We present evidence from a pre-registered experiment indicating that a philosophical argument––a type of rational appeal––can persuade people to make charitable donations. The rational appeal we used follows Singer’s well-known “shallow pond” argument (1972), while incorporating an evolutionary debunking argument (Paxton, Ungar, & Greene 2012) against favoring nearby victims over distant ones. The effectiveness of this rational appeal did not differ significantly from that of a well-tested emotional appeal involving an image of a single child in need (Small, Loewenstein, (...) and Slovic 2007). This is a surprising result, given evidence that emotions are the primary drivers of moral action, a view that has been very influential in the work of development organizations. We did not find support for our pre-registered hypothesis that combining our rational and emotional appeals would have a significantly stronger effect than either appeal in isolation. However, our finding that both kinds of appeal can increase charitable donations is cause for optimism, especially concerning the potential efficacy of well-designed rational appeals. We consider the significance of these findings for moral psychology, ethics, and the work of organizations aiming to alleviate severe poverty. (shrink)

Since its publication, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory and its revision (Lilien- feld & Andrews, 1996; Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005) have become increasingly popular such that it is now among the most frequently used self-report inventories for the assessment of psychopathy. The current meta-analysis examined the relations between the two PPI factors (factor 1: Fearless Dominance; factor 2: Self-Centered Impulsivity), as well as their relations with other validated measures of psychopathy, internalizing and externalizing forms of psychopathology, general personality traits, and antisocial (...) personality disorder symptoms. Across 61 samples reported in 49 publications, we found support for the convergent and criterion validity of both PPI factor 2 and the PPI total score. Much weaker validation was found for PPI factor 1, which manifested limited convergent validity and a pattern of correlations with central criterion variables that was inconsistent with many conceptualizations of psychopathy. (shrink)

Background: Recent literature on addiction and judgments about the characteristics of agents has focused on the implications of adopting a ‘brain disease’ versus ‘moral weakness’ model of addiction. Typically, such judgments have to do with what capacities an agent has (e.g., the ability to abstain from substance use). Much less work, however, has been conducted on the relationship between addiction and judgments about an agent’s identity, including whether or to what extent an individual is seen as the same person after (...) becoming addicted. Methods: We conducted a series of vignette-based experiments (total N = 3,620) to assess lay attitudes concerning addiction and identity persistence, systematically manipulating key characteristics of agents and their drug of addiction. Conclusions: In Study 1, we found that US participants judged an agent who became addicted to drugs as being closer to ‘a completely different person’ than ‘completely the same person’ as the agent who existed prior to the addiction. In Studies 2-6, we investigated the intuitive basis for this result, finding that lay judgments of altered identity as a consequence of drug use and addiction are driven primarily by perceived negative changes in the moral character of drug users, who are seen as having deviated from their good true selves. (shrink)

Republic 554c-d—where the oligarchic individual is said to restrain his appetites ‘by compulsion and fear’, rather than by persuasion or by taming them with speech—is often cited as evidence that the appetitive part of the soul can be ‘persuaded’. I argue that the passage does not actually support that conclusion. I offer an alternative reading and suggest that appetite, on Plato’s view, is not open to persuasion.

Although ethics is an essential component of undergraduate medical education, research suggests current medical ethics curricula face considerable challenges in improving students’ ethical reasoning. This paper discusses these challenges and introduces a promising new mode of graduate and professional ethics instruction for overcoming them. We begin by describing common ethics curricula, focusing in particular on established problems with current approaches. Next, we describe a novel method of ethics education and assessment for medical students that we have devised, the Medical Ethics (...) Bowl. Finally, we suggest pedagogical advantages to MEBs when compared to other ethics curricula. (shrink)

My topic is the intelligent guidance of action. In this paper I offer an empirically grounded case for four ideas: that [a] cognitive processes of practical reasoning play a key role in the intelligent guidance of action, [b] these processes could not do so without significant enabling work done by both perception and the motor system, [c] the work done by perceptual and motor systems can be characterized as the generation of information specialized for action guidance, which in turn suggests (...) that [d] the cognitive processes of practical reasoning that play a key role in the guidance of intelligent action are not the abstract, syllogistic ones philosophers often treat as the paradigm of practical reasoning. Rather, these cognitive processes are constrained by, and work well with, the specialized concepts outputted by perception and the feedback outputted by sensorimotor processes. (shrink)

We present a new understanding of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist on the model of Stump’s account of God’s omnipresence and Green and Quan’s account of experiencing God in Scripture. On this understanding, Christ is derivatively, rather than fundamentally, located in the consecrated bread and wine, such that Christ is present to the believer through the consecrated bread and wine, thereby making available to the believer a second-person experience of Christ, where the consecrated bread and wine are the way (...) in which she shares attention with him. The consecrated bread and wine are then, in a sense, icons of Christ. (shrink)

: I focus on Uriah Kriegel’s account of conative phenomenology. I agree with Kriegel’s argument that some conative phenomenology is primitive in that some conative phenomenal properties cannot be reduced to another kind of property. I disagree, however, with Kriegel’s specific characterization of the properties in question. Kriegel argues that the experience of deciding-and-then-trying is the core of conative phenomenology. I argue, however, that the experiences of trying and acting better occupy this place. Further, I suggest that the attitudinal component (...) of the experiences of trying and acting is not, as Kriegel suggests, best characterized in terms of commitment to the rightness or goodness of the objects of experience. Rather, I argue that the attitudinal component is best characterized in imperatival terms. Keywords : Agentive Phenomenology; Deciding; Trying; Imperatives Kriegel e la fenomenologia dell’azione Riassunto : In questo testo mi concentrerò sulla descrizione della fenomenologia conativa di Kriegel. Mentre condivido la tesi di Kriegel, secondo cui parte della fenomenologia conativa è primitiva, nel senso che parte delle proprietà fenomeniche conative non possono essere ridotte ad altri tipi di proprietà, debbo tuttavia dissentire riguardo la specifica caratterizzazione data da Kriegel delle proprietà in questione. Kriegel ritiene che l’esperienza del decidere-e-poi-sforzarsi sia il nucleo della fenomenologia conativa. Io direi tuttavia che le esperienze dello sforzo e dell’azione occupano meglio questa posizione. Inoltre, suggerirei che la componente relativa all’atteggiamento delle esperienze dello sforzo e dell’azione non sia descrivibile al meglio, come suggerisce Kriegel, in termini di impegno legato all’adeguatezza o all’integrità dell’oggetto d’esperienza. Direi piuttosto che la componente dell’atteggiamento sia meglio descrivibile in termini imperativi.. Parole chiave : Fenomenologia dell’agentività; Atto della decisione; Atto dello sforzo; Imperativi. (shrink)

Provides an overview of empirical research relevant to philosophical questions about moral thought, feeling, reasoning, and motivation. Topics include: free will and moral responsibility, egoism and altruism, moral judgment and motivation, weakness and strength of will, moral intuitions, and moral knowledge. [Originally published in 2012. Updated and expanded in 2017.].

Peer commentary on: Goering, S., Klein, E., Dougherty, D. D., & Widge, A. S. (2017). Staying in the loop: Relational agency and identity in next-generation DBS for psychiatry. AJOB Neuroscience, 8(2), 59-70.

A Very Bad Wizard is a collection of delightful interviews or conversations conducted by philosopher Tamler Sommers. Sommers interviews an array of researchers--from psychologists to primatologists to philosophers--who all have one thing in common: their work has direct implications for the study of morality. The distinguished interviewees are Galen Strawson, Philip Zimabrdo, Franz De Waal, Michael Ruse, Joseph Henrich, Joshua Greene, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Stich, and William Ian Miller. I read the book on my flights back (...) to the West Coast after picking it up a few days prior in Massachusetts. I simply couldn't put it down! It truly is--as Steven Pinker states in his blurb--both thought-provoking and entertaining. It is a lively way into some of the most fascinating interdisciplinary research on ethics--what often now goes under the heading "moral psychology.". (shrink)

The emerging field of the philosophy of dance, as suggested by Aili Bresnahan, increasingly recognizes the problem that (especially pre‐modern) dance has historically focused on bodily perfection, which privileges abled bodies as those that can best make and perform dance as art. One might expect that the philosophy of dance, given the critical and analytical powers of philosophy, might be helpful in illuminating and suggesting ameliorations for this tendency in dance. But this is particularly a difficult task since the analytic (...) philosophy of dance is too young to have achieved a comprehensive treatment of dance per se, let alone to update such a treatment in line with the demands of social justice. As a step in that direction, the present article (a) summarizes dance theorists on disabled dance (as opposed to the dance of the temporarily able‐bodied, or TAB) and then applies (b) the philosophy of art and dance to disability, (c) the philosophy of disability to dance, (d) interdisciplinary disability theory to dance, and (e) my own Figuration philosophy of dance to disability, as inspired in part by John Dewey. (shrink)

The first section of this article focuses on the treatment of “time travel” in science-fiction literature and film as presented in the secondary literature in that field. The first anthology I will consider has a metaphysical focus, including (a) relating the time travel of science fiction to the banal time travel of all living beings, as we move inexorably toward the future; and (b) arguing for the filmstrip as the ultimate metaphor for time. The second anthology I will consider has (...) a more political focus, arguing that the “special effects” form of science-fiction films, rather than the visual or narrative content of science-fiction-films, is truly imaginative and futural. The second section of this article ties together a variety of concepts and insights between time-travel cinema and Deleuze’s Cinema 1, suggesting (among other things) that (c) time-traveling characters in cinema function as a redoubled phenomenon of the “mobile sections” of Bergsonian duration (in reference to Henri Bergson), and (d) time-travel cinema vividly illustrates the imagistic nature of the entire world. (shrink)

In his 2013 book, “Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them,” Joshua Greene1 contemplates two tragedies. The first is the tragedy of the commons, a well- studied problem in the game theory and psychology literature. Here, if people are truly self- interested, cooperation cannot arise, and everyone will use the commons until it is depleted. This problem is succinctly called the “Me vs. Us” problem. The second is the tragedy of the commonsense morality, which (...) class='Hi'>Greene named, refers to the problem of cooperation among groups, the “Us vs. Them” problem. (shrink)

In his article “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality,” Joshua Greene argues that the empirical findings of cognitive neuroscience have implications for ethics. Specifically, he contends that we ought to trust our manual, conscious reasoning system more than our automatic, emotional system when confronting unfamiliar problems; and because cognitive neuroscience has shown that consequentialist judgments are generated by the manual system and deontological judgments are generated by the automatic system, we ought to trust the former more than the latter when facing (...) unfamiliar moral problems. In the present article, I analyze one of the premises of Greene’s argument. In particular, I ask what exactly an unfamiliar problem is and whether moral problems can be classified as unfamiliar. After exploring several different possible interpretations of familiarity and unfamiliarity, I conclude that the concepts are too problematic to be philosophically compelling, and thus should be abandoned. (shrink)

In a world of more than 7 billion people, 80% live on less than $10 per day. Five (5) percent of global income is generated by the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population; while the wealthiest 20% of the population generates 75 percent of world income. Economics attempts to define or describe behavior and it ventures into the realm of predicting. Economics should therefore accept responsibility for controlling/directing realities. If we can understand, define and predict behavior, we should accept (...) the responsibility for changing behavior, and as economists, bring that to bear on material upliftment of the greater majority of the earth’s populace. . Since 1847, numerous role-players have debated and worked tirelessly to promote the welfare of those who are marginalised from mainstream society. To what avail? Exactly one hundred and fifty eight years later, one of the iconic statesmen of the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela, stated: “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our time – times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accommodation – that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils” (as quoted in Green 2009:2).Clearly, significant progress in addressing the issue has not been made. A concerted drive by the United Nations led to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in September 2000, and was endorsed by 189 world leaders. Some progress has been made during the past decade, but it is apparent that many countries are not going to be able to reach their goals. Hence, in order to address poverty at its root, attention is increasingly focused on the contribution of the informal sector and small, medium and micro enterprises. This paper explores such and offers alternatives to combat the spectres of structural unemployment and poverty. (shrink)

Joshua Greene argues that cognitive (neuro)science matters for ethics in two ways, the “direct route” and the “indirect route.” Greene illustrates the direct route with a debunking explanation of the inclination to condemn all incest. The indirect route is an updated version of Greene’s argument that dual-process moral psychology gives support for consequentialism over deontology. I consider each of Greene’s arguments, and I argue that neither succeeds. If there is a route from cognitive (neuro)science to (...) ethics, Greene has not found it. (shrink)

La thèse du présent article est que l’opposition factice entre James, repré- sentant supposé des « relations externes », d’une part, et Bradley, représen- tant supposé des « relations internes », d’autre part, est due à une mauvaise appréhension des thèses de ce dernier. Ce premier contresens conduit alors à manquer le propos même de James.

Joshua Greene has put forward the bold empirical hypothesis that deontology is a confabulation of moral emotions. Deontological philosophy does not steam from "true" moral reasoning, but from emotional reactions, backed up by post hoc rationalizations which play no role in generating the initial moral beliefs. In this paper, I will argue against the confabulation hypothesis. First, I will highlight several points in Greene’s discussion of confabulation, and identify two possible models. Then, I will argue that the (...) evidence does not illustrate the relevant model of deontological confabulation. In fact, I will make the case that deontology is unlikely to be a confabulation because alarm-like emotions, which allegedly drive deontological theorizing, are resistant to be subject to confabulation. I will end by clarifying what kind of claims can the confabulation data support. The upshot of the final section is that confabulation data cannot be used to undermine deontological theory in itself, and ironically, if one commits to the claim that a deontological justification is a confabulation in a particular case, then the data suggests that in general deontology has a prima facie validity. (shrink)

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

Recently, Joshua Greene has argued that we need a metamorality to solve moral problems for which evolution has not prepared us. The metamorality that he proposes is a utilitarian account that he calls deep pragmatism. Deep pragmatism is supposed to arbitrate when the values espoused by different groups clash. To date, no systematic appraisal of this argument for a metamorality exists. We reconstruct Greene’s case for deep pragmatism as a metamorality and consider three lines of objection to (...) it. We argue that, in the end, only one of these objections seriously threatens Greene’s position. Greene has to commit to the nonexistence of moral truth in order for his argument for the need of a metamorality to get off the ground. This, however, leads to a tension in his overall argument for deep pragmatism: ultimately, it casts his rejection of antiutilitarian moral intuitions into doubt. (shrink)

Empirical research into moral decision-making is often taken to have normative implications. For instance, in his recent book, Greene (2013) relies on empirical findings to establish utilitarianism as a superior normative ethical theory. Kantian ethics, and deontological ethics more generally, is a rival view that Greene attacks. At the heart of Greene’s argument against deontology is the claim that deontological moral judgments are the product of certain emotions and not of reason. Deontological ethics is a mere rationalization (...) of these emotions. Accordingly Greene maintains that deontology should be abandoned. This paper is a defense of deontological ethical theory. It argues that Greene’s argument against deontology needs further support. Greene’s empirical evidence is open to alternative interpretations. In particular, it is not clear that Greene’s characterization of alarm-like emotions that are relative to culture and personal experience is empirically tenable. Moreover, it is implausible that such emotions produce specifically deontological judgments. A rival sentimentalist view, according to which all moral judgments are determined by emotion, is at least as plausible given the empirical evidence and independently supported by philosophical theory. I therefore call for an improvement of Greene’s argument. (shrink)

In a widely read essay, “For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything,” Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen argue that the advance of neuroscience will result in the widespread rejection of free will, and with it – of retributivism. They go on to propose that consequentialist reforms are in order, and they predict such reforms will take place. We agree that retributivism should be rejected, and we too are optimistic that rejected it will be. But we don’t think (...) that such a development will have much to do with neuroscience – it won’t, because neuroscience is unlikely to show that we have no free will. We have two main aims in this paper. The first is to rebut various aspects of the case against free will. The second is to examine the case for consequentialist reforms. We take Greene and Cohen’s essay as a hobbyhorse, but our criticisms are applicable to neurodeterministic anti-free-willism in general. We first suggest that Greene and Cohen take proponents of free will to be committed to an untenable homuncular account of agency. But proponents of free will can dispense with such a commitment. In fact, we argue, it is Greene and Cohen who work with an overly simple account of free will. We sketch a more nuanced conception. We then turn to the proposal for consequentialist reforms. We argue that retributivism will fall out of favor not as a consequence of neuroscience-driven rejection of free will, but rather, as a result of a familiar feature of moral progress – the expanding circle of concern. In short, retributivism can and must die, but neuroscience will not kill it – humanity will. (shrink)

This essay pertains to Nietzsche's and Spinoza's philosophical/historical relationship, and the hitherto unnoticed role Kant plays as an intermediary for Spinoza's ideas and legacy. We advance two main assertions: 1) that Nietzsche is historically related to Spinoza via Kant's Antinomies of Pure Reason and their legacy, and 2) that both the striking similarities and tremendous differences between these two thinkers are best described with reference to the Antithesis positions of Kant's Antinomies. Our account rests primarily on the works of two (...) other scholars. The first is Omri Boehm, who argues convincingly that a) Spinoza was both the single greatest influence on and primary target of Kant's Antinomies, and b) that Spinoza's position is remarkably similar to the first three Antithesis positions (and no other relevant thinker comes close). The second is Michael Steven Green, who argues with equal force that c) Nietzsche's mature philosophy is heavily dependent upon Afrikan Spir's concept of the "fundamental antinomy," and d) that Nietzsche's view of empirical reality amounts to an "antithetic" view of reality. We demonstrate that these two scholars were, independently of one other, pointing to a single historical/philosophical connection between Nietzsche and Spinoza, and begin an exploration of the ramifications of this discovery. (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)

I argue that the evolutionary history of anger has substantive implications for normative ethics. In the process, I develop an evolutionary account of anger and its influence on action. First, I consider a prominent argument by Peter Singer and Joshua Greene. They conclude that evolutionary explanations of human cooperation debunk – or undercut the evidential value of – the moral intuitions supporting duty ethics (as opposed to utilitarian or consequentialist ethics). With this argument they aim to defend consequentialist (...) theories. However, their argument also threatens to debunk intuitions that support consequentialist theories. I give a novel argument that overcomes this difficulty. Specifically, I offer an evolutionary story about anger that can explain retributive, duty-oriented intuitions concerning punishment. This explanation debunks these intuitions (and not others) by showing that they were selected for their biological consequences rather than their accuracy (concerning duties to punish). I develop this explanation by raising and resolving three additional problems. First, prominent evolutionary explanations of retributive motives fail because they appeal to models that apply only to organisms with strategic insight. To mitigate this problem, I explain the existence of a retributive-like motive in rodents by appealing to an economic model of resource competition, which applies to organisms without strategic insight. Second, I show that human anger was shaped by resource competition of this kind. To do so, I develop evidential criteria to determine when psychological systems in different species share common evolutionary origins. I deploy these criteria to argue that human anger and the retributive motive in rodents derive from the same ancestral trait. Finally, the continuity of anger across human and nonhuman animals stands in tension with the idea that anger causes purposive behavior like retribution or retaliation. I argue that differences between the angry behaviors of human and nonhuman animals are differences in degree and not in kind. In the end, this evolutionary story both explains and undermines retributive intuitions, but not in the straightforward way that Singer and Greene suppose. (shrink)

The U.S. doctrine of employment-at-will, modified legislatively for protected groups, is being less harshly applied to managerial personnel. Comparable compensation is not otherwise available in the U.S. to workers displaced by technology. Nine pairs of arguments are presented to show how fundamentally management and labor disagree about a company's responsibility for its former employees. These arguments, born of years of labor-management debate, are kaleidoscopic claims about which side has what power. Ultimately, however, not even both together can solve without creative (...) public intervention the emerging problem of massive technological unemployment — the other side of the corporate dream of profit without payrolls. (Originally published as "Displaced Workers: Whose Responsibility?" in Social Policy and Conflict Resolution, eds. T. Attig, D. Callen, and R.G. Frey, Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy VI, 1984.). (shrink)

The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral thought and action, we’re told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, shows the pervasive role played by reason, and ultimately defuses sweeping debunking arguments in ethics. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don’t come easily. However, despite (...) the heavy influence of automatic and unconscious processes that have been shaped by evolutionary pressures, we needn’t reject ordinary moral psychology as fundamentally flawed or in need of serious repair. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but a special pessimism about morality in particular is unwarranted. Moral judgment and motivation are fundamentally rational enterprises not beholden to the passions. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary capacities for understanding the world make use of much the same methods one might find in a formal scientific investigation. A series of recent experimental results offer a challenge to this widely-held view, suggesting that people’s moral judgments can actually influence the intuitions they hold both in folk psychology and in causal cognition. The present target article distinguishes two basic approaches to explaining such effects. One approach would be to say that the (...) relevant competencies are entirely non-moral but that some additional factor (conversational pragmatics, performance error, etc.) then interferes and allows people’s moral judgments to affect their intuitions. Another approach would be to say that moral considerations truly do figure in workings of the competencies themselves. It is argued that the data available now favor the second of these approaches over the first. (shrink)

This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances, such as in criminal justice contexts, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. Contributing philosophers include Myisha Cherry, Jonathan Jacobs, Barrett Emerick, Alice MacLachlan, David McNaughton and Eve Garrard. Contributing psychologists include Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Robert D. Enright and Mary Jacqueline Song, C. Ward Struthers, Joshua Guilfoyle, Careen Khoury, Elizabeth van Monsjou, Joni Sasaki, Curtis Phills, Rebecca Young, and (...) Zdravko Marjanovic. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is expected to revolutionise the practice of medicine. Recent advancements in the field of deep learning have demonstrated success in variety of clinical tasks: detecting diabetic retinopathy from images, predicting hospital readmissions, aiding in the discovery of new drugs, etc. AI’s progress in medicine, however, has led to concerns regarding the potential effects of this technology on relationships of trust in clinical practice. In this paper, I will argue that there is merit to these concerns, since AI systems (...) can be relied on, and are capable of reliability, but cannot be trusted, and are not capable of trustworthiness. Insofar as patients are required to rely on AI systems for their medical decision-making, there is potential for this to produce a deficit of trust in relationships in clinical practice. (shrink)

There are several important arguments in metaethics that rely on explanatory considerations. Gilbert Harman has presented a challenge to the existence of moral facts that depends on the claim that the best explanation of our moral beliefs does not involve moral facts. The Reliability Challenge against moral realism depends on the claim that moral realism is incompatible with there being a satisfying explanation of our reliability about moral truths. The purpose of this chapter is to examine these and related arguments. (...) In particular, this chapter will discuss four kinds of arguments – Harman’s Challenge, evolutionary debunking arguments, irrelevant influence arguments, and the Reliability Challenge – understood as arguments against moral realism. The main goals of this chapter are (i) to articulate the strongest version of these arguments; (ii) to present and assess the central epistemological principles underlying these arguments; and (iii) to determine what a realist would have to do to adequately respond to these arguments. (shrink)

The Louvre Museum is the largest of the world's art museums by its exhibition surface. These represent the Western art of the Middle Ages in 1848, those of the ancient civilizations that preceded and influenced it (Oriental, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman), and the arts of early Christians and Islam. At the origin of the Louvre existed a castle, built by King Philip Augustus in 1190, and occupying the southwest quarter of the current Cour Carrée. In 1594, Henri IV decided (...) to unite the palace of the Louvre with the palace of the Tuileries built by Catherine de Medicis. The Cour Carrée was built by the architects Lemercier and then Le Vau, under the reign of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. The Department of Paintings currently has about 7,500 paintings (of which 3,400 are exposed), covering a period that goes from the Middle Ages to 1848 (date of the beginning of the Second Republic). By including the deposits, the collection is, with 12,660 works, the largest collection of ancient paintings in the world. With rare exceptions, the works after 1848 were transferred to the Musée d'Orsay when it was created in 1986. CONTENTS: Louvre Museum - Variety of exhibited works - The Royal Palace - The collections - - Eastern antiquities - - Arts of Islam - - Egyptian Antiquities - - Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities - - Paintings - - - French school - - - Northern Schools (Flanders, Netherlands, Germany) - - - Italian School - - - Other schools Painting - Definitions - Painting genres - - The landscape - - Still life Paintings - FRANCOIS BOUCHER - - Vulcan presenting arms to Venus for Aeneas - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione - RUBENS - - Helena Fourment with children - LOUIS DAVID - - Madame Récamier - REMBRANDT - - Portrait of Heindrickje Stoffels - VELAZQUEZ - - Portrait of the Infanta Margarita - SIMONE MEMMI - - Jesus Christ walking on Calvary - JAN STEEN - - The Bad Company - HANS HOLBEIN - - Erasmus - CORREGGIO - - Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine - LANCRET - - Conversation - JAN VAN DER MEER (VERMEER) - - The Lacemaker - VAN DYCK - - Charles I at the Hunt - FRANÇOIS CLOUET - - Elisabeth of Austria (1554-1592), Wife of Charles IX and Queen of France (1570 - 1574) - DELACROIX - - The Barque of Dante - EL GRECO - - Saint Louis, King of France, and a page - REMBRANDT - - Pilgrims at Emmaus (The Supper at Emmaus) - GERARD DAVID - - Marriage at Cana - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Dona Isabel de Requesens, Vice-Queen of Naples - RUBENS - - La Kermesse (The Village Fête, or Noce de village) - FRANS HALS - - The Gypsy Girl - DECAMPS - - The Sonneurs - HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER - - Anne of Cleves - P. PRUD’HON - - Psyche transported to Heaven - PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE - - Portrait of Richelieu - LANCRET - - The Autumn - L. DAVID - - Madame Seriziat - COROT - - Recollection of Mortefontaine - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - La belle ferronnière - CORREGGIO - - Venus and Cupid with a Satyr - WATTEAU - - Pilgrimage to Cythera (The Embarkation for Cythera) - NICOLAS POUSSIN - - The Inspiration of the Poet - PRUD’HON - - The Empress Josephine (1763-1814) - FRAGONARD - - The Bathers - H. RIGAUD - - Louis XIV (1638–1715) - TERBURG - - The Concert - LEOPOLD ROBERT - - The Pilgrimage to the Madonna of the Arch - LARGILLIERE - - Family Portrait - MANTEGNA - - Parnassus - MEMLING - - The Virgin and Child between St James and St Dominic - FRAGONARD - - The Music Lesson - JEAN VAN EYCK - - The Virgin of chancellor Rolin - PAOLO VERONESE - - Susannah and the Elders - FRANÇOIS BOUCHER - - Diana leaving her bath - GÉRICAULT - - The Raft of the Medusa - MURILLO - - Assumption of the Virgin - CLAUDE GELLEE (LORRAIN) - - Ulysses returning Chryseis to her father (Marine, setting sun) - INGRES - - Madame Riviere - E. MURILLO - - The Young Beggar - GREUZE - - The Broken Pitcher - PIETER DE HOOCH - - Card players in an opulent interior - POUSSIN - - Et in Arcadia ego - QUENTIN MATSYS - - The moneylender and his wife - ANDREA SOLARIO - - Madonna with the Green Cushion - TITIEN - - Woman with a Mirror - DAVID TENIERS (the Younger) - - The Works of Mercy - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) - Armand Dayot . (shrink)

People sometimes try to call others’ beliefs into question by pointing out the contingent causal origins of those beliefs. The significance of such ‘Etiological Challenges’ is a topic that has started attracting attention in epistemology. Current work on this topic aims to show that Etiological Challenges are, at most, only indirectly epistemically significant, insofar as they bring other generic epistemic considerations to the agent’s attention. Against this approach, we argue that Etiological Challenges are epistemically significant in a more direct and (...) more distinctive way. An Etiological Challenge prompts the agent to assess whether her beliefs result from practices of indoctrination, and whether she should reduce confidence in those beliefs, given the anti-reliability of indoctrination as a method of belief-acquisition. Our analysis also draws attention to some of the ways in which epistemic concerns interact with political issues—e.g. relating to epistemic injustice, identity-based discrimination, and segregation—when we’re thinking about the contingent causal origins of our beliefs. (shrink)

Recent empirical research seems to show that emotions play a substantial role in moral judgment. Perhaps the most important line of support for this claim focuses on disgust. A number of philosophers and scientists argue that there is adequate evidence showing that disgust significantly influences various moral judgments. And this has been used to support or undermine a range of philosophical theories, such as sentimentalism and deontology. I argue that the existing evidence does not support such arguments. At best it (...) suggests something rather different: that moral judgment can have a minor emotive function, in addition to a substantially descriptive one. (shrink)

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

Closure for justification is the claim that thinkers are justified in believing the logical consequences of their justified beliefs, at least when those consequences are competently deduced. Many have found this principle to be very plausible. Even more attractive is the special case of Closure known as Single-Premise Closure. In this paper, I present a challenge to Single-Premise Closure. The challenge is based on the phenomenon of rational self-doubt – it can be rational to be less than fully confident in (...) one's beliefs and patterns of reasoning. In rough outline, the argument is as follows: Consider a thinker who deduces a conclusion from a justified initial premise via an incredibly long sequence of small competent deductions. Surely, such a thinker should suspect that he has made a mistake somewhere. And surely, given this, he should not believe the conclusion of the deduction even though he has a justified belief in the initial premise. (shrink)

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where ‘theory of mind’ and moral judgment meet. Preschool children’s judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side-effect is brought about 'on purpose' when the side-effect itself is morally bad but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of ‘on-purpose’ (as opposed to purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentional action are usually (...) assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative — even in preschoolers — challenges current understanding. Young children’s judgments regarding foreseen side-effects depend upon whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side-effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the ‘theory of mind’ concept, NOT CARE THAT P, children show the side-effect effect.idea.. (shrink)

We are reliable about logic in the sense that we by-and-large believe logical truths and disbelieve logical falsehoods. Given that logic is an objective subject matter, it is difficult to provide a satisfying explanation of our reliability. This generates a significant epistemological challenge, analogous to the well-known Benacerraf-Field problem for mathematical Platonism. One initially plausible way to answer the challenge is to appeal to evolution by natural selection. The central idea is that being able to correctly deductively reason conferred a (...) heritable survival advantage upon our ancestors. However, there are several arguments that purport to show that evolutionary accounts cannot even in principle explain how it is that we are reliable about logic. In this paper, I address these arguments. I show that there is no general reason to think that evolutionary accounts are incapable of explaining our reliability about logic. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly finding it challenging to balance economic and environmental performance particularly those that face competitive, regulatory and community pressure. With the increasing pressures for environmental sustainability, this calls for the new formulation of strategies by the manufacturers in order to minimize their products and services negative impact on the environment. Hence, Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) continues to be an important research agenda among the researchers. In Palestine, green issues are new and still developing. Constant study is needed (...) to fully understand and update information regarding this area. Objective: The aim of this paper is to explore the views and level of acceptance of GHRM practices among manufacturing firms in Palestine. Results: Through the use of e-mail survey, 121 responses were obtained to generate the results of the study. The result showed GHRM practices have been practiced to somewhat to a greater extent a firms in Palestine. Findings can be extended to study on the issues in further. Academicians and practitioners can apply this result to their research and business strategies on how to improve sustainable performance and to effectively implement GHRM practices. (shrink)

Imagination plays a rich epistemic role in our cognitive lives. For example, if I want to learn whether my luggage will fit into the overhead compartment on a plane, I might imagine trying to fit it into the overhead compartment and form a justified belief on the basis of this imagining. But what explains the fact that imagination has the power to justify beliefs, and what is the structure of imaginative justification? In this paper, I answer these questions by arguing (...) that imaginings manifest an epistemic status: they are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. This epistemic status grounds their ability to justify beliefs, and they accrue this status in virtue of being based on evidence. Thus, imaginings are best understood as justified justifiers. I argue for this view by way of showing how it offers a satisfying explanation of certain key features of imaginative justification that would otherwise be puzzling. I also argue that imaginings exhibit a number of markers of the basing relation, which further motivates the view that imaginings can be based on evidence. The arguments in this paper have theoretically fruitful implications not only for the epistemology of imagination, but for accounts of reasoning and epistemic normativity more generally. (shrink)

There are many domains about which we think we are reliable. When there is prima facie reason to believe that there is no satisfying explanation of our reliability about a domain given our background views about the world, this generates a challenge to our reliability about the domain or to our background views. This is what is often called the reliability challenge for the domain. In previous work, I discussed the reliability challenges for logic and for deductive inference. I argued (...) for four main claims: First, there are reliability challenges for logic and for deduction. Second, these reliability challenges cannot be answered merely by providing an explanation of how it is that we have the logical beliefs and employ the deductive rules that we do. Third, we can explain our reliability about logic by appealing to our reliability about deduction. Fourth, there is a good prospect for providing an evolutionary explanation of the reliability of our deductive reasoning. In recent years, a number of arguments have appeared in the literature that can be applied against one or more of these four theses. In this paper, I respond to some of these arguments. In particular, I discuss arguments by Paul Horwich, Jack Woods, Dan Baras, Justin Clarke-Doane, and Hartry Field. (shrink)

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in a permanent vegetative state, debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness, controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia, and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, (...) though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and those with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

Advocates of the use of intuitions in philosophy argue that they are treated as evidence because they are evidential. Their opponents agree that they are treated as evidence, but argue that they should not be so used, since they are the wrong kinds of things. In contrast to both, we argue that, despite appearances, intuitions are not treated as evidence in philosophy whether or not they should be. Our positive account is that intuitions are a subclass of inclinations to believe. (...) Our thesis explains why intuitions play a role in persuasion and inquiry, without conceding that they are evidential. The account also makes predictions about the structure of intuitions that are confirmed by independent arguments. (shrink)

This chapter discusses contemporary scientific research on the role of reason and emotion in moral judgment. The literature suggests that moral judgment is influenced by both reasoning and emotion separately, but there is also emerging evidence of the interaction between the two. While there are clear implications for the rationalism-sentimentalism debate, we conclude that important questions remain open about how central emotion is to moral judgment. We also suggest ways in which moral philosophy is not only guided by empirical research (...) but continues to guide it. (shrink)

The rise of experimental philosophy has placed metaphilosophical questions, particularly those concerning concepts, at the center of philosophical attention. X-phi offers empirically rigorous methods for identifying conceptual content, but what exactly it contributes towards evaluating conceptual content remains unclear. We show how x-phi complements Rudolf Carnap’s underappreciated methodology for concept determination, explication. This clarifies and extends x-phi’s positive philosophical import, and also exhibits explication’s broad appeal. But there is a potential problem: Carnap’s account of explication was limited to empirical and (...) logical concepts, but many concepts of interest to philosophers are essentially normative. With formal epistemology as a case study, we show how x-phi assisted explication can apply to normative domains. (shrink)

Mill defines utilitarianism as the combination of a “theory of life” and a moral claim: only pleasure and freedom from pain are desirable as ends, and the promotion of happiness is the sole goal of moral action. So defined, utilitarianism is open to ad hominem pessimistic objection: a “theory of life” which entails the impossibility of happiness fits poorly with a morality centered on its promotion. The first two challenges Mill confronts in Utilitarianism share this pessimistic structure. Interestingly, however, these (...) challenges paint inverted pictures of the best utilitarian life: one suggests this life is satisfying but ignoble, the other that it is noble but unsatisfying. I explain Mill's treatment of both challenges as genuinely pessimistic interpretations of utilitarianism's “theory of life.” Read through the lens of Mill's engagement with pessimism, these challenges point to distinctive conceptions of dignity and satisfaction that play a significant role in Mill's ethics. (shrink)

At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia—i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one‘s judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton (1999, 2009) claims that it doesn’t, while Alfred Mele (2010) argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As Mele recognizes, the question (...) about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele’s studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors. (shrink)

This chapter argues that epistemic uses of the imagination are a sui generis form of reasoning. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, there are imaginings which instