I argue for an egalitarian conception of modesty. Modesty is a virtue because an apt expression of what is, and is not, morally salient in our attitudes toward persons and is important because we are prone to arrogance, self‐importance, and hero worship. To make my case, I consider 3 claims which have shaped recent discussions: first, that modesty is valuable because it obviates destructive social rankings; second, that modesty essentially involves an indifference to how others evaluate one's accomplishments; and third, (...) the wide spread but normatively fraught assumption that the modest person is deserving of credit. Although the first two features identify something significant about modesty, they fail to ground it. I argue that appeals to deserved credit bear a larger explanatory burden than has been supposed; they can smuggle in the illegitimate social hierarchies that modesty is supposed to counter. I make my case for modesty as an excellence in moral perspective by arguing that prominent, nonegalitarian, accounts of modesty allow for or promote illegitimate forms of social privilege. Modesty is valuable because it expresses a commitment to fair distribution of basic moral recognition and a skillful response to unjust social hierarchies at odds with this fair distribution. (shrink)

Most commonplace moral failure is not conditioned by evil intentions or the conscious desire to harm or humiliate others. It is more banal and ubiquitous – a form of moral stupidity that gives rise to rationalization, self‐deception, failures of due moral consideration, and the evasion of responsibility. A kind of crude, perception‐distorting self‐absorption, moral stupidity is the cause of many moral missteps; moral development demands the development of self‐knowledge as a way out of moral stupidity. Only once aware of the (...) presence or absence of particular desires and beliefs can an agent have authority over them or exercise responsibility for their absence. But what is the connection between self‐knowledge and moral development? I argue that accounts (such as Kant's and Richard Moran's) which construe instances of self‐knowledge as like the verdicts of a judge cannot explain its potential role in moral development, and claim that it must be conceived of in a way that makes possible a process of self‐refinement and self‐regulation. Making use of Buddhist moral psychology, I argue that when self‐knowledge plays a role in moral development, it includes a quality of attention to one's experience best modeled as the work of the craftsperson, not as judge. (shrink)

Descartes’s mechanistic account of the passions is sometimes dismissed as one which lacks the resources toadequately explain the cognitive aspect of emotion. By some, he is taken to be “feeling theorist”, reducing thepassions to a mere awareness of the physiological state of the soul-body union. If this reading of Descartes’spassions is correct, his theory fails not only because it cannot account for the intentional nature of the passions,but also because the passions cannot play the role in Descartes’s moral theory they (...) are meant to play. I arguethat Descartes’s account is not best read as a feeling theory. I defend a reading of the Cartesian passions whichacknowledges their mechanistic nature, arguing that for Descartes, passions are modes of the soul withcognitive significance, they are perceptions of relational axiological properties. Thus, Descartes’s theory of thepassions has the resources to connect it with an account of good conduct. As a means of elaborating on thenormative nature of the passions I consider the role of generosity in Descartes’s moral theory. (shrink)

Influentially, Pamela Hieronymi has argued that any account of forgiveness must be both articulate and uncompromising. It must articulate the change in judgement that results in the forgiver’s loss of resentment without excusing or justifying the misdeed, and without comprising a commitment to the transgressor=s responsibility, the wrongness of the action, and the transgressed person=s self-worth. Non-articulate accounts of forgiveness, which rely on indirect strategies for reducing resentment (for example, reflecting on the transgressor’s bad childhood) are said to fail to (...) explain forgiveness. I argue that the articulateness condition is not a necessary condition for forgiveness. I respond to numerous objections advanced against non-articulate accounts, including the claim that the resentment-mitigating practices they involve amount to excusing. Appealing to P.F. Strawson=s distinction between objective and participant attitudes, I argue that forgivers can take transgressors to be detrimentally causally shaped by their past while holding him them to be morally responsible. (shrink)

After distinguishing between a metaphysical and a contemplative strategy interpretation of the no-self doctrine, I argue that the latter allows for the illumination of significant and under-discussed Kantian affinities with Buddhist views of the self and moral psychology. Unlike its metaphysical counterpart, the contemplative strategy interpretation, understands the doctrine of no-self as a technique of perception, undertaken from the practical standpoint of action. I argue that if we think of the contemplative strategy version of the no-self doctrine as a process (...) engaged in, in order to free oneself from delusion and to see things more objectively in order to promote right action, then we find a clear parallel in Kant’s duty of self-knowledge which demands that we rid ourselves of deluded moral self-descriptions. While in Buddhism the aim is a selflessness that liberates one from suffering, for Kant the aim is an agency free of the conceit that interferes with clear moral vision, sound judgement, and dutiful action. I conclude by responding to objections advanced by Charles Goodman which aim to show that the Kantian position is deeply at odds with Buddhist thinking, arguing that neither Kantian agency nor Kantian self-legislation is undermined by the doctrine of no-self. (shrink)

Persons interested in developing virtue will find attending to, and attempting to act on, the right reason for action a rich resource for developing virtue. In this paper I consider the role of self-knowledge in intentional moral development. I begin by making a general case that because improving one’s moral character requires intimate knowledge of its components and their relation to right reason, the aim of developing virtue typically requires the development of self-knowledge. I next turn to Kant’s ethics for (...) an account which explains the reflexivity involved in moral reasoning generally, and the significance of self-knowledge to morality. I then take up Robert Audi’s interesting notion of the harnessing and unharnessing of reasons as a potential way of strengthening the agent’s connection to right reason, and his concerns about our limited and indirect resources for becoming virtuous. I argue that harnessing and unharnessing are not plausibly characterized as activities to be accomplished by an exertion of will, rather they involve a dynamic, cognitive, reflective attempt to gain self-knowledge and align oneself with one’s moral reasons for action. (shrink)

