iii) highlighting Jewish sensitivity to the differences between various spheres of human commitment, and (iv) the role of market and economic considerations in Jewish tradition. The fourth section reflects more broadly on how PI may contribute to the conception of conscious or humane capitalism. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on the propensity toward identifying natural kinds with successful scientific categories in contemporary discussions of natural kinds within the philosophy of science. Success in this case is understood as the fulfillment of epistemic interests or goals in a given field of scientific research. The prevailing view is that, in order to have a theory of natural kinds that successfully captures current scientific practice, the relevant epistemic interests are the current interests of scientists (...) working in a particular field. In contrast, we concur with the Franklin-Hall (2015) that a wider range of possible interests needs to be taken into account, in order to avoid making natural kinds too dependent on the current stage of research. But unlike Franklin-Hall who suggests looking for an intersection between the interests and goals of current epistemic agents and our neighboring epistemic agents (the categorical bottleneck view), we advocate the view that all these different interests and goals need to be taken into account, and thus our view takes into account a much wider range of categories. (shrink)

I defend interest-relative invariantism from a number of recent attacks. One common thread to my response is that interest-relative invariantism is a muchweaker thesis than is often acknowledged, and a number of the attacks only challenge very specific, and I think implausible, versions of it. Another is that a number of the attacks fail to acknowledge how many things we have independent reason to believe knowledge is sensitive to. Whether there is a defeater for someone's knowledge can be sensitive to (...) all manner of features of their environment, as the host of examples from the post-Gettier literature shows. Adding in interest-sensitive defeaters is a much less radical move than most critics claim it is. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a version of contextualism that I call interests contextualism. Interests contextualism is the view that the truth-conditions of knowledge ascribing and denying sentences are partly determined by the ascriber’s interests and purposes. It therefore stands in opposition to the usual view on which the truth-conditions are partly determined by the ascriber’s conversational context. I give an argument against one particular implementation of the usual view, differentiate interests contextualism from other prominent versions (...) of contextualism and argue that, unlike those versions, interests contextualism can mitigate against the epistemic descent objection put forward by Duncan Pritchard in his ‘Contextualism, Scepticism, and the Problem of Epistemic Descent’ (the objection is that, on the contextualist view, an ascriber of knowledge cannot, for some subject S and proposition p, properly ascribe knowledge that p to S if that ascriber has previously retracted an earlier ascription of knowledge that p to S). (shrink)

I consider the current best interests of patients who were once thought to be either completely unaware (to be in PVS) or only minimally aware (MCS), but who, because of advanced fMRI studies, we now suspect have much more “going on” inside their minds, despite no ability to communicate with the world. My goal in this chapter is twofold: (1) to set out and defend a framework that I think should always guide thinking about the best interests of (...) highly cognitively compromised patients, and then (2) to defend a particular conclusion that applies to this specific patient population. The framework requires us to ask two questions: Is the individual suffering? Is the individual gaining any benefit from life? There must be benefit of some sort for life to be worth preserving, and the benefit must outweigh any suffering (if there is suffering present). I then argue it would be best overall to allow these patients to die. Either these patients are not really very aware at all, in which case they are most likely not suffering, but not benefiting from life either, or they are mentally intact enough to make benefit a theoretical possibility, but in fact they are not benefiting because they cannot communicate with anyone. Such patients would most likely suffer. As there is no way currently to address their suffering, we should allow them to die. No matter the truth about their cognitive lives, death would either be a neutral event, or a blessing. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that the view of informed consent found in the regulations and guidelines struggles to keep pace with the ever-advancing enterprise of human subjects research. Over the last 10 years, there have been serious attempts to rethink informed consent so that it conforms to our considered judgments about cases where we are confident valid consent has been given. These arguments are influenced by an argument from Gopal Sreenivasan, which apparently shows that a potential participant9s consent to research (...) participation can be perfectly valid even if she fails to understand the risk-benefit profile of the study. I argue that Sreenivasan9s argument fails. The set of clinical trials that is supposed to be ethical in the face of this kind of ignorance is empty. However, I argue that his argument is nonetheless instructive in allowing us to identify three important but neglected areas for future conceptual research on informed consent. I close by arguing that research on these identified questions promises to yield a defensible view of consent, lessen the burden of ambiguity on researchers attempting to obtain consent to research participation, and facilitate socially valuable research. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically analyze the notion that self-interest distorts moral belief-formation. This belief is widely shared among modern moral epistemologists, and in this paper, I seek to undermine this near consensus. I then offer a principle which can help us to sort cases in which self-interest distorts moral belief from cases in which it does not. As it turns out, we cannot determine whether such distortion has occurred from the armchair; rather, we must inquire into mechanisms of social (...) power and advantage before declaring that some moral position is distorted by self-interest. (shrink)

This paper focuses on 3 features of Freyenhagen's Aristotelian version of Adorno. (a) It challenges the strict negativism Freyenhagen finds in Adorno. If we have morally relevant interests in ourselves, it is implicit that we have a standard by which to understand what is both good and bad for us (our interests). Because strict negativism operates without reference to what is good, it seems to be detached from real interests too. Torture, it is argued, is, among other (...) things, a violation of those interests. (b) Freyenhagen identifies the “impulse” in Adorno as an untutored yet moral reaction to morally demanding situations. The plausibility of this primitivism and its compatibility with Adorno's general worries about immediacy are considered. (c) The disruptive character of Adorno's version of the categorical imperative, its willingness to complicate action through wholesale reflection on the norms of what we are committing ourselves to, is set in contrast with Freyenhagen's Aristotelian claim that certain notions, such as “humanity,” cannot be intelligibly questioned. (shrink)

We present a dynamic model of the evolution of communication in a Lewis signaling game while systematically varying the degree of common interest between sender and receiver. We show that the level of common interest between sender and receiver is strongly predictive of the amount of information transferred between them. We also discuss a set of rare but interesting cases in which common interest is almost entirely absent, yet substantial information transfer persists in a *cheap talk* regime, and offer a (...) diagnosis of how this may arise. -/- . (shrink)

Western philosophy begins with Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Or so we are told by Aristotle and many members of the later doxographical tradition. But a good case can be made that several centuries before the Milesian thinkers began their investigations, the poets of archaic Greece reflected on the limits of human intelligence and concluded that no mortal being could know the full and certain truth. Homer belittled the mental capacities of ‘creatures of a day’ and a series of poets of (...) the archaic period declared that mortals think only in terms of ‘what they meet with’ while failing to detect the larger cycles that make for success or failure. While Xenophanes embraced this pessimistic tradition, a number of early thinkers (Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and Philolaus) expressed a more positive view of the powers of human intelligence, at least in those who heard and took to heart their novel philosophical teachings. (shrink)

It is not clear that scholars, when they use the term ‘conspiracy theory’, are in fact interested in investigating the phenomenon of conspiracy theories and belief in them as such. I consider two perspectives found in the fast-growing literature on conspiracy theories: The Faux-pas View and The Neutral View. I argue that there is a difference in scholarly motivation, or at a very minimum a difference in the sustaining motivation for the research paradigms. What the motivations are is much too (...) complex to detail in this paper, and I only give a suggestion to possible ones to consider. However, I maintain that investigating the motivations for - and interest in conspiracy theory research will illuminate why there is disagreements on the definition and conceptualization of the term itself. I argue that our interest will inform our research project, and determine the conceptualization of the term ‘conspiracy theory’, which in turn taints our interpretation of the contemporary exploratory research on the subject. (shrink)

One recurring criticism of the best interests standard concerns its vagueness, and thus the inadequate guidance it offers to care providers. The lack of an agreed definition of ‘best interests’, together with the fact that several suggested considerations adopted in legislation or professional guidelines for doctors do not obviously apply across different groups of persons, result in decisions being made in murky waters. In response, bioethicists have attempted to specify the best interests standard, to reduce the indeterminacy (...) surrounding medical decisions. In this paper, we discuss the bioethicists’ response in relation to the state's possible role in clarifying the best interests standard. We identify and characterise two clarificatory strategies employed by bioethicists —elaborative and enumerative—and argue that the state should adopt the latter. Beyond the practical difficulties of the former strategy, a state adoption of it would inevitably be prejudicial in a pluralistic society. Given the gravity of best interests decisions, and the delicate task of respecting citizens with different understandings of best interests, only the enumerative strategy is viable. We argue that this does not commit the state to silence in providing guidance to and supporting healthcare providers, nor does it facilitate the abuse of the vulnerable. Finally, we address two methodological worries about adopting this approach at the state level. The adoption of the enumerative strategy is not defeatist in attitude, nor does it eventually collapse into (a form of) the elaborative strategy. (shrink)

The financial crisis of 2008–2009 presents us with the opportunity to not only understand what has happened in the markets but also to reflect on the purpose of the marketplace. Drawing from expert economic analyses, we first assess the central lesson of the crisis—the failure of self-regulation by rational self-interest to moderate externalized risk in financial markets. Second, we ask the philosophical question occasioned by the crisis concerning the moral meaning of economic activity: Is market exchange solely for the sake (...) of self-interest? Reflecting on the poetry of Kahlil Gibran and engaging with the recent encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, we turn our attention from political economy to moral economy: the relationships among market exchange, self-interest, and the common good—and, in particular, the prior conditions of market exchange and their moral significance for the present crisis. (shrink)

The Aristotelian view that the moral virtues–the virtues of character informed by practical wisdom–are essential to an individual's happiness, and are thus in an individual's self-interest, has been little discussed outside of purely scholarly contexts. With a few exceptions, contemporary philosophers have tended to be suspicious of Aristotle's claims about human nature and the nature of rationality and happiness. But recent scholarship has offered an interpretation of the basic elements of Aristotle's views of human nature and happiness, and of reason (...) and virtue, that brings them more into line with common-sense thinking and with contemporary philosophical and empirical psychology. This makes it fruitful to reexamine the question of the role of virtue in self-interest. (shrink)

The van Wijngaarden grammars are two-level grammars that present many interesting properties. In the present article I elaborate on six of these properties, to wit, (i) their being constituted by two grammars, (ii) their ability to generate (possibly infinitely many) strict languages and their own metalanguage, (iii) their context-sensitivity, (iv) their high descriptive power, (v) their productivity, or the ability to generate an infinite number of production rules, and (vi) their equivalence with the unrestricted, or Type-0, Chomsky grammars.

Contemporary philosophical attitudes toward beauty are hard to reconcile with its importance in the history of philosophy. Philosophers used to allow it a starring role in their theories of autonomy, morality, or the good life. But today, if beauty is discussed at all, it is often explicitly denied any such importance. This is due, in part, to the thought that beauty is the object of “disinterested pleasure”. In this paper I clarify the notion of disinterest and develop two general strategies (...) for resisting the emphasis on it, in the hopes of getting a clearer view of beauty’s significance. I present and discuss several literary depictions of the encounter with beauty that motivate both strategies. These depictions illustrate the ways in which aesthetic experience can be personally transformative. I argue that they present difficulties for disinterest theories and suggest we abandon the concept of disinterest to focus instead on the special kind of interest beauty fuels. I propose a closer look at the Platonic thought that beauty is the object of love. (shrink)

In Chapter 5 of Liberalism’s Religion, Cécile Laborde considers the freedom and autonomy of religious associations within liberal democratic societies. This paper evaluates her central arguments in that chapter. First, I argue that Laborde makes things too easy for herself in dismissing controversies over the state’s legitimate jurisdictional authority. Second, I argue that Laborde’s view of when associations’ ‘coherence interests’ justify exemptions is too narrow. Third, I consider how we might develop an account of judicial deference to associations’ ‘competence (...) interests’. (shrink)

The liberal conception of rights which has dominated the greater part of the 19th and 20th centuries is still very relevant today with its emphasis on individual interests. The liberals consider the rights or the interests of individual members of the society as trumps over group interests. Under the liberal harm and offence principles for example, they hold that whatever interests claimed by the groups should have adequate protection under individual interests or rights. This paper, (...) while recognizing the controversies and difficulties in a wholesome acceptance of group rights, aims to show that the considerations of the liberal harm and offence principles that ignore the interests of groups or collectives will be incomplete in handling or managing the problems of the political society. We argue that in spite of the difficulties and controversies related with group interests and rights, we cannot ignore the constant problems of the political society that require proper attention to such interests. Our major interest is therefore to show that there is certainly a good case for its recognition in the language of rights. The theory of group rights that stresses the independent existence of group interests from that of individuals is particularly admirable and may not be ignored easily in modern political thinking. (shrink)

Are embryos deserving of moral consideration in our actions? A standard view suggests that embryos are considerable only if they have interests. One argument for embryonic interests contends that embryos are harmed by death because they are deprived of valuable future lives as adult persons. Some have challenged this argument on the grounds that embryos aren’t identical to adults: either due to the potential for embryos to twin or because we do not exist until the fetus develops consciousness. (...) These arguments fail to show that embryos do not have future adult lives. There is a better reason to think that embryos cannot have interests; namely, because they are not capable of having desires. Others have held this view but have not sufficiently justified it. The justification lies in the fact that the capacity for desires is necessary to make sense of the normativity of interests. (shrink)

Having positive experience is, by defintion, in the interest of every subject. Whether being alive per se, in addition to having positive experiences, is in a subject's interest depends of her/his cognitive development. Only a reflectively self-conscious subject can take and thus have an interest in one's own individual existence and may not want to die regardless of the expected experience. Since most non-human subjects (except for a few mammalian and avian species) are not aware of their subjective existence they (...) cannot take and thus have interest in their lives per se. However, they do have interest in maximizing rewarding experience and minimizing suffering. (shrink)

Epistocratic systems of government have received renewed attention, and considerable opposition, in recent political philosophy. Although they vary significantly in form, epistocracies generally reject universal suffrage. But can they maintain the advantages of universal suffrage despite rejecting it? This paper develops an argument for a significant instrumental advantage of universal suffrage: that governments must take into account the interests of all of those enfranchised in their policy decisions or else risk losing power. This is called ‘the Interests Argument’. (...) One problem for the Interests Argument is that governments are not entirely responsive to voter interests, partly because voters do not always know what is in their interests. I will show how this epistemic claim can be used to support certain forms of epistocracy, but deny that it undermines the Interests Argument. I then consider whether we can identify forms of epistocracy that preserve the benefits of the Interests Argument whilst overcoming the epistemic limitations of democracy. I propose six forms of epistocracy, and argue that two are able to maintain these benefits, hence providing an evaluation of the relative strengths of these epistocracies with respect to one of the most valuable instrumental benefits of universal suffrage. Whilst epistocracy lacks many of the advantages of democracy, this paper shows that some forms fare better than others. (shrink)

This paper presents an analytical model for valuing interest rate swaps, subject to bilateral counterparty credit risk. The counterparty defaults are modeled by the reduced-form model as the first jump of a time-inhomogeneous Poisson process. All quantities modeled are market-observable. The closed-form solution gives us a better understanding of the impact of the credit asymmetry on swap value, credit value adjustment, swap rate and swap spread.

In seeking to clarify the concept of conflict of interest (COI) in debates about physician–industry relationships, Howard Brody (2011) highlights the extent to which the prob- lem turns on a common pejorative understanding of COI. Whether it is the academic or public policy “pharmapologists” or “pharmascolds” talking about COI, there is often a straightforward and overly simplistic correlation made: that is, a conflict of interest—by definition—leads to fraudulent or corrupt behavior. The same type of reasoning is com- monly found in (...) discussions about COI outside the health sciences, most notably in news stories about the awarding of government contracts or the behaviour of corporate executives. The problem is that in focusing on dramatic failures to manage COI (e.g., around Vioxx), there is a tendency to strongly associate COI with extreme forms of financial and even criminal misconduct, leaving the public, policymakers, academics, and professionals with a skewed and limited understanding of the concept. (shrink)

The case study presented by Winch and Sinnott (2011) shows not only how difficult it is for clinicians and researchers to identify conflicts of interest (COI), but also how damaging it can be when there are unin- formed and uncoordinated policy responses by senior administrators.

I propose that the meanings of vague expressions render the truth conditions of utterances of sentences containing them sensitive to our interests. For example, 'expensive' is analyzed as meaning 'costs a lot', which in turn is analyzed as meaning 'costs significantly greater than the norm'. Whether a difference is a significant difference depends on what our interests are. Appeal to the proposal is shown to provide an attractive resolution of the sorites paradox that is compatible with classical logic (...) and semantics. (shrink)

A recurring claim in a number of behavioural, cognitive and neuro-scientific literatures is that there is, or must be, a unidimensional ‘common currency’ in which the values of different available options are represented. There is striking variety in the quantities or properties that have been proposed as determinants of the ordering in motivational strength. Among those seriously suggested are pain and pleasure, biological fitness, reward and reinforcement, and utility among economists, who have regimented the notion of utility in a variety (...) of ways, some of them incompatible. This topic deserves philosophical attention for at least the following reasons. Repeated invocation of the ‘common currency’ idiom isn’t merely terminological coincidence because most of the claims are competing explanations either of manifest pattern in choices, or of order in the processes producing choice. We can’t suppose that the different currency claims within each area are compatible, because there are significant obstacles to identifying pairs of members of either the ‘pattern’ or ‘process’ group. There are, finally, seriously opposed positions about the relationships between the pattern facts and the process facts. There are philosophical positions both favouring and opposing a common currency. But direct consideration of the abstract relationships between claims about common currencies across scientific settings, and the arguments for and against these claims, is relatively rare. There is, though, much of philosophical interest to be found here. (shrink)

Does the strength of a particular belief depend upon the significance we attach to it? Do we move from one context to another, remaining in the same doxastic state concerning p yet holding a stronger belief that p in one context than in the other? For that to be so, a doxastic state must have a certain sort of context-sensitive complexity. So the question is about the nature of belief states, as we understand them, or as we think a theory (...) should model them. I explore the idea and how it relates to work on imprecise probabilities and second-order confidence. (shrink)

In this paper I consider what it is that makes certain topics or questions epistemically interesting. Getting clear about this issue, I argue, is not only interesting in its own right, but also helps to shed light on increasingly important and perplexing questions in the epistemological literature: e.g., questions concerning how to think about ‘the epistemic point of view,’ as well as questions concerning what is most worthy of our intellectual attention and why.

Michael Huemer argues that cross-cultural convergence toward liberal moral values is evidence of objective moral progress, and by extension, evidence for moral realism. Nathan Cofnas claims to debunk Huemer’s argument by contending that convergence toward liberal moral values can be better explained by ‘two related non-truth-tracking processes’: self-interest and its long-term tendency to result in social conditions conducive to greater empathy. This article argues that although Cofnas successfully debunks Huemer’s convergence argument for one influential form of moral realism – Robust (...) Moral Realism, which holds that moral facts are non-natural, stance-independent normative facts – Cofnas’s debunking argument broadly supports a second type of moral realism: Enlightened Self-Interest Realism, the view that moral facts are reducible to stance-dependent requirements of instrumental (‘means-end’) rationality. Finally, this article argues that insofar as different Enlightened Self-Interest Realist theories make specific predictions about the intra- and inter-personal mechanisms behind moral convergence toward liberalism, empirical observations of cross-cultural convergence can provide independent support for Enlightened Self-Interest Realism. I conclude that this is an important mark in favor of Enlightened Self-Interest Realism over Robust Moral Realism. (shrink)

Ayalon Eidelstein’s Openness and Faith focuses on the centrality of the idea of openness, or open-mindedness, to the educational sphere. The first half presents the challenges in modern ‘divided-consciousness’ and its consequences of egoism, materialism, and hedonism on the one hand, and religious fanatism on the other. Eidelstein’s main audience is the Israeli secular public, to which he proposes an educational and philosophical middle-way rooted in sincere human and inter-human openness. This openness is inspired by the idea of disinterestedness that (...) Kant articulates in his Critique of Judgment. Eidelstein refers to additional authors, including Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, to conceptualize the idea of open-mindedness. In the second half of the book, he engages classical American Pragmatism, specifically that of William James, in order to establish the possibility for, and the validity of, a humane open-mindedness. Pragmatism thus paves the way for accepting beliefs that may otherwise be excluded as superstitions and accords them a legitimate and productive role in the life of a modern individual. The difficulty, however, lies in Eidelstein’s employment of Kantian disinterestedness, for it is in fact seriously dissonant with the worthy pragmatic educational purposes that Eidelstein elaborates in the second half of his book. Pragmatism is opposed to disinterestedness in that it stresses the entanglement of fact and value, viewing interests as playing a necessary and productive part in moral motivation and action, while Kantian deontology eliminates consequentialism from the moral scope. While for pragmatists (for example John Dewey’s Democracy and Education) the human creature is holistically conceived, as made of flesh and blood and not only as ‘spirit’, Kant maintained the dualistic Cartesian tradition. This tension calls for a rigorous address. Since Eidelstein’s book is making an important claim about the place open-mindedness has within the Judaism, it must be noted that the disinterestedness of a presumed human ‘self’ is also not easily compatible with the dominant voices in normative Jewish tradition. The Bible does not deal to a large extent with the ‘self’ or with mental intentions, and its conception of the human is not categorically different in the Talmudic corpus. On the contrary, the rabbis frequently endorse pragmatic and ‘external’ reasons, as the motivational basis for action. The kind of purism associated with disinterestedness (as in Mishnah Avot 5:18-19) is barely represented in rabbinic thought. Openness and Faith: In Search of Cultural Education Here and Now is nevertheless an important contribution to the intellectual discourse over the individual and public virtues. In our ever-more segregated and fenced-off world, there is an urgency to delineating the virtue of openness, hoping that Ecclesiastes is right in contending that “No person has power over the spirit [רוח] to retain it” (8:8). But to make Eidelstein’s point about openness in the second half of his book educationally viable, there a need for a pragmatic refinement of the philosophical anthropology in its first half. One way or the other, Openness and Faith is praiseworthy for its articulateness and depth, which invites its readers to an open-minded conversation about the concept of openness. (shrink)

This paper aims to reevaluate Aristotelian political theory from an egalitarian perspective and to pinpoint its legacy and relevance to contemporary political theory, demonstrating its importance for contemporary liberal democracies in a changing world, suggesting a new critique of liberal and neoliberal political theory and practice, and especially the improvement of our notion of the modern liberal-democratic state, since most contemporary representative liberal democracies fail to take into account the public interest of the many and do very little in order (...) to advance it. The paper will focus on key aspects of Aristotle’s thought, such as his notions of justice (δικαιοσύνη/dikaiosunē and ἁπλῶς δίκαιον/aplōs dikaion), concord (ὁμόμοια/homonoia), friendship (φιλία/philia) and the art of ruling (τέχνη τοῦ ἄρχειν/technē tou archein), arguing that Aristotle’s theory requires us to have concern for our fellow citizens; ‘concern for others’ as opposed to the mere ‘respect for others’ that contemporary neo-Kantian liberalism advocates . Hence, I will examine these aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy that have not so far been adequately discussed, in relation to his conception of the ‘common or public interest’ (τὸ κοινῇ συμφέρον/to koinē sympheron) which is essential in order to understand the Aristotelian vision for ‘the art of politics’ (τέχνη τοῦ ἄρχειν) which should always aim towards the interest of the many, i.e., the people (πλῆθος/plēthos). (shrink)

I argue in this paper that there are two considerations which govern the dynamics of a two-person bargaining game, viz. relative proportionate utility loss from conceding to one's opponent's proposal and relative non-proportionate utility loss from not conceding to one's opponent's proposal, if she were not to concede as well. The first consideration can adequately be captured by the information contained in vNM utilities. The second requires measures of utility which allow for an interpersonal comparison of utility differences. These considerations (...) respectively provide for a justification of the Nash solution and the Kalai egalitarian solution. However, none of these solutions taken by themselves can provide for a full story of bargaining, since, if within a context of bargaining one such consideration is overriding, the solution which does not match this consideration will yield unreasonable results. I systematically present arguments to the effect that each justification from self-interest for respectively the Nash and the Kalai egalitarian solution is vulnerable to this kind of objection. I suggest that the search for an integrative model may be a promising line of research. (shrink)

Timothy Michael Fowler has argued that, as a consequence of their commitment to neutrality in regard to comprehensive doctrines, political liberals face a dilemma. In essence, the dilemma for political liberals is that either they have to give up their commitment to neutrality (which is an indispensible part of their view), or they have to allow harm to children. Fowler’s case for this dilemma depends on ascribing to political liberals a view which grants parents a great degree of freedom in (...) deciding on the education of their children. I show that ascribing this view to political liberals rests upon a misinterpretation of political liberalism. Since political liberals have access to reasons based upon the interests of children, they need not yield to parent’s wishes about the education of their children. A correct understanding of political liberalism thus shows that political liberals do not face the dilemma envisaged by Fowler. (shrink)

Chater & Loewenstein argue that i-frame research has been coopted by private interests opposed to system-level reform, leading to ineffective interventions. They recommend that behavioural scientists refocus on system-level interventions. We suggest that the influence of private interests on research is problematic for wider normative and epistemic reasons. A system-level intervention to shield research from private influence is needed.

Do non-human animals have an interest in sociopolitical freedom? Cochrane has recently taken up this important yet largely neglected quest ion. He argues that animal freedom is not a relevant moral concern in itself, because animals have a merely instrumental but not an intrinsic interest in freedom (Cochrane 2009a, 2012). This paper will argue that even if animals have a merely instrumental interest in freedom, animal freedom should nonetheless be an important goal for our relationships with animals. Drawing on recent (...) work on the value of freedom, it will be argued that freedom is non-specifically instrumentally valuable. Accordingly, freedom is a means to other goods, but often it is not possible to identify those goods in advance or aim for them directly. Some of the reasons that make freedom non-specifically valuable for human relationships, it will be argued, also apply to relationships between humans and animals. Amongst other implications, it will be shown how this argument provides a response to those who fear that stricter animal protection policies might undermine people’s freedom: A concern for freedom actually requires stricter protection policies rather than speak against them. (shrink)

Given the growing interest in entrepreneurship education and the quest to provide entrepreneurial skills to all including the youths, the study investigates high school learners’ interest and readiness to start a business in South Africa. A group of high school learners (n=403) from select high schools in Cape Town was purposively sampled using self-administrated questionnaires while personal interviews were held with all Business Studies teachers in the participating schools (n=9). The results of this study indicate that 52% of the learners (...) are interested in starting a business, while 73% of them were from moderate income schools. A chi square test was performed to determine if the race and income level of the school influenced learners’ responses, and we found no statistical significance (P > 0.01). An overwhelming majority of the learners (73%) was of the view that they could start a business with the help of the knowledge and skills gained in the entrepreneurship education received. Suggestions on how to increase high school learners’ entrepreneurial intent and readiness to start a business upon leaving high school include the implementation of frequent learner visits to businesses as well as inviting entrepreneurs to give talks to learners. The goal of any scientific social enquiry such as the one pursued in this study, is to produce knowledge that assists in distilling viewpoints that express accurate necessities for socioeconomic development. Therefore, the practical implications of the study reside in the reinforcement of the need for a curriculum that addresses entrepreneurship education in South African high schools. -/- . (shrink)

When parties and interest groups interact, they can do so in several ways which could be on an informal level, lobbying for a party candidate, or group representatives approach party leaders in the parliament to lobby them on an issue. There is a plethora of studies on the extent to which major political parties and major interests have related in the past and continue to relate or interact at the organizational level. Researchers have investigated to what extent parties and (...) groups had formal organizational ties, cooperated in elections, or worked in concert on developing and implementing policies. Factors that for decades have determined the relationship between political parties and interest groups in liberal democracies are political system and subsystem development, political culture and political ideology, centralization of government and policymaking, nature of the party system, political party dependence on interest groups, encompassing characteristics of the interest group system, interest group development, ideology, and leadership. However, the pandemic has influenced to a great extend the relationship between interest groups and politics. While Covid-19 crisis has consolidated power within governments, leaving opposition parties in a bind, on the other hand it has galvanized interest groups and businesses to mobilize. The pandemic has opened up the lobbying playing field to many new players. The paper aims to investigate to what extend the pandemic has influenced the relationship between political parties, government and interest groups and what strategies have these last ones used to get heard in a time when social distancing has reduced the opportunities for face-to-face lobbying. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of the moral status of non-human animals, or the question whether sentient animals are morally considerable. The arguments for and against the moral status of animals are discussed, above all the argument from marginal cases. It is argued that sentient animals have moral status based on their having interests in their experiential well-being, but that there are degrees of moral status. Two interest-based approaches are presented and discussed: DeGrazia’s view that sentient animals have (...) class='Hi'>interests in continuing to live, and that their interests should be granted moral weight; and McMahan’s TRIA which similarly postulates that animals have interests and that in a given situation we should compare the human and animal interests at stake. Finally, the paper concludes that the anthropocentric approach to animal ethics should be abandoned in favour of the biocentric ethics. (shrink)

In order to determine whether current (or future) machines have a welfare that we as agents ought to take into account in our moral deliberations, we must determine which capacities give rise to interests and whether current machines have those capacities. After developing an account of moral patiency, I argue that current machines should be treated as mere machines. That is, current machines should be treated as if they lack those capacities that would give rise to psychological interests. (...) Therefore, they are moral patients only if they have non-psychological interests. I then provide an account of what I call teleo interests that constitute the most plausible type of non-psychological interest that a being might have. I then argue that even if current machines have teleo interests, they are such that agents need not concern themselves with these interests. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, current machines are not moral patients. (shrink)