In this position paper, we argue that careless reliance on AI to answer our questions and to judge our output is a violation of Grice’s Maxim of Quality as well as a violation of Lemoine’s legal Maxim of Innocence, performing an (unwarranted) authority fallacy, and while lacking assessment signals, committing Type II errors that result from fallacies of the inverse. What is missing in the focus on output and results of AI-generated and AI-evaluated content is, apart from paying proper tribute, (...) the demand to follow a person’s thought process (or a machine’s decision processes). In deliberately avoiding Neural Networks that cannot explain how they come to their conclusions, we introduce logic-symbolic inference to handle any possible epistemics any human or artificial information processor may have. Our system can deal with various belief systems and shows how decisions may differ for what is true, false, realistic, unrealistic, literal, or anomalous. As is, stota AI such as ChatGPT is a sorcerer’s apprentice. (shrink)

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, such as semaglutide, and dual GLP-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonists, such as tirzepatide, have been found to be effective for treating obesity and diabetes, significantly reducing weight and the risk or predicted risk of adverse cardiovascular events. There is a global shortage of these medications that could last several years and raises questions about how limited supplies should be allocated. We propose a fair-allocation framework that enables evaluation of the ethics of current (...) practices and could guide governments, professional societies, and physicians in allocation decisions. (shrink)

K has a prepaid appointment with J. She wants to talk about philosophy even though the appointment is for psychotherapy. It seems she really just wants to leave and eventually she does. When she returns the subject is the meaning of life in a world without a God. Together they manage to sort some things out.

In this paper we shed new light on the Argument from Disagreement by putting it to test in a computer simulation. According to this argument widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by any moral facts, either because no such facts exist or because they are epistemically inaccessible or inefficacious for some other reason. Our simulation shows that if our moral opinions were influenced at least a little bit by moral facts, we (...) would quickly have reached consensus, even if our moral opinions were affected by factors such as false authorities, external political shifts, and random processes. Therefore, since no such consensus has been reached, the simulation gives us increased reason to take seriously the Argument from Disagreement. Our conclusion is however not conclusive; the simulation also indicates what assumptions one has to make in order to reject the Argument from Disagreement. The simulation algorithm we use builds on the work of Hegselmann and Krause (J Artif Soc Social Simul 5(3); 2002, J Artif Soc Social Simul 9(3), 2006). (shrink)

A brief critical notice of Dan J Stein's new book _Problems of Living: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Cognitive-Affective Science_.

Characteristic of the contemporary field of life's meaning has been the combination of monism in method and naturalism in substance. That is, much of the field has sought to reduce enquiry into life's meaning to one question and to offer a single principle as an answer to it, with this principle typically focusing on ways of living in the physical world as best known by the scientific method. T. J. Mawson's new book, God and the Meanings of Life, provides fresh (...) reason to doubt both this form and this content and also develops positive alternatives to them. In this critical notice of Mawson's book, I consider several of the central arguments that he gives for a pluralist supernaturalism, explaining why I remain unconvinced. (shrink)

Abraham J. Malherbe was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the past half century. He is especially known for his use of Hellenistic moral philosophy in the interpretation of New Testament texts, especially Pauline literature. Whilst the comparative study of New Testament and Greco-Roman material remains a contentious approach in scholarship, Malherbe’s work provides important pointers in how to make such comparisons in a meaningful and reasoned manner, by paying due respect to the integrity of the texts (...) being compared and to the function textual elements have within their own contexts. I discussed the salient features of Malherbe’s approach, focusing in particular on his study of topoi. One of the most significant findings was Malherbe’s emphasis on the dialectical combination of common and individual elements in such topoi, which enabled ancient authors to embed their own texts within the cultural discourse of their time. His approach opens the way to further research of the New Testament within its philosophical context without requiring proof of a genealogical relationship between the texts or authors concerned. (shrink)

. In the philosophy of J. L. Schellenberg, “evolutionary religion” is a religious stance oriented towards the deep future. According to Schellenberg, the best form of evolutionary religion is non-doxastic faith in ultimism. I reject Schellenberg’s arguments for preferring ultimism and suggest that committing non-doxastically to traditional religion makes more sense from an evolutionary perspective. I argue that the alignment argument for traditional religion remains sound even when the deep future is considered. Furthermore, I assess Schellenberg’s claim that humanity is (...) religiously immature. (shrink)

A series of papers on different aspects of practical knowledge by Roderick Chisholm, Rudolf Haller, J. C. Nyiri, Eva Picardi, Joachim Schulte Roger Scruton, Barry Smith and Johan Wrede.

We argue that C. Darwin and more recently W. Hennig worked at times under the simplifying assumption of an eternal biosphere. So motivated, we explicitly consider the consequences which follow mathematically from this assumption, and the infinite graphs it leads to. This assumption admits certain clusters of organisms which have some ideal theoretical properties of species, shining some light onto the species problem. We prove a dualization of a law of T.A. Knight and C. Darwin, and sketch a decomposition result (...) involving the internodons of D. Kornet, J. Metz and H. Schellinx. A further goal of this paper is to respond to B. Sturmfels’ question, “Can biology lead to new theorems?”. (shrink)

We approach the notion of general (global) human intelligence as a prominently multifaceted concept which can be tested in at least seventy specific scenarios. We say that an agent has Artificial Global Intelligence (AGLI), if it is able to perform in an intelligent manner for at least the collection of tasks defining the former scenarios. In particular, based on Gartner's multiple intelligences theory, we describe the design of a concrete test for AGLI made in such a way that an ‘average’ (...) young human being should, per diffinitionem, pass it. We compare our holistic test with several highly representative human and artificial intelligence tests for deducing that our AGLI test is the one with the broader scope of the whole range of intelligence. However, we claim as a plausible hypothesis and based on the wide thematic spectrum of the test that the most outstanding inventions of AI currently available are far from getting a high score on it. Finally, we open a discussion about the fact that, although there are artificial agents being able to simulate intelligent behaviour at a perfect level for several local tasks, this seems not to be the case for AGLI. This would imply, in particular, a kind of practical implausibility of the notion of intelligence explosion coming from philosophy of AI. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is one of the world's most influential living philosophers. Few contemporary thinkers display his breadth of argument and reference, or his ability to intervene in debates critical to both analytic and continental philosophy. Alain Badiou: Key Concepts presents an overview of and introduction to the full range of Badiou's thinking. Essays focus on the foundations of Badiou's thought, his "key concepts" - truth, being, ontology, the subject, and conditions - and on his engagement with a range of thinkers (...) central to his philosophy, including Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Heidegger and Deleuze. (shrink)

This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on ‘Bentham’s test’, which was devised by Matthew Kramer to limit the expansiveness of the interest theory. According to the test, a party holds a right correlative to a duty only if that party stands to undergo a development that is typically detrimental if the duty is breached. The article shows how the entire interest theory can be reformulated in terms of the test. The article (...) then focuses on a further strength of the interest theory, brought to the fore by the new formulation. In any Western legal system, the tortious maltreatment of a child or a mentally disabled individual results in a compensatory duty. The interest theory can account for such duties in a simple and elegant way. The will theory, on the other hand, struggles to explain such compensatory duties unless it abandons some of its main tenets. (shrink)

We present a multidisciplinary, universal a pragmatic theory of causation based explicitly on five methodological causal seminal dimensions. The first one is called formal-mathematical-idealist theory and emerges as a meta-conceptual fusion of several existing causal theories. The second one is essentially based on a global, scientific and technical perspective. In fact, this can be considered as a meta-dimension encompassing a huge number of academic disciplines. The third dimension arises once more as combination of former approaches having the mind and its (...) laws as the central paradigm. The fourth one is structurally related with our subjective phenomenological world and its objective impact on the external universe. And, finally, the fifth dimension is closely related with the first one, but more oriented toward the global implicit purpose of the universe and what this implies causally on the events in nature. We give several concrete examples elucidating the explanatory range of our theory. (shrink)

We describe (essential features and an axiomatization of) a new metamathematical (cognitive) ability, i.e., functional conceptual substratum, used implicitly in the generation of several mathematical proofs and definitions, and playing a fundamental role in Artificial Mathematical Intelligence (or Cognitive-computational metamathematics). Furthermore, we present an initial (first-order) formalization of this mechanism together with its characterizing relation with classic notions like primitive positive definability and Diophantiveness. Additionally, we analyze the semantic variability of functional conceptual substratum when small syntactic modifications are done. Finally, (...) we describe cognitively natural inference rules for (mathematical) definitions inspired by functional conceptual substratum and we show that they are sound and complete w.r.t.\ standard calculi. (shrink)

The boundless nature of the natural numbers imposes paradoxically a high formal bound to the use of standard artificial computer programs for solving conceptually challenged problems in number theory. In the context of the new cognitive foundations for mathematics' and physics' program immersed in the setting of artificial mathematical intelligence, we proposed a refined numerical system, called the physical numbers, preserving most of the essential intuitions of the natural numbers. Even more, this new numerical structure additionally possesses the property of (...) being a bounded object allowing us to work with quite similar axioms like the classic Peano axioms, but in a finite environment and with an enriched physical dimension. Finally, we present several enlightening examples and we conclude that the physical numbers provide a natural formal setting for approaching classic problems in number theory from a more hybrid perspective, i.e. with a potential participation in the generation of solutions, not only of working mathematicians but also of more sophisticated artificial interactive (mathematical) intelligent agents (within the context of cognitive-computational metamathematics or artificial mathematical intelligence) and more controlled by physically-inspired principles. Finally, this paper addresses a highly new, bottom-up and paradigm-shifting approach to the foundations of physics: One should refine and improve the conceptual formal setting of the language that we use for understanding physical phenomena (e.g. the mathematical grounding concepts and theories) for being able to understand better more subtle and complex physical phenomena. (shrink)

As it says on the in, the problem for a standard of objectual (referential) quantification is presented, and a solution offered.

I think the basic intuition behind textualism correct – that the meaning of a law is fixed by referencing the meaning of its words according to the meaning common to the law’s ratifiers. However, even if true, it does not follow that interpretation of a law goes through the original ratifiers. Rather, a citizenry continually ratifies the laws to which it subjects itself, and as the meanings of those words change over time, so will those laws. Concerning, say, the U.S. (...) Constitution, though the text may be very nearly the same now as in the 18th century, a different constitution is in effect. (shrink)

We argue for the possibility of validating the presence of consciousness in another person from a perspective that blends both, a third-person approach of coming close to, observing, and understanding the other; and a first-person assessment of how the experience of the other feels like. For this, we will need to explain how the line between the third-person and first-person approaches is blurred in some methodological approaches. We rest our position largely on the back of some seminal conclusions of the (...) meditations of Ren\'e Descartes and other theories concerning consciousness like Chalmers' naturalistic dualism and, to some secondary extent on Integrated Information Theory (IIT). Additionally, we describe fundamental contextual principles already developed in the literature and the arts (like Stanivlaski's Acting System), and then we use them for setting a suitable methodology that we feel can be used to validate the presence of others' conscious experiences in one's consciousness (at suitable periods of spacetime). Finally, we give general methodological guidelines for the construction of the concrete experiment and we explore very briefly the potential implications of this kind of research in other academic and non-academic settings. (shrink)

The Article analyzes the notion of legal “thinghood” in the context of the person–thing bifurcation. In legal scholarship, there are numerous assumptions pertaining to this definition that are often not spelled out. In addition, one’s chosen definition of “thing” is often simply taken to be the correct one. The Article scrutinizes these assumptions and definitions. First, a brief history of the bifurcation is offered. Second, three possible definitions of “legal thing” are examined: Things as nonpersons, things as rights and duties, (...) and things as property. The first two definitions are rejected as not being very interesting or serving any heuristic function. Conversely, understanding legal things as property is meaningful, useful, and helps to understand what it means to say that animals are legally things. Defining things as property has certain rather important implications, which are analyzed at the end of the Article. For instance, not everything needs to be either a person or a thing: The historical institution of outlawry involved treating individuals neither as legal persons nor as legal things. One must conclude that the person–thing bifurcation is less fundamental than is often assumed. (shrink)

Betrachtet man den Gebrauch der Worte ‘Moral’ und ‘Vernunft’ etwas genauer, so stellt man fest, dass nicht klar ist, was sie bezeichnen bzw. wie Moral und Vernunft zusammenhängen. In dem Buch ‘Rationalität in der Angewandten Ethik’, in dem sich verschiedene Autoren die Aufgabe gestellt haben, diese Umstände in das Licht der Betrachtung zu rücken, finden wir Fragen darüber, wie “Moral”, “Angewandte Ethik” und “Vernunft” (auch in der Anwendung) zu verstehen und zu vereinen sind.

In this short paper I will introduce an idea which, I will argue, presents a fundamental additional challenge to the machine consciousness community. The idea takes the questions surrounding phenomenology, qualia and phenomenality one step further into the realm of intersubjectivity but with a twist, and the twist is this: that an agent’s intersubjective experience is deeply felt and necessarily co-affective; it is enkinaesthetic, and only through enkinaesthetic awareness can we establish the affective enfolding which enables first the perturbation, and (...) then the balance and counter-balance, the attunement and co-ordination of whole-body interaction through reciprocal adaptation. (shrink)

Linda Zagzebski’s book on epistemic authority is an impressive and stimulating treatment of an important topic. 1 I admire the way she manages to combine imagination, originality and argumentative control. Her work has the further considerable merit of bringing analytic thinking and abstract theory to bear upon areas of concrete human concern, such as the attitudes one should have towards moral and religious authority. The book is stimulating in a way good philosophy should be -- provoking both disagreement and emulation. (...) I agree with much of what she says, and have been instructed by it, but it will be of more interest and relevance here if I concentrate upon areas of disagreement. Perhaps they are better seen as areas, at least some of them, where her emphases suggest a position that seems to me untenable, but that she may not really intend. In that event, I will be happy to have provoked a clarification or the dispelling of my misunderstanding. My focus will be upon problems in her account of communal authority and autonomy, especially with respect to religious and political authority. Here my worry is that she places too much trust in trust and not enough in what I call selective mistrust. (shrink)

Hillel Steiner has recently attacked the notion of inalienable rights, basing some of his arguments on the Hohfeldian analysis to show that infinite arrays of legal positions would not be associated with any inalienable rights. This essay addresses the nature of the Hohfeldian infinity: the main argument is that what Steiner claims to be an infinite regress is actually a wholly unproblematic form of infinite recursion. First, the nature of the Hohfeldian recursion is demonstrated. It is shown that infinite recursions (...) of legal positions ensue regardless of whether inalienable rights exist or not. Second, the alleged problems that this might pose for the analysis are discussed. The conclusion is that one should not worry about the recursion as long as one understands correctly the role of the Hohfeldian analysis in normative reasoning. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is (...) one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the ‘‘scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith’’ [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination. (shrink)

As a national ideology, Pancasila has formal quality, but it is also part of the material aspects that shapes perspectives that drives national policies through the process of consensus. The open and ambiguous character of Pancasila allows a wide space for social and political interpretation, and therefore is open to critique and reformation through reinterpretations of its meaning. An examination of the ethics of the socio-political application of Pancasila is crucial in the current national climate, and these ethical valuations are (...) formed through public discussions and debates on the meaning of Pancasila. Using data drawn from mass media. In this paper, I will examine the Government Regulation on Law (Perppu No. 2/2017) as an example of how these political ethics develop through the discussion of the meaning of Pancasila. Second, I'll highlight how the space for interpretation of the meaning of Pancasila determines how the public, government and oppositional coalitions evaluate the pro and contra approaches to translating the ideology into practice. Third, in examining the process of socio-political consensus as a necessity in the democratic life of Indonesia, this paper will position the discursive deployments of Pancasila in the ethical and political considerations that stem from the practical application of these discourses of Pancasila. (shrink)

Social participation requires certain abilities: communication with other members of society; social understanding which enables planning ahead and dealing with novel circumstances; and a theory of mind which makes it possible to anticipate the mental state of another. In childhood play we learn how to pretend, how to put ourselves in the minds of others, how to imagine what others are thinking and how to attribute false beliefs to them. Without this ability we would be unable to deceive and detect (...) deception in the actions of others, and our ability to interact within our social group would be greatly impaired. In this paper I claim that the capacity for deception is necessary for a theory of mind, and a theory of mind is necessary for complex social interaction. (shrink)

This article addresses the sensitive topic of human rights issues in Indonesia through a Kantian analysis. Cases of human rights violations are a common occurrence in Indonesia. Presently, human rights violations in the country are assessed from historical and legal perspectives. However, there is little commitment or willingness on the part of the Indonesian government to protect and defend the principles of human rights. This article is attempts to utilize arguments from political philosophy that can contextualize the protection and implementation (...) of human rights in Indonesia, through an analysis of the concept of social contract in Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy. According to Kant, freedom and equality are natural rights. This article demonstrates that Kant's social contract theory is linear with his formal moral philosophy. In his explanation, ‘contract’ is unified will. Therefore, the Indonesian state with its power is responsible to implement the will of the public to ensure order and rule of law and to protect the rights and freedom of each individual. (shrink)

Standard definitions of causal closure focus on where the causes in question are. In this paper, the focus is changed to where they are not. Causal closure is linked to the principle that no cause of another universe causes an event in a particular universe. This view permits the one universe to be affected by the other via an interface. An interface between universes can be seen as a domain that violates the suggested account of causal closure, suggesting a view (...) in which universes are causally closed whereas interfaces are not. On this basis, universes are not affected by other universes directly but rather indirectly. (shrink)

In this article we focus on three key precepts shared by Confucianism and the African ethic of Ubuntu: the central value of community, the desirability of ethical partiality, and the idea that we tend to become morally better as we grow older. For each of these broad similarities, there are key differences underlying them, and we discuss those as well as speculate about the reasons for them. Our aim is not to take sides, but we do suggest ways that Ubuntu (...) and Confucianism might have something to learn from each other and perhaps come closer. We hope that our preliminary reflections can inspire further debate and thinking on a theme – dialogues between long-standing and large-scale non-Western traditions – that is bound to increase in importance as non-Western societies play a greater role in the global system and as the search continues for a 'global ethic'. (shrink)

Perhaps the most commonly discussed argument against the possibility of extended simples is the argument from heterogeneity. The argument states that, if extended simples are possible, then extended simples which exhibit intrinsic qualitative variation across space (or spacetime) are also possible [Premise 1]. But, the argument goes, it is impossible for an extended simple to exhibit intrinsic qualitative variation across space (or spacetime) [Premise 2]. Thus, extended simples are impossible. I argue that there is a serious problem with the argument (...) from heterogeneity: the best arguments in support of the first premise undermine support for the second. Thus, there appears to be no good reason to accept both premises. (shrink)

In this dialogue Daniel and Jeito talk about the not knowing of experiences of existing in the non existence.

I apply the notion of truthmaking to the topic of fundamentality by articulating a truthmaker theory of fundamentality according to which some truths are truth-grounded in certain entities while the ones that don't stand in a metaphysical-semantic relation to the truths that do. I motivate this view by critically discussing two problems with Ross Cameron's truthmaker theory of fundamentality. I then defend this view against Theodore Sider's objection that the truthmaking approach to fundamentality violates the purity constraint. Truthmaker theorists can (...) have a trouble-free theory of fundamentality. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

In this dialogue Zhuangzi and Jacob discuss nothing and something and their relation with God.

In this article, I respond to questions about, and criticisms of, my article “Towardan African Moral Theory” that have been put forth by Allen Wood, Mogobe Ramose, Douglas Farland and Jason van Niekerk. The major topicsI address include: what bearing the objectivity of moral value should have on cross-cultural moral differences between Africans and Westerners; whether a harmonious relationship is a good candidate for having final moral value; whether consequentialism exhausts the proper way to respond to the value of a (...) harmonious relationship; what makes a moral theory count as “African”; how the existing literature on African ethics relates to the aim of analytically developing and defending a single foundational moral principle; whether the intuitions I appeal to ground an African moral theory are pro tanto rightmakers or general moral truths; whether the moral theory I defend can capture pro tanto rightness; and whether the best interpretation of African ethics is self-regarding (deeming the only basic moral reason for action to be that it would develop one's own valuable human nature) or other-regarding (holding that a certain kind of harmonious relationship between individuals could ground a basic moral reason for action) . (shrink)

This is a book review of Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007).

In this paper, I evaluate three views of philosophical pragmatism’s practical implications for academic and non-academic or public discourses, as well as offer my own view of those implications. The first view is that of George Novack. In an underappreciated tract, Pragmatism versus Marxism, the American Trotskyite and union organizer launched a vicious attack on John Dewey’s career as a professional philosopher. He alleged that Dewey’s ideas were inaccessible to all but a small community of fellow academicians. While Novack conceded (...) that Dewey’s philosophical inquiries had a cross-pollinating influence on other academic fields, he doubted that the beneficial products of those inquiries traveled far beyond the walls of the so-called ‘ivory tower.’ Larry Hickman offers a second view. He understands Dewey’s claim in Experience and Nature that philosophy serves as a “liaison officer” to mean that philosophers should provide a common lexicon that translates between the languages of distinct disciplines. In other words, for Dewey, the role of philosophy, including philosophical pragmatism, is to facilitate interdisciplinarity. Since interdisciplinary sharing is usually confined to academic discourse, Novack’s challenge is perfectly compatible with Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim. Both Novack and Hickman are mistaken, though in different degrees and for different reasons. The third, and more promising, view is advanced by Robert Talisse. He cites the life and works of Sidney Hook, one of Dewey’s better-known students, as an exemplary case of a pragmatist who consistently realized his pragmatic commitments in public discourse. The most important reason for qualifying Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim is that the measure of pragmatism’s value is not solely the ability of pragmatists to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, but their ability to also insert their ideas into public discourse. In my view, philosophical pragmatists, and philosophers generally, should both facilitate interdisciplinarity in academic discourse and introduce philosophical notions into public discourse—that is, serving in the dual capacity of interdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual. (shrink)

The concept of instantiation is realized differently across a variety of metaphysical theories. A certain realization of the concept in a given theory depends on what roles are specified and associated with the concept and its corresponding term as well as what entities are suited to fill those roles. In this paper, the classic realization of the concept of instantiation in a one-category ontology of abstract particulars or tropes is articulated in a novel way and defended against unaddressed objections.

The field of bioethics is replete with applications of moral theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism. For a given dilemma, even if it is not clear how one of these western philosophical principles of right (and wrong) action would resolve it, one can identify many of the considerations that each would conclude is relevant. The field is, in contrast, largely unaware of an African account of what all right (and wrong) actions have in common and of the sorts of factors (...) that for it are germane to developing a sound response to a given bioethical problem. My aim is to help rectify this deficiency by first spelling out a moral theory grounded in the mores of many sub-Saharan peoples, and then applying it to some major bioethical issues, namely, the point of medical treatment, free and informed consent, standards of care and animal experimentation. For each of these four issues, I compare and contrast the implications of the African moral theory with utilitarianism and Kantianism, my overall purposes being to highlight respects in which the African moral theory is distinct and to demonstrate that the field should take it at least as seriously as it does the Western theories. (shrink)

Our aims are to articulate some core philosophical positions characteristic of Traditional African Religion and to argue that they merit consideration as monotheist rivals to standard interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In particular, we address the topics of how God’s nature is conceived, how God’s will is meant to bear on human decision making, where one continues to exist upon the death of one’s body, and how long one is able to exist without a body. For each of these topics, (...) we note how Traditional African Religion posits claims that clash with mainstream Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and that, being prima facie plausible, indicate the need for systematic cross-cultural philosophical debate. (shrink)

Structural universals are a kind of complex universal. They have been put to work in a variety of philosophical theories but are plagued with problems concerning their compositional nature. In this article, we will discuss the following questions. What are structural universals? Why believe in them? Can we give a consistent account of their compositional nature? What are the costs of doing so?

Trust is a topic of longstanding philosophical interest. It is indispensable to every kind of coordinated human activity, from sport to scientific research. Even more, trust is necessary for the successful dissemination of knowledge, and by extension, for nearly any form of practical deliberation and planning. Without trust, we could achieve few of our goals and would know very little. Despite trust’s fundamental importance in human life, there is substantial philosophical disagreement about what trust is, and further, how trusting is (...) normatively constrained and best theorized about in relation to other things we value. This entry is divided into three sections, which explore key (and sometimes interconnected) ethical and epistemological themes in the philosophy of trust: (1) The Nature of Trust; (2) The Normativity of Trust, and (3) The Value of Trust. (shrink)

Almost all philosophers interested in parthood and composition think that a composite object is a further thing, numerically distinct from the objects that compose it. Call this the orthodox view. I argue that the orthodox view is false, and that a composite object is identical to the objects that compose it (collectively). This view is known as composition as identity. -/- I argue that, despite its unpopularity, there are many reasons to favour com- position as identity over the orthodox view. (...) First, defenders of the orthodox view have not offered complete theories of composition. For instance, they have not given adequate accounts of heterogeneous properties like being black and white in composite objects. Nor have they given satisfactory explanations for the necessary connections that hold between composite objects and their proper parts. -/- Second, there appears to be no good way for defenders of the orthodox view to remedy this. Any account of the heterogeneous properties of composite objects which is compatible with the orthodox view faces serious problems, as does any account of the necessary connections between an object and its proper parts. Composition as identity, on the other hand, is compatible with intuitive responses to both of these challenges. -/- Third, there are a number of strong arguments in favour of composition as identity. For example, composition as identity fits our evidence about the way the world is better than the orthodox view does. It also allows us to easily maintain that composition sometimes occurs and sometimes does not—i.e., it allows us to easily maintain that composition is restricted. The orthodox view does not. The theories of composition put forward by most philosophers are at best incomplete or in need of improvement. At worst, they are false and composition as identity is true. (shrink)

In this article I articulate and defend an African moral theory, i.e., a basic and general principle grounding all particular duties that is informed by sub-Saharan values commonly associated with talk of "ubuntu" and cognate terms that signify personhood or humanness. The favoured interpretation of ubuntu (as of 2007) is the principle that an action is right insofar as it respects harmonious relationships, ones in which people identify with, and exhibit solidarity toward, one another. I maintain that this is the (...) most defensible moral theory with an African pedigree at the time, and that it should be developed further with an eye to rivalling dominant Western theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism. (NB: a mildly revised version, avoiding some typos and phrases that invite misinterpretation, appeared as a chapter in Isaac Ukpokolo, ed., _Themes, Issues and Problems in African Philosophy_ London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 97-119.). (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify what we are asking when posing the question of what (if anything) makes a life meaningful. People associate many different ideas with talk of "meaning in life," so that one must search for an account of the question that is primary in some way. Therefore, after briefly sketching the major conceptions of life's meaning in 20th century philosophical literature, the remainder of the paper systematically seeks a satisfactory analysis the concept of a meaningful life that (...) these conceptions all address. (shrink)

There are three major reasons that ideas associated with ubuntu are often deemed to be an inappropriate basis for a public morality. One is that they are too vague, a second is that they fail to acknowledge the value of individual freedom, and a third is that they a fit traditional, small-scale culture more than a modern, industrial society. In this article, I provide a philosophical interpretation of ubuntu that is not vulnerable to these three objections. Specifically, I construct a (...) moral theory grounded on southern African worldviews, one that suggests a promising new conception of human dignity. According to this conception, typical human beings have a dignity in virtue of their capacity for community, understood as the combination of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them, where human rights violations are egregious degradations of this capacity. I argue that this account of human rights violations straightforwardly entails and explains many different elements of South Africa’s Bill of Rights and naturally suggests certain ways of resolving contemporary moral dilemmas in South Africa and elsewhere relating to land reform, political power and deadly force. (shrink)

If the laws are deterministic, then standard theories of counterfactuals are forced to reject at least one of the following conditionals: 1) had you chosen differently, there would not have been a violation of the laws of nature; and 2) had you chosen differently, the initial conditions of the universe would not have been different. On the relevant readings—where we hold fixed factors causally independent of your choice—both of these conditionals appear true. And rejecting either one leads to trouble for (...) philosophical theories which rely upon counterfactual conditionals—like, for instance, causal decision theory. Here, I outline a semantics for counterfactual conditionals which allows us to accept both (1) and (2). And I discuss how this semantics deals with objections to causal decision theory from Arif Ahmed. (shrink)

Jeff Paris proves a generalized Dutch Book theorem. If a belief state is not a generalized probability then one faces ‘sure loss’ books of bets. In Williams I showed that Joyce’s accuracy-domination theorem applies to the same set of generalized probabilities. What is the relationship between these two results? This note shows that both results are easy corollaries of the core result that Paris appeals to in proving his dutch book theorem. We see that every point of accuracy-domination defines a (...) dutch book, but we only have a partial converse. (shrink)

In this article, I expound and assess two theories of meaning in life informed by the indigenous sub-Saharan African philosophical tradition. According to one principle, a life is more meaningful, the more it promotes community with other human persons. According to the other principle, a life is more meaningful, the more it promotes vitality in oneself and others. I argue that, at least upon some refinement, both of these African conceptions of meaning merit global consideration from philosophers, but that the (...) vitality approach is more promising than the community one for capturing a wider array of intuitions about what confers meaning on a life. I further argue, however, that there are objections that apply with comparable force to both theories; neither one does a good job of entailing that and explaining why certain types of reason and progress can make a life more meaningful. Although these objections are characteristic of a ‘modern’ western outlook, I maintain that they are difficult for contemporary African philosophers to ignore and consider some ways they might respond to the objections. (shrink)