Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Many democratic theorists hold that when a decision is collectively made in the right kind of way, in accordance with the right procedure, it is permissible to enforce it. They deny that there are further requirements on the type of reasons that can permissibly be used to justify laws and policies. In this paper, I argue that democratic theorists are mistaken about this. So-called public reason requirements follow from commitments that most of them already hold. Drawing on the democratic ideal (...) of civic equality, I show that it can successfully explain why political decision-making must have the right sort of procedure-independent justification. However, contra standard accounts of public reason, I argue that laws and policies need to be justified with convergence accessible, not shared, reasons. Public reasons are those that are accessible in light of evaluative standards shared by all, or in light of every citizen’s private evaluative standards. Since this will make the set of public reasons wider, it makes the theory more palatable to sceptics while retaining the framework’s justificatory potential. (shrink)

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

Dieses Buch betritt Neuland. Es ist eine Einführung in das neue Gebiet der angewandten Ontologie, jenem multidisziplinären Arbeitsgebiet, in dem Philosophen gemeinsam mit Informatikern und Vertretern der jeweils thematischen Wissenschaftsbereiche, in unserem Fall mit Biologen und Medizinern, daran arbeiten, wissenschaftliches Wissen informationstechnisch zu repräsentieren. Es zeigt, wie Philosophie eine praktische Anwendung findet, die von zunehmender Wichtigkeit nicht nur in den heutigen Lebenswissenschaften ist. Und so richtet sich dieses Buch an Philosophen, aber auch an interessierte Biologen, Mediziner und Informatiker.

People often fail to comply with the demands of morality. Partial compliance theory takes this noncompliance or its possibility into account in the formulation of moral requirements for people to comply with, or in the evaluation of people’s actions against those requirements. This chapter critically engages with recent work on partial compliance theory. It examines the relationship between noncompliance and injustice, assesses different ways of doing partial compliance theory, sketches the relationship between partial compliance theory and other central methodological debates (...) in moral and political philosophy, and considers whether it is reasonable to issue moral requirements without examining what would happen if everyone did their part. (shrink)

In this paper, we engage with the question of the normative content of the resilience concept. The issues are approached in two consecutive steps. First, we proceed from a narrow construal of the resilience concept – as the ability of a system to absorb a disturbance – and show that under an analysis of normative concepts as evaluative concepts resilience comes out as descriptive. In the second part of the paper, we argue that (1) for systems of interest (primarily social (...) systems or system with a social component) we seem to have options with respect to how they are described and (2) that this matters for what is to be taken as a sign of resilience as opposed to a sign of the lack of resilience for such systems. We discuss the implications of this for how the concept should be applied in practice and suggest that users of the resilience concept face a choice between versions of the concept that are either ontologically or normatively charged. (shrink)

On 4th of August 2020, the Lebanese capital and port city, Beirut, was rocked by a massive explosion that has killed hundreds and injured thousands more, ravaging the heart of the city’s nearby downtown business district and neighbouring housing areas, where more than 750,000 people live. The waterfront neighbourhood and a number of dense residential neighbourhoods in the city’s eastern part were essentially flattened. Lebanese Government officials believe that the blast was caused by around 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored (...) near the city’s cargo port without proper control for six years. -/- The disaster devastating Beirut’s port and city shows the latent danger of safe storage of potentially dangerous goods in modern ports, particularly ones located close to the heart of the city. The huge blast tore through major grain silos, stoking fears of shortages in a nation that imports nearly all its food and is already reeling from economic crisis. As the WFP (World Food Programme) said in a statement: the blast will “exacerbate the grim economic and food-security situation.” The Beirut blast also reminds us of the importance of ports in the contemporary globalized world. It calls our attention to safety and security, of governance and collaboration between port and city or region and of accessibility to the hinterland. What do local governments and port cities need to do to enhance the safety and security issues in port terminals? Or, to put it differently, how do we reconcile this challenge between the ports we need to feed us, serve us, provide us with medicines, equipment, etc. and the ports that threatens us? (shrink)

Die Zeiten, in denen der Leib-Seele-Dualismus als Ansatz der Philosophie des Geistes durch ein herrschendes Dogma als diskussionsunwürdig galt, sind vorbei. Der Dualismus darf wieder diskutiert werden. Er muß diskutiert werden, wenn in diskussionswürdiger Strenge für ihn argumentiert wird – auch wenn das, wie sich zeigen wird, manchmal ein ziemlich technisches Geschäft ist. In diesem Sinne soll im folgenden Richard Swinburnes Versuch behandelt werden, die Existenz einer Seele und damit die Wahrheit des Substanzdualismus aus einigen zunächst recht unspektakulär aussehenden Prämissen (...) mit Hilfe der modernen Modallogik formal zu beweisen. Zugleich sei damit auf eine kleine Debatte aufmerksam gemacht, die sich inzwischen um Swinburnes Argument entwickelt hat. Die Untersuchung führt zu einem doppelten negativen Ergebnis: Zum einen sind Swinburnes Prämissen nicht plausibel, zum anderen ist ein wichtiger Teil seines Beweisversuches formal nicht in Ordnung. Swinburnes Argument ist also weder überzeugend noch gültig . Allerdings ist das nicht auf den ersten Blick ersichtlich, denn Swinburnes Argument ist alles andere als trivial. Eine eingehende Kritik dieses Arguments soll zeigen, daß, selbst wenn der Dualismus wahr sein sollte, er nicht ganz so einleuchtend ist, wie Swinburne meint. (shrink)

We investigate risk attitudes when the underlying domain of payoffs is finite and the payoffs are, in general, not numerical. In such cases, the traditional notions of absolute risk attitudes, that are designed for convex domains of numerical payoffs, are not applicable. We introduce comparative notions of weak and strong risk attitudes that remain applicable. We examine how they are characterized within the rank-dependent utility model, thus including expected utility as a special case. In particular, we characterize strong comparative risk (...) aversion under rank-dependent utility. This is our main result. From this and other findings, we draw two novel conclusions. First, under expected utility, weak and strong comparative risk aversion are characterized by the same condition over finite domains. By contrast, such is not the case under non-expected utility. Second, under expected utility, weak comparative risk aversion is characterized by the same condition when the utility functions have finite range and when they have convex range. By contrast, such is not the case under non-expected utility. Thus, considering comparative risk aversion over finite domains leads to a better understanding of the divide between expected and non-expected utility, more generally, the structural properties of the main models of decision-making under risk. (shrink)

Is a bank note identical with the piece of paper of which it consists? On the one hand, John Searle, in his reply to Barry Smith, suggests that they are “one and the same object” that is a social or non-social object only under certain descriptions. On the other hand, Lynne Rudder Baker puts forward the claim that bank note and paper are distinct entities that are bound together by the relation of material constitution. I suggest two possible analyses for (...) Searle’s description relativity claim, the Alternative Subject Analysis and the Predicate Modification Analysis. On both accounts his identity claim gets into serious trouble. While Baker’s definition of material constitution deals well with the bank note example, it fails to account for the constitution of bearerless social entities and groups. I point out five respects in which social constitution can differ from Baker’s account of material constitution and discuss compositional, institutional and interactional constitution as additional varieties of social constitution. (shrink)

Free will is difficult to classify with respect to determinism or indeterminism, and its phenomenology in consciousness often shows both aspects. Initially, it is felt as unlimited and indeterminate will power, with the potentiality of multiple choices. Thereafter, reductive deliberation is led by determinism to the final decision, which realises only one of the potential choices. The reductive deliberation phase tries to find out the best alternative and simultaneously satisfying vague motivations, contextual conditions and personal preferences. The essential sense of (...) free will is the introduction of personal preferences, which allows a higher diversity of reactions to vague motivations. With an oversimplified model of determinism as a chain of events, incompatibilists define “free” as “undetermined” so that determinism becomes incompatible with any free choice between alternatives. In consciousness, free will requires a more complex model of network determinism as well as the consideration of unconsciousness as a causal factor. When “free” defined as “undetermined” is applied to the context of consciousness, it should be reinterpreted as “unconscious of being determined” or not aware of underlying determinism. Lacking information on determinism generates a feeling of “free” in consciousness and, therefore, gives the impression of indeterminism. Lacking information may be induced by an uncertain future without determined events—an unconscious past with biological reactions suddenly emerging from the unconsciousness or an unknown present unable to distinguish determinism of complex events. Therefore, at the level of human consciousness, the experience of free will is associated with apparent indeterminism although it is based on unconscious determinism. The concepts of compatibilism and incompatibilism are only two different aspects of the same phenomenon and correspond to consciousness and unconsciousness. Nevertheless, they can be considered together with a free will concept based on relativity depending on two different reference frames—the first person’s experience frame or the Laplace’s demon frame with knowledge on every molecule of the universe. Only relativity of the free will concept avoids the contradiction between “free” and “unfree” for the same phenomenon and could be a compromise for considering compatibilism and incompatibilism equally. (shrink)

In this article, I have two aims. Firstly, I argue that Hilary Putnam's model theoretic indeterminacy argument against external realism and Saul Kripke's so-called Kripkensteinian argument against semantic realism have the same dialectical structure and the same conclusion---both force the opponent to face the same dilemma. Namely: either adopt meaning minimalism or postulate unobservable semantic facts. Secondly, I analyze more closely the first horn of the dilemma---meaning minimalism. This is the position according to which there are no truth conditions for (...) meaning-ascriptions. It has been suggested that this position is incoherent. However, I argue that there is a coherent option available for the meaning minimalist. As Crispin Wright has proposed, a coherent meaning minimalist has to adopt a structured truth-predicate with at least two levels: one is a minimal or a deflationary truth-predicate for a semantic discourse and the other, more substantial or objective truth-predicate for discourses like natural sciences. Subsequently, this leads to a position close to Huw Price's global expressivism. Thus, the ultimate dilemma that Putnam's and the Kripkensteinian argument establish is the following choice: either meaning minimalism with a structured two-level truth-predicate or robust realism regarding meaning. (shrink)

The idea that technologies can change moral beliefs and practices is an old one. But how, exactly, does this happen? This paper builds on an emerging field of inquiry by developing a synoptic taxonomy of the mechanisms of techno-moral change. It argues that technology affects moral beliefs and practices in three main domains: decisional (how we make morally loaded decisions), relational (how we relate to others) and perceptual (how we perceive situations). It argues that across these three domains there are (...) six primary mechanisms of techno-moral change: (i) adding options; (ii) changing decision-making costs; (iii) enabling new relationships; (iv) changing the burdens and expectations within relationships; (v) changing the balance of power in relationships; and (vi) changing perception (information, mental models and metaphors). The paper also discusses the layered, interactive and second-order effects of these mechanisms. (shrink)

The thesis investigates the implications for moral philosophy of research in psychology. In addition to an introduction and concluding remarks, the thesis consists of four chapters, each exploring various more specific challenges or inputs to moral philosophy from cognitive, social, personality, developmental, and evolutionary psychology. Chapter 1 explores and clarifies the issue of whether or not morality is innate. The chapter’s general conclusion is that evolution has equipped us with a basic suite of emotions that shape our moral judgments in (...) important ways. Chapter 2 presents and investigates the challenge presented to deontological ethics by Joshua Greene’s so-called dual process theory. The chapter partly agrees with his conclusion that the dual process view neutralizes some common criticisms against utilitarianism founded on deontological intuitions, but also points to avenues left to explore for deontologists. Chapter 3 focuses on Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer’s suggestion that utilitarianism is less vulnerable to so-called evolutionary debunking than other moral theories. The chapter is by and large critical of their attempt. In the final chapter 4, attention is directed at the issue of whether or not social psychology has shown that people lack stable character traits, and hence that the virtue ethical view is premised on false or tenuous assumptions. Though this so-called situationist challenge at one time seemed like a serious threat to virtue ethics, the chapter argues for a moderate position, pointing to the fragility of much of the empirical research invoked to substantiate this challenge while also suggesting revisions to the virtue-ethical view as such. (shrink)

In order to develop the ontology of tendencies for use in the representation of medical knowledge, tendencies are compared with other kinds of entities possessing the realizable-realization-structure, specifically: dispositions, propensities, abilities and virtues. The peculiarities of tendencies are discussed and a standard schema of tendency ascription is developed in order to represent the relations between the ascriptions of tendency tokens to particulars and the ascriptions of tendency types to universals. Two non-standard cases and their epistemic variants are discussed.

Today research on prosocial behaviour is very much shaped by the success of social neuroscience. However, some philosopher's criticise neuroscience as reductionist. The purpose of this paper is to analyse this critique. With a philosophical background in Charles Taylor's hermeneutic thesis "man as a self-interpreting animal", the paper shows that neuroscientists' attempt to describe prosocial behaviour in science through brain imaging technologies (MRI) constitute a neurochemical self that resonates a modern ‘paradigm of clarity and objectivity’ as presented by Taylor. It (...) is argued that this scientific explanation model challenges Taylor's hermeneutic self. Where human behaviour previous was mapped on a psychological level, prosocial behaviour is described in the body - the human brain - on a neurophysiological level. The author applies an autism analogy metaphor, which paradoxical shows that the neurochemical self’s emphasis on structures and observations epistemological facilitate an autistic understanding of prosocial behaviour alien to the situated and interpreted feelings of Taylor's self-understanding(s), and the logic of our everyday language. (shrink)

: Background: In responsible research and innovation (RRI), innovation is seen as a way in which humankind finds solutions for societal issues. However, studies on commercial innovation show that firms respond in a different manner and at a different speed to the same societal issue. This study investigates what role organizational motives play in the product innovation processes of firms when aiming for socially responsible outcomes. Methods: This multiple-case study investigates the motives of food firms for healthier product innovation by (...) interviewing firms about the organizational motives behind product reformulation and innovation. Results: This study highlights the importance of having both instrumental and moral motives in the innovation process when aiming for socially responsible outcomes, and how both these motives interact and contribute to responsible innovation in industry. Furthermore, the study results question the nature of relational motives as a separate category from the other two categories of motives, as suggested by corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholars. Conclusions: If commercial innovation needs to contribute to solutions for societal issues, the importance of moral motives has to be stressed without annihilating the instrumental objectives of firms. Both motives contribute to the success factors of responsible product innovation in industry. (shrink)

In this article I am interpreting Friedrich Nietzsche's piece of writing "How the "True World" finally became a fable - The History of an Error" in the context of 20th-century analytical philosophy of language. In particular, I am going to argue that the main theme in this text - the issue of abolishing "the true world" - can be interpreted as Hilary Putnam's model-theoretic arguments against external realism and Saul Kripke's Wittgensteinian arguments against truth-conditional meaning theories. Interpreting this Nietzsche's text (...) with the help of these arguments gives rise to two options determining Nietzsche's own position. The perspective of Putnam's argument seems to push Nietzsche to the quietist camp - the view that significant metaphysical debate between external realism and its opposite is impossible or inexpressible. On the other hand, the Kripkensteinian perspective gives us reasons to interpret Nietzsche as an adherer of the pragmatic account of semantics, which explains meaning through the use of language. (shrink)

The constituents of social entities (and of social continuants in particular) determine whether or not a social thing comes to be, persists and perishes. John Searle hints at two very different accounts for the persistence of social entities, a mere past related account and an acceptance theoretic account, whereas Margaret Gilbert's account is based on deontic entities like obligations or joint commitments. I demonstrate that Gilbert's account can also accommodate Searle's examples. While oblivion, protests or violence can be historical causes (...) of the destruction of social entities, they cannot be considered to be the ultimate causes of the perishing from Gilbert's point of view. Social entities rather perish because of the treatises or divorces that dissolve their deontic constituents. (shrink)

The so-called materially valid inferences have come to new prominence through the work of Robert Brandom. This paper introduces a fragment of a logic of concepts that does not reduce concepts to their extensions. Concept logic and ist semantics allow us to represent the conceptual knowledge used in material inferences and thus suggests a way to deal with them.

Recent empirical work on the concept of intentionality suggests that people’s assessments of whether an action is intentional are subject to uncertainty. Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that different people employ different concepts of intentional action. These possibilities have motivated a good deal of work in the relatively new field of experimental philosophy. The findings from this empirical research may prove to be relevant to medical ethics. In this article, we address this issue head on. We (...) first describe a study we conducted on intention ascription. Drawing on recent work in experimental philosophy, we investigated the possibility that the ascription of intentions to clinical actors in clinical settings is influenced by prior judgments about the goodness or badness of the consequences of the action in question. Our study was modeled on experimental studies in other contexts that have shown that people, when presented with a range of scenarios, are more likely to classify a side effect of an action as intended if the side effect is negative or reflects poorly on the actor than if it is positive or reflects well on the actor. We investigated whether this asymmetry in intention ascriptions was also present among physicians who were asked to ascribe intentions to clinical actors in certain well-defined clinical scenarios. After describing the study and its results, we discuss its implications for medical ethics. (shrink)

No one influenced and shaped our thinking about dispositions and causal properties more than Aristotle. What he wrote about power (dynamis), nature (physis) and habit (hexis) has been read, systematised and criticised again and again during the history of philosophy. In this chapter I sketch Aristotle's thoughts about dispositions and argue that his theory can still be regarded as a good one.

Starting from the early treatise "On Being and Essence", I review issues concerning substances composed of matter and form: their hylomorphic composition, individuation, essence as part and as whole, and the analogy between genus/difference and matter/form. Then I discuss substances separated from matter, which may range from human souls and angels (or intelligences) to God. I then turn to Aquinas's later 'Summa Theologica', where he argues that in the end God cannot possibly belong to the category of substance and discuss (...) possible reasons for Aquinas conflicting accounts on this question. (shrink)

Es gibt Staaten und Fußballmannschaften, Fakultäten und Punkbands. Und mansollte meinen, daß diese Entitäten etwas gemeinsam haben, daß sie zu ein und derselben ontologischen Kategorie gehören. Und daß sie sich unterscheiden von Elektronen, Tischen, Grizzlybären, einem Zehn-Euro-Schein, dem neuen Präsidenten, der Amtseinführung des neuen Präsidenten und der Tatsache, daß ich einen Vortrag halte. Mein Ziel ist es, zu zeigen, daß die Kategorie, die alle Beispiele der ersten Gruppe umfaßt, aber keines der zweiten Gruppe, die Kategorie der vereinten Pluralpersonen ist. Um (...) diese These stark zu machen, muß ich zunächst eine Reihe ontologischer Unterscheidungen diskutieren. Zunächst werde ich die Begriffe des Statusobjekts und des Pluralobjekts einführen, zwei relativ neue ontologische Kategorien. Sodann werde ich die traditionellen Kategorien der Substanz und der Person diskutieren, wobei ich mit Hilfe der zuvor eingeführten Begriffe des Statusobjekts und des Pluralobjekts verschiedene Arten von Personen unterscheiden werde. Die natürlichen Personen bilden nur eine dieser Arten, wenn auch die Art von Personen, zu der wir selber als Individuen gehören. Nach diesen Vorarbeiten stehen die Hilfsmittel bereit, die zu Beginn angeführten Beispiele zu kategorisieren. (shrink)

Being an "untimely review", this paper reviews Aristotle's 'Categories' as if they were published today, in the era of computerised information, where categorisation becomes more and more essential for information retrieval. I suggest a systematic ordering of Aristotle's list of categories and argue that Aristotle's discussion of ontological dependency and his focus on concrete entities are still a source of new insight and can indeed be read as a contribution to the emerging field of applied ontology and ontological engineering.

In 'Metaphysics IX.6' (1048b 18-35) Aristotle presents a test to distinguish between "kinesis" and "energeia," based on relations between the perfective and the imperfective aspect of the verb. This passage has been interpreted as drawing a linguistic distinction between classes of verbs (e.g., stative verbs) by means of a linguistic criterion (Ackrill, Graham). But such an interpretation is in conflict with the text. Aristotle's test must, therefore, be understood as a metaphysical criterion between items in the world (rather than lingual (...) items) by means of a metaphysical criterion, exploiting properties of these items. These items are events, and 'Metaphysics IX.6' exhibits Aristotle's awareness to certain topics discussed in modern event ontology. (shrink)

Aristoteles unterscheidet zwischen zwei Arten, das Wort „dynaton" zu gebrauchen. Die erste dieser beiden Verwendungsweisen dient zur Zuschreibung von Vermögen (dynaton kata dynamin), die zweite entspricht unserer Verwendung des logisch-alethischen Modaloperators „Es ist möglich, dass" (dynaton ou kata dynamin). Ich argumentiere dafür, dass wichtige Unterschiede zwischen Vermögensprädikationen und Modalaussagen bestehen. Ich nenne mehrere Gründe dafür, dass Vermögensprädikationen keine Modalaussagen sind, zeige aber auch, dass Vermögensprädikationen zwei modale Elemente haben: Sie implizieren erstens nichttriviale Modalaussagen, weil es keine Vermögen für Unmögliches gibt. (...) Und sie implizieren zweitens nichttriviale Aussagen über kontrafaktische Situationen, weil sie Aussagen über kausale Rollen sind. (shrink)

This paper discusses Tugendhat's project of a "modern ethics" (moderne Moral) in contrast to "traditional ethics" (traditionelle Moral). We argue that this distinction is not as clear cut as Tugendhat would like it to be, and that Tugendhat's modern ethics shares important features with traditional ethics.

Given the assertion of a relation between two types, like: “Epidermis has part some Keratinocyte”, we define silent change as any kind of change of the instance-relata of the relation in question that does not change the truth-value of the respective type-level assertion. Such assertions are notoriously difficult to model in OWL 2. To address this problem, we distinguish different modes of type-level relatedness giving rise to this problem and describe a conservative extension to the BFO top-level ontology that allows (...) expressing these modes. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a philosophical analysis of the speech given by the German writer Martin Walser when the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was awarded to him in 1998. I reconstruct Walser's infamous claims about the Holocaust and his critique against its presence in the media and discuss Walser's proclamation of a right for disregarding his claims about German normality and his views about private commemoration.

This paper examines precursors and consequents of perceived relevance of a proposition A for a proposition C. In Experiment 1, we test Spohn's assumption that ∆P = P − P is a good predictor of ratings of perceived relevance and reason relations, and we examine whether it is a better predictor than the difference measure − P). In Experiment 2, we examine the effects of relevance on probabilistic coherence in Cruz, Baratgin, Oaksford, and Over's uncertain “and-to-if” inferences. The results suggest (...) that ∆P predicts perceived relevance and reason relations better than the difference measure and that participants are either less probabilistically coherent in “and-to-if” inferences than initially assumed or that they do not follow P = P. Results are discussed in light of recent results suggesting that the Equation may not hold under conditions of irrelevance or negative relevance. (shrink)

There are group-actions, and if actions are intentional, there should also be group-intentions. Who has got these intentions? The groups? This seems to be the natural answer. But then: Groups do not have a mind or brain of there own to form any mental attitude. Different kinds of individualistic analyses of group-intentions have been suggested in the literature. On the one hand there are suggestions to reduce group intentions to a complex of different Iattitudes. John Searle, on the other hand, (...) suggests a special social kind of attitudes, namely we-intentions. We-intentions are being had by individual persons, though they have the form “We intend to do such-and-such”. However, because of the fallibility of Searlian we-intentions and the possibility of ignorance this concept is of no help: We-intentions are neither necessary nor sufficient for group-intentions. In this respect, Margaret Gilbert’s approach is much more successful, though it covers only a special case, namely small-scale informal groups. I suggest a generalised solution in order to cover also large-scale and formal groups. (shrink)

The beginning of the 21st century has seen the renewed use of aesthetics as a critical and interpretive method within various discursive spheres. Particularly, and unsurprisingly, this move has been most pronounced in the discursive systems of philosophy and the artworld. It is to this more specific re-discovery that the authors in this journal address their arguments.