Resumen Ésta es la primera traducción al español de las guías “Atención después de la investigación: un marco para los comités de ética de investigación del National Health Service (NHS) (borrador versión 8.0)”. El documento afirma que existe una fuerte obligación moral de garantizar que los participantes enfermos de un estudio clínico hagan una transición después del estudio hacia una atención de la salud apropiada. Con “atención de la salud apropiada” se hace referencia al acceso para los participantes a la (...) atención de la salud, proporcionada principalmente por el National Health Service (en adelante NHS), el sistema de salud del Reino Unido, y/o a la intervención en estudio, también llamada producto o tratamiento en investigación. Las guías “Atención después de la investigación” están dirigidas principalmente a los miembros de los 79 comités de ética de investigación del NHS y a quienes presentan sus estudios de investigación ante estos comités. Se trata de un documento borrador muy avanzado, trabajado en numerosas reuniones, durante más de 3 años, que ha sido discutido por participantes de estudios y miembros de la comunidad, miembros y presidentes de comités de ética de investigación del Reino Unido, especialistas internacionales en ética de la investigación, representantes de la industria y otras partes interesadas. La redacción de las guías es producto de la colaboración de Neema Sofaer y Penney Lewis, ambas investigadoras del King’s College London, en el Centre of Medical Law and Ethics del Dickson Poon School of Law, y Hugh Davies, Asesor en Ética de la Investigación de la Health Research Authority (HRA) del NHS. El traductor del presente documento, Ignacio Mastroleo, participó del workshop en la Fundación Brocher (Ginebra, Suiza, diciembre de 2011) donde se revisó el borrador versión 7.0 y contribuyó en la revisión del borrador de la versión 8.0 durante el 2012. -/- Abstract This is the first Spanish translation of the guidelines “Care after research: a framework for NHS RECs (8th draft)”. The document states that there is a strong moral obligation to ensure that participants in a clinical study who are ill transition after the study to appropriate healthcare. The terms "appropriate healthcare" refer to participants’ access to health care, mainly provided by the National Health Service (NHS), the health system in the UK, and/or to the intervention study also named investigational treatment or product. The guides "Care after research" are mainly directed to members of the 79 NHS committees of research ethics (RECs) and to those who submit their research to these committees. This is a very advanced draft document, worked in several meetings, for more than three years, that has been discussed with study participants and community members, members and chairs of RECs in the UK, international specialists in research ethics, industry representatives and other stakeholders. The drafting of the guidelines is the result of the collaboration of Neema Sofaer and Penney Lewis, both researchers at King's College London, at the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics of Dickson Poon School of Law, and Hugh Davies, Research Ethics Advisor of the Health Research Authority (HRA) of the NHS. The translator of this document, Ignacio Mastroleo, attended the workshop at the Brocher Foundation (Geneva, Switzerland, December 2011) where draft version 7.0 was revised and contributed in the revision of draft version 8.0 during 2012. (shrink)

Con el fin de examinar los aspectos exclusivamente morales del suicidio asistido y la eutanasia activa voluntaria, el análisis debe ser llevado a cabo independientemente de la función social de los agentes involucrados, de la opinión de los familiares del paciente terminal y del público en general, y de las consecuencias legales de dichas acciones. En consecuencia, en el presente ensayo se analiza un imaginario caso neutral, aislado del contexto natural de la eutanasia y el suicidio asistido. Utilizando un principio (...) moral—llamado PMS en el ensayo—cuya aplicabilidad depende de la apreciación subjetiva que de él hagan la persona que desea morir y el agente que asiste en su muerte, en el ensayo se concluye que en ciertos casos es posible justificar la obligación moral de asistir en un suicidio o de llevar a cabo una eutanasia activa voluntaria. (shrink)

"La gente dice una y otra vez que la filosofía no progresa realmente, que todavía estamos ocupados con los mismos problemas filosóficos que los griegos. Pero la gente que dice esto no entiende por qué tiene que ser así. Es porque nuestro lenguaje ha permanecido igual y nos sigue seduciendo para que hagan las mismas preguntas. Mientras siga habiendo un verbo "ser" que parezca como si funciona de la misma manera que "comer y beber", siempre y cuando todavía tengamos los (...) adjetivos "idénticos", "verdaderos", "falsos", "posibles", siempre y cuando sigamos hablando de un río de tiempo, , de una extensión de espacio, etc., etc., la gente seguirá tropezando con las mismas dificultades desconcertante y se encontrará mirando a algo que ninguna explicación parece capaz de aclarar. Y lo que es más, esto satisface un anhelo de lo trascendente, porque, en la medida en que la gente cree que puede ver el ‘límites de la comprensión humana ́, creen, por supuesto, que pueden ver más allá de estos. ' ' Esta cita es de Ludwig Wittgenstein que redefinió la filosofía hace unos 70 años (pero la mayoría de la gente todavía tiene que averiguarlo). Dennett, aunque ha sido un filósofo desde hace unos 40 años, es uno de ellos. También es curioso que tanto él como su antagonista principal, John Searle, estudiaron bajo los famosos Wittgensteinianos (Searle con John Austin, Dennett con Gilbert Ryle) pero Searle Más o menos consiguió el punto y Dennett no, (aunque se está estirando cosas para llamar Searle o Ryle Wittgensteinianos). Dennett es un determinista duro (aunque intenta escabullirse de la realidad en la puerta trasera), y tal vez esto se deba a Ryle, cuyo famoso libro ́el concepto de la mente ́ (1949) continúa siendo reimpreso. Ese libro hizo un gran trabajo de exorcizar al fantasma, pero dejó la máquina. A Dennett le gusta cometer los errores que Wittgenstein, Ryle (y muchos otros desde entonces) han expuesto en detalle. Nuestro uso de las palabras consciencia, elección, libertad, intención, partícula, pensamiento, determina, oleada, causa, ocurrió, evento (y así sucesivamente) raramente son una fuente de confusión, pero tan pronto como dejamos la vida normal y entramos en la filosofía (y cualquier discusión separada del entorno en el que el lenguaje evolucionó— es decir, el contexto exacto en el que las palabras tenían sentido) reina el caos. Como la mayoría, Dennett carece de un marco coherente - que Searle ha llamado la estructura lógica de la racionalidad. Me he expandido en este considerablemente desde que escribí esta reseña y mis artículos recientes muestran en detalle lo que está mal con el enfoque de Dennett a la filosofía, que uno podría llamar scientismo en esteroides. Permítanme terminar con otra cita de Wittgenstein--́la ambición es la muerte del pensamiento ́. Aquellos que deseen un marco completo hasta la fecha para el comportamiento humano de la moderna Doe Sistemas Punto de Vista puede consultar mi libro 'La estructura lógica de la filosofía, la psicología, la mente y lenguaje en Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle ' 2nd ED (2019). Los interesados en más de mis escritos pueden ver 'Monos parlantes--filosofía, psicología, ciencia, religión y política en un planeta condenado--artículos y reseñas 2006-2019 3rd ED (2019) y delirios utópicos suicidas en el siglo 21 4a Ed (2019) y otras. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation is currently being investigated as an experimental treatment for patients suffering from treatment-refractory AN, with an increasing number of case reports and small-scale trials published. Although still at an exploratory and experimental stage, initial results have been promising. Despite the risks associated with an invasive neurosurgical procedure and the long-term implantation of a foreign body, DBS has a number of advantageous features for patients with SE-AN. Stimulation can be fine-tuned to the specific needs of the particular patient, (...) is relatively reversible, and the technique also allows for the crucial issue of investigating and comparing the effects of different neural targets. However, at a time when DBS is emerging as a promising investigational treatment modality for AN, lesioning procedures in psychiatry are having a renaissance. Of concern it has been argued that the two kinds of interventions should instead be understood as rivaling, yet “mutually enriching paradigms” despite the fact that lesioning the brain is irreversible and there is no evidence base for an effective target in AN. We argue that lesioning procedures in AN are unethical at this stage of knowledge and seriously problematic for this patient group, for whom self-control is particularly central to wellbeing. They pose a greater risk of major harms that cannot justify ethical equipoise, despite the apparent superiority in reduced short term surgical harms and lower cost. (shrink)

Đánh giá chất lượng công chức nói chung và công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện nói riêng là khâu mở đường quan trọng trong các hoạt động quản lý công chức và kết quả thực thi công vụ là tiêu chí cơ bản trong đánh giá. Nghiên cứu tiếp thu kết quả các nghiên cứu đi trước để xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết các nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến kết quả thực thi công vụ (...) của công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện ở TP. Hà Nội gồm 8 nhân tố: (1) Đào tạo, bồi dưỡng công chức; (2) Chính sách đãi ngộ; (3) Đánh giá công chức; (4) Bố trí, sử dụng công chức; (5) Kỷ cương, kỷ luật; (6) Phong cách lãnh đạo; (7) Đổi mới, sáng tạo của công chức; (8) Gắn kết với công việc của công chức. (shrink)

Financial distress in the hospitality industry affects both businesses and their employees. This study explores the perspectives of employees on financial distress within the hospitality sector in Imo State, Nigeria. The study addressed three research questions. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The study was carried out in Imo State Nigeria. 361 financial officers in the hotels within the hospitality industry in Owerri Imo State were the target population and random sampling was used to select 181 hotels whose (...) financial officers served as the study respondents. Structured questionnaire was specifically designed for this study. The data was analyzed using mean, and standard deviation to provide an overview of employee perspectives on financial distress. The results indicate that a wide range of variables, such as economic downturns, irregular revenue, high cost of living, and management concerns within businesses, are responsible for financial hardship among employees in the hotel industry in Imo State. Employees also mentioned that worry, anxiety, and job instability were direct effects of their financial hardship. Based on the results, a number of suggestions are made to lessen financial hardship. These include putting in place financial literacy initiatives for staff members, enhancing management-staff communication and transparency, supporting ethical labor practices, and encouraging social support systems within the workplace. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân trong đại đô thị Vinhomes Grand Park. Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra 6 nhân tố: (1) Thái độ hướng đến bảo vệ môi trường; (2) Chuẩn chủ quan; (3) Chất lượng sản phẩm tốt; (4) Giá cả sản phẩm; (5) Truyền thông xã hội đều có ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm (...) thân thiện với môi trường. Qua đó, tác giả đề xuất hàm ý quản trị nhằm nâng cao chiến lược phát triển thị trường sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân. (shrink)

Over 1000 companies have either curtailed or else completely ceased operations in Russia as a response to its invasion of Ukraine, a mass corporate exodus of a speed and scale which we’ve never seen. While corporate withdrawal appears to have considerable public support, it’s not obvious that it has done anything to hamper the Russian war effort, nor is it clear what the long-run effects of corporate withdrawal as a regularised response to war might be. Given this, it’s important the (...) evaluate the ethical merits of such a response. In this paper I critique what I take to be the two most common arguments given in favour of voluntary corporate withdrawal, which I label ‘the instrumental argument’ and ‘the clean hands argument’ respectively. After illustrating their shortcomings, I reframe corporations’ predicament as a ‘spattered hands’ case—one where they may do good by remaining in a war-waging state, but where they contribute indirectly to grave wrongdoing by doing so. Drawing on ideas from the ‘Business for Peace’ and ‘Business and Human Rights’ literature, I highlight the potentially positive role of corporate presence within war-waging countries, before highlighting four considerations which corporations ought to bear in mind when determining whether to withdraw, or whether it is the lesser evil to stay and to let their hands be spattered. (shrink)

This essay asks what it is about the practice of trade that grounds duties of justice between states as trade partners. The answer advanced is that such duties are grounded in the dependence that trade generates. The essay puts forward four conditions that a plausible account of grounding in trade must meet: it must admit of degrees, explain the distinctly international character of trade justice, ground both procedural and distributive duties, and it must be a necessary feature of all trade (...) relationships which generate duties of justice. A dependence account of grounding meets all four conditions, and does so in an intuitively compelling way. While other accounts of what grounds duties of trade justice can meet some of the conditions, none can meet all of them. Relative to rival candidates, then, the dependence account provides a firmer foundation for the ongoing attempts to develop a comprehensive theory of trade justice. (shrink)

To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This (...) paper is largely the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value, and, relatedly, of the claim that non-human beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. The paper is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It also defends one substantive thesis: that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e., in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. (shrink)

Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analysis supports a programme of public ownership and economic democracy intended to reduce domination in the workplace and (...) wider society. I defend this socialist republicanism from both the Marxist objection that it overlooks the impersonal nature of domination under capitalism and the left-liberal objections that property-owning democracy or worker codetermination are sufficient to suppress dominating relationships. The resulting position identifies the need for more ambitious institutional grounds for republican liberty than is often supposed, while offering us a distinctive emancipatory justification for socialism. (shrink)

China’s rise to global power status is set to be amongst the primary shapers of politics and life more broadly in the 21st century. Yet despite its immense significance, political philosophers have been surprisingly quiet on the normative implications of China’s rise. This, I will argue, is a mistake. Not only does China’s rise generate interesting normative questions in its own right; it also upends some basic assumptions that many of us have hitherto adopted in our thinking about international distributive (...) justice. In the philosophical literature, the international order is often characterised by two sorts of states – developed and developing – with the former owing demanding duties and the latter having expansive permissions to further their own development. China’s status as both a genuine superpower and a middle-income country facing significant development challenges calls into question the continued functionality of such simplifying assumptions. Against the backdrop of China’s rise – and, to a lesser extent, that of other large emerging economies – this paper develops a more fine-grained account of how to conceive of states’ differential levels of advantage, distinguishing between states that are incapable, precariously capable, and robustly capable of realizing a minimally decent standard of domestic justice. This account reaffirms the assignment of the most onerous international duties to developed states, but also assigns duties and claims to developing states in a scalar fashion, with the upshot that better-off developing states in particular bear positive duties of international justice, owed to least-developed countries (LDCs). (shrink)

Economic liberty is best understood in opposition to economic domination. This article develops a radical republican conception of such domination. In particular, I argue that radical republicanism provides a more satisfactory account of individual economic freedom than the market-friendly liberties of working, transacting, holding, and using championed by Nickel and Tomasi. So too, it avoids the pitfalls of other conceptions of economic liberty which emphasize real freedom, alternatives to immiserating work, or unalienated labor. The resulting theory holds that economic domination (...) occurs when someone’s access to civic capabilities is contingent on the arbitrary economic power of others. Socialist institutions—suitably configured—can deliver on this individual economic freedom, allowing the dominating power of proprietors, shareholders, landlords, and managers to be kept in check, and providing an unconditional minimum that allows individual citizens to be less beholden to others in meeting many of their most fundamental civic needs. Thus, I conclude that socialism can be championed as a politics of individual economic liberty. (shrink)

Đánh giá chất lượng công chức nói chung và công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện nói riêng là khâu mở đường quan trọng trong các hoạt động quản lý công chức và kết quả thực thi công vụ là tiêu chí cơ bản trong đánh giá. Nghiên cứu tiếp thu kết quả các nghiên cứu đi trước để xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết các nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến kết quả thực thi công vụ (...) của công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện ở TP. Hà Nội gồm 8 nhân tố: (1) Đào tạo, bồi dưỡng công chức; (2) Chính sách đãi ngộ; (3) Đánh giá công chức; (4) Bố trí, sử dụng công chức; (5) Kỷ cương, kỷ luật; (6) Phong cách lãnh đạo; (7) Đổi mới, sáng tạo của công chức; (8) Gắn kết với công việc của công chức. (shrink)

The republican ideal of non-domination identifies the capacity for arbitrary interference as a fundamental threat to liberty that can generate fearful uncertainty and servility in those dominated. I argue that republican accounts of domination can provide a powerful analysis of the nature of legal and institutional power that is encountered by people with mental disorders or cognitive disabilities. In doing so, I demonstrate that non-domination is an ideal which is pertinent, distinctive, and desirable in thinking through psychological disability. Finally, I (...) evaluate republican strategies for contesting domination, focusing on the limits of contestatory democracy, and proposing a participatory alternative which better addresses problems of political agency in the mentally disordered and cognitively disabled. (shrink)

This chapter examines the possibility of using AI technologies to improve human moral reasoning and decision-making, especially in the context of purchasing and consumer decisions. We characterize such AI technologies as artificial ethics assistants (AEAs). We focus on just one part of the AI-aided moral improvement question: the case of the individual who wants to improve their morality, where what constitutes an improvement is evaluated by the individual’s own values. We distinguish three broad areas in which an individual might think (...) their own moral reasoning and decision-making could be improved: one’s actions, character, or other evaluable attributes fall short of one’s values and moral beliefs; one sometimes misjudges or is uncertain about what the right thing to do is in particular situations, given one’s values; one is uncertain about some fundamental moral questions or recognizes a possibility that some of one’s core moral beliefs and values are mistaken. We sketch why one might think that AI tools could be used to support moral improvement in those areas, and describe two types of assistance: preparatory assistance, including advice and training supplied in advance of moral deliberation; and on-the-spot assistance, including on-the-spot advice and facilitation of moral functioning over the course of moral deliberation. Then, we turn to some of the ethical issues that AEAs might raise, looking in particular at three under-appreciated problems posed by the use of AI for moral self-improvement: namely, reliance on sensitive moral data; the inescapability of outside influences on AEAs; and AEA usage prompting the user to adopt beliefs and make decisions without adequate reasons. (shrink)

Explores the role of eliminating fear in Epicurean ethics and physics, focusing on techniques to eliminate the fear of death and the fear of the gods. Includes a taxonomy of types of fear and types of therapy for fear.

This article undertakes a republican analysis of power in the workplace and labour market in order to determine whether workers are dominated by employers. Civic republicans usually take domination to be subjection to an arbitrary power to interfere with choice. But when faced with labour disputes over what choices it is normal for workers to make for themselves, these accounts of domination struggle to determine whether employers possess the power to interfere. I propose an alternative capabilitarian conception of domination as (...) the arbitrary power to determine access to capabilities necessary for relationships of equality between citizens. This approach allows us to diagnose domination in the workplace and the labour market but does not capture unfreedom arising from the wider socio-structural position of workers. Thus, I supplement this capabilitarian account of the domination of workers with a structural account of dominating power, which reveals a richer set of conditions under which employers dominate workers. (shrink)

This paper addresses ways of arguing fors ome form of economic democracy from within a broadly Rawlsian framework. Firstly, one can argue that a right to participate in economic decision-making should be added to the Rawlsian list of basic liberties, protected by the first principle of justice. Secondly,I argue that a society which institutes forms of economic democracy will be more likely to preserve a stable and just basic structure over time, by virtue of the effects of economic democratization on (...) the development of an active, democratic character among citizens. Thirdly, I argue that a proper understanding of the demands of the difference principle shows that justice demands more than ex post redistribution, but also requires the ex ante redistribution of power and authority in economic life. This connects to Rawls’s discussion of the badness of inequality, and to his endorsement of a “property-owning democracy”. -/- My conclusion is that, even if we may doubt the success of this first Rawlsian argument,the second and third arguments are both successful, and together establish a strong Rawlsian case forseeing economic democratization as a requirement of justice. (shrink)

Biomedical diagnostic science is a great deal less successful than we've been willing to acknowledge in bioethics, and this fact has far-reaching ethical implications. In this article I consider the surprising prevalence of medically unexplained symptoms, and the term's ambiguous meaning. Then I frame central questions that remain answered in this context with respect to informed consent, autonomy, and truth-telling. Finally, I show that while considerable attention in this area is given to making sure not to provide biological care to (...) patients without a need, comparatively little is given to the competing, ethically central task of making sure never to obstruct access to biological care for those with diagnostically confusing biological conditions. I suggest this problem arises from confusion about the philosophical value of vagueness when it comes to the line between biological and psychosocial needs. (shrink)

A minimal truthmaker for a given proposition is the smallest portion of reality which makes this proposition true. Minimal truthmakers are frequently mentioned in the literature, but there has been no systematic account of what they are or of their importance. In this article we shall clarify the notion of a minimal truthmaker and argue that there is reason to think that at least some propositions have minimal truthmakers. We shall then argue that the notion can play a useful role (...) in truthmaker theory, by helping to explain the truth of certain propositions as precisely as possible. (shrink)

Logicism is the thesis that all or, at least parts, of mathematics is reducible to deductive logic in at least two senses: (A) that mathematical lexis can be defined by sole recourse to logical constants [a definition thesis]; and, (B) that mathematical theorems are derivable from solely logical axioms [a derivation thesis]. The principal proponents of this thesis are: Frege, Dedekind, and Russell. The central question that I raise in this paper is the following: ‘How did Russell construe the philosophical (...) worth of logicism?’ The argument that I build in response to this is that Russell perceived an inverse proportion between a logical reduction of mathematics and the certitude of non-novel mathematical theorems—such that the more we reduce mathematics to logic, the more certain we become of our mathematical theorems; this was portrayed through a presentation of mathematical knowledge as coherent. Therefore, I set out to sketch Russell’s coherence theory and appraise it in relation to the presence discourse: i.e., in relation to logicism and mathematical certainty. (shrink)

Harrison Frye claims that socialist republicanism may be unable to reduce domination due to efficiency costs and accountability deficits imposed by public ownership. I argue that the empirical and theoretical grounds for expecting such a decline in economic efficiency are weak. Moreover, the egalitarian distributive effects of public ownership are likely to be more important for insulating people from domination. So too, workers, consumers, and citizens are not well-protected from domination by the accountability of managers to profit-seeking shareholders. I conclude (...) that the investor-owned firm will do far more to exacerbate dominating power than to constrain it. (shrink)

This article uses sim-max games to model perceptual categorization with the goal of answering the following question: To what degree should we expect the perceptual categories of biological actors to track properties of the world around them? I argue that an analysis of these games suggests that the relationship between real-world structure and evolved perceptual categories is mediated by successful action in the sense that organisms evolve to categorize together states of nature for which similar actions lead to similar results. (...) This conclusion indicates that both strongly realist and strongly antirealist views about perceptual categories are too simple. (shrink)

This article argues that political injustices can arise from the distribution and character of our sexual desires and that we can be held responsible for correcting these injustices. It draws on a conception of structural injustice to diagnose unjust patterns of sexual attraction, which are taken to arise when socio-structural processes shaping the formation of sexual desire compound systemic domination and capacity-deprivation for the occupants of a social position. Individualistic and structural solutions to the problem of unjust patterns of sexual (...) attraction are assessed in the context of racialised sexual aversion, racial fetishism, and the desexualisation of people with disabilities. While both forms of intervention can help in principle, some of the advantages of structural approaches are laid out. A schema for assigning political responsibilities for addressing this injustice is proposed, with some limits identified to the kinds of state and social responses that are justified. Finally, the status of the merely aesthetically unappealing is considered, with a relational egalitarian approach concluding that they are subject to structurally unjust patterns of sexual desire only when exposed to oppression or second-class citizenship as a result. (shrink)

It is widely thought that functionalism and the qualia theory are better positioned to accommodate the ‘affective’ aspect of pain phenomenology than representationalism. In this paper, we attempt to overturn this opinion by raising problems for both functionalism and the qualia theory on this score. With regard to functionalism, we argue that it gets the order of explanation wrong: pain experience gives rise to the effects it does because it hurts, and not the other way around. With regard to the (...) qualia theory, we argue that it fails to capture the sense in which pain 's affective phenomenology rationalises various bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. Representationalism, in contrast, escapes both of these problems: it gets the order of explanation right and it explains how pain 's affective phenomenology can rationalise bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. For this reason, we argue that representationalism has a significant advantage in the debates about pain 's affective phenomenology. We end the paper by examining objections, including the question of what representationalists should say about so-called ‘disassociation cases’, such as pain asymbolia. (shrink)

The project of this paper is to deliver a semantics for a broad subset of bare plural generics about racial kinds, a class which I will dub 'Type C generics.' Examples include 'Blacks are criminal' and 'Muslims are terrorists.' Type C generics have two interesting features. First, they link racial kinds with ​ socially perspectival predicates ​ (SPPs). SPPs lead interpreters to treat the relationship between kinds and predicates in generic constructions as nomic or non-accidental. Moreover, in computing their content, (...) interpreters must make implicit reference to socially privileged​ ​ perspectives which are treated as authoritative about whether a given object fits into the extension of the predicate. Such deference grants these authorities influence over both the conventional meaning of these terms and over the nature of the ​ objects ​ in the social ontology that these terms purport to describe, much the way a baseball umpire is authoritative over the meaning and metaphysics of 'strike'/​ strike ​. Second, terms like 'criminal' and 'terrorist' receive default ​ racialized ​ interpretations in which these terms conventionally token racial or ethnic identities. I show that neither of these features can be explained by Sarah-Jane Leslie's influential 'weak semantics' for generics, and show how my own 'socially perspectival semantics' fares better on both counts. Finally, I give an analysis of 'Blacks are criminal' which explores the semantic mechanisms that underlie default racialized interpretations. (shrink)

Radical constructivists appeal to self-legislation in arguing that rational agents are the ultimate sources of normative authority over themselves. I chart the roots of radical constructivism and argue that its two leading Kantian proponents are unable to defend an account of self-legislation as the fundamental source of practical normativity without this legislation collapsing into a fatal arbitrariness. Christine Korsgaard cannot adequately justify the critical resources which agents use to navigate their practical identities. This leaves her account riven between rigorism and (...) voluntarism, such that it will not escape a paradox that arises when self-legislation is unable to appeal to external normative standards. Onora O'Neill anchors self-legislation more firmly to the self-disciplining structures of reason itself. However, she ultimately fails to defend sufficiently unconditional practical norms which could guide legislation. These endemic problems with radical constructivist models of self-legislation prompt a reconstruction of a neglected realist self-legislative tradition which is exemplified by Christian Wolff. In outlining a rationalist and realist account of self-legislation, I argue that it can also make sense of our ability to overcome anomie and deference in practical action. Thus, I claim that we need not make laws but can make them our own. (shrink)

The Cyrenaics assert that (1) particular pleasure is the highest good, and happiness is valued not for its own sake, but only for the sake of the particular pleasures that compose it; (2) we should not forego present pleasures for the sake of obtaining greater pleasure in the future. Their anti-eudaimonism and lack of future-concern do not follow from their hedonism. So why do they assert (1) and (2)? After reviewing and criticizing the proposals put forward by Annas, Irwin and (...) Tsouna, I offer two possible reconstructions. In the first reconstruction, I explain claim (1) as follows: happiness has no value above and beyond the value of the particular pleasures that compose it. Also, there is no "structure" to happiness. The Cyrenaics are targeting the thesis that happiness involves having the activities of one's life forming an organized whole, the value of which cannot be reduced to the value of the experiences within that life. I explain claim (2) as follows: a maximally pleasant life is valuable, but the best way to achieve it is to concentrate heedlessly on the present. In the second reconstruction, the good is radically relativized to one's present preferences. The Cyrenaics assert that we desire some particular pleasure, e.g., the pleasure that results from having this drink now. Thus, our telos -- which is based upon our desires -- is this particular pleasure, not (generic) 'pleasure' or the maximization of pleasure over our lifetime. As our desires change, so does our telos. I conclude that the scanty texts we have do not allow us to decide conclusively between these reconstructions, but I give some reasons to support the second over the first. (shrink)

Epicurus is strongly committed to psychological and ethical egoism and hedonism. However, these commitments do not square easily with many of the claims made by Epicureans about friendship: for instance, that the wise man will sometimes die for his friend, that the wise man will love his friend as much as himself, feel exactly the same toward his friend as toward himself, and exert himself as much for his friend's pleasure as for his own, and that every friendship is worth (...) choosing for its own sake. These claims have led some scholars to assert that Epicurus inconsistently affirms that friendship has an altruistic element. I argue that the Epicurean claims about friendship can be reconciled with egoism and hedonism in psychology and ethics. Friendship is valuable because having friends provides one with security more effectively than any other means, and having confidence that one will be secure in the future either is identical to ataraxia, or the grounds on which one has it. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers of biology have argued that learning rules that do not lead organisms to play evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSes) in games will not be stable and thus not evolutionarily successful. This claim, however, stands at odds with the fact that learning generalization---a behavior that cannot lead to ESSes when modeled in games---is observed throughout the animal kingdom. In this paper, I use learning generalization to illustrate how previous analyses of the evolution of learning have gone wrong. It has (...) been widely argued that the function of learning generalization is to allow for swift learning about novel stimuli. I show that in evolutionary game theoretic models learning generalization, despite leading to suboptimal behavior, can indeed speed learning. I further observe that previous analyses of the evolution of learning ignored the short term success of learning rules. If one drops this assumption, I argue, it can be shown that learning generalization will be expected to evolve in these models. I also use this analysis to show how ESS methodology can be misleading, and to reject previous justifications about ESS play derived from analyses of learning. (shrink)

While much has been written about the functional profile of intentions, and about their normative or rational status, comparatively little has been said about the subjective authority of intention. What is it about intending that explains the ‘hold’ that an intention has on an agent—a hold that is palpable from her first-person perspective? I argue that several prima facie appealing explanations are not promising. Instead, I maintain that the subjective authority of intention can be explained in terms of the inner (...) structure of intention. In adopting an intention the agent comes to see herself as criticizable depending on whether she executes the intention. This allows us to explain in first-personal terms why the agent becomes disposed to act and deliberate in ways that are characteristic of intention. As intention-formation involves profound changes to reflexive evaluative attitudes, this is the ‘Self-Evaluation’ view of the subjective authority of intention. (shrink)

In a world characterised by intense global poverty, do active corporate efforts to help the global poor constitute discretionary acts of charity, to be praised but not to be thought of as mandatory? Or, conversely, are such efforts a matter of binding moral duty? The traditional position among business ethicists – and still, perhaps, the dominant one – is that there is no such duty, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances such as rescue cases. In recent years, however, several authors have (...) made the case that corporations have quite wide-ranging positive duties to the global poor. This entry outlines the contours of the various arguments given in favour of the latter position, before highlighting two theoretical challenges which arise if we are to embrace this position – first, the issue of determining what sorts of actions count as adequately fulfilling positive duties to the global poor, and, second, the question of what limits there are, if any, to the demandingness of corporations’ positive duties. (shrink)

The charge of hypocrisy is a peculiar kind of accusation: it is damning and ubiquitous; it is used to deny the hypocrite standing to speak; and it is levelled against a great variety of conduct. Much of the philosophical literature on hypocrisy is aimed at explaining why hypocrisy is wrongful and worthy of censure. We focus instead on the use of the accusation of hypocrisy and argue for a revisionary claim. People think that hypocrisy in politics is bad and that (...) calling it out is good. Our novel claim is that even if hypocrisy in politics is bad (and that is a big if), calling it out is worse. We give a feminist case as to why accusations of hypocrisy are problematic. We also go further and claim that hypocrisy is a ubiquitous and perhaps even a necessary and beneficial part of political debate in liberal democracies. We also consider and reject candour as a possible alternative solution to hypocrisy in public debate. We argue that requiring people to be candid is not necessarily a good solution because it will often require one to divulge what is private when there are good reasons not to do so. (shrink)

One striking oddity about Democritus and Epicurus is that, even though Epicurus' theory of perception is largely the same as that of Democritus, Democritus and his followers draw skeptical conclusions from this theory of perception, whereas Epicurus declares that all perceptions are true or real. I believe that the dispute between Democritus and Epicurus stems from a question over what sort of ontological status should be assigned to sensible qualities. In this paper, I address three questions: 1) Why were Democritus (...) and his followers skeptical? 2) How did Epicurus modify Democritus' metaphysics in order to avoid these skeptical conclusions? and 3) How successful was he? -/- 1) I argue that Democritus allows only the intrinsic properties of atoms into his ontology, and then runs into skeptical difficulties because of the relativity of perception. 2) I propose that Epicurus modifies Democritus' ontology by allowing dispositional and relational properties as real properties of bodies. Sensible qualities are conceptualized as dispositional properties of bodies to cause certain experiences in percipients. 3) I argue that Epicurus does not run into the same problems as Democritus. Finally, I consider how my interpretation of Epicurus' ontology helps to make sense of his claim that all perceptions are alethes--'true' or 'real.'. (shrink)

Many corporations are large, powerful, and wealthy. There are massive shortfalls of global justice, with hundreds of millions of people in the world living below the threshold of extreme poverty, and billions more living not far above that threshold. Where injustice and needs shortfalls must be remediated, we often look towards agents’ capabilities to determine who ought to bear the costs of rectifying the situation. The combination of these three claims grounds what I call a ‘linkage-based’ account of why corporations (...) have demanding positive duties to the global poor. In this paper, I put forward a distinctive linkage-based account of corporations’ positive duties centred on the idea of dependence and the importance of meeting agents’ core needs. In addition to outlining and defending this account, I will show that we can utilise its basic conceptual components to make headway on questions that have received insufficient attention in the business ethics literature; specifically, we can say something substantive about the weighting of needy agents’ competing claims to assistance, and about the limits to the demands that can be lodged against corporations on the basis of others' unmet needs. Having integrated considerations of duties' grounding, their comparative weight, and the limits of their demandingness into a single account of corporate positive duty, I conclude by discussing a challenge to attributing to corporations duties owed to the worst-off amongst the global poor. (shrink)

R&D collaborations between industry, government, civil society, and research ) have recently gained attention from R&D theorists and practitioners. In aiming to come to grips with their complexity, past models have generally taken a stakeholder-analytical approach based on stakeholder types. Yet stakeholder types are difficult to operationalise. We therefore argue that a processual model is more suited for studying the interaction in QHCs because it eschews matters of titles and identities. We develop such a model in which the QHC is (...) represented as a process of generating four types of value: research value, market value, political value, and societal value. We then apply this processual model in analysing real-life cases of friction in QHCs. Friction is seen, not as an interpersonal clash, but as a discrepancy between two or more value-creation processes that compete for limited resources. (shrink)

Semantic deference is the apparent phenomenon whereby some of -/- our concepts have their content fixed by the minds of others. The -/- phenomenon is puzzling both in terms of how such concepts are -/- supposed to work, but also in terms of why we should have -/- concepts whose content is fixed by others. Here I argue that if we -/- rethink semantic deference in terms of extended mind reasoning -/- we find answers to both of these questions: the (...) minds of others -/- can be understood to play a role in storing the semantic knowledge -/- underpinning our concepts without undermining their -/- functionality, and this ‘outsourcing’ of semantic knowledge greatly -/- expands our overall knowledge-bearing capacity, both at the level -/- of the individual and the community. I conclude that deference in -/- fact affords stronger grounds for a social expansion of knowledge -/- than standard extended mind reasoning permits. (shrink)

I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious understanding of the demands of citizen sovereignty and civic solidarity. While Debs (...) shares some of the commitments of earlier American labour republican critics of capitalism, he departs from them in his thoroughgoing commitment to common democratic ownership of productive property. His socialist republicanism remains valuable today for its ability to illuminate features of plutocratic control, judicial autocracy, and the regime of property best suited to suppressing economic domination. I conclude that Debs not only deserves a prominent place in an emerging radical republican canon but presents a distinctive contrast with many of his Marxist contemporaries and offers a compelling challenge to recent liberal, plebeian, and socialist forms of republicanism. (shrink)

In crossmodal identification, a subject token identifies an item perceived in one sensory modality with an item perceived in another sensory modality. Does crossmodal identification always occur in cognition, or does crossmodal identification sometimes take place in perception? This paper argues that crossmodal identification occurs in cognition, and not in perception. Nevertheless, multisensory perception is not unalive to crossmodal identity. Experimental evidence demonstrates that perception is differentially sensitive to the identity of individuals presented to distinct senses. Such sensitivity enhances recognition (...) and improves action. This approach relies on distinguishing crossmodal identification from perceiving crossmodal identity. Perception registers crossmodal identity, but crossmodal identification as such belongs to thought. (shrink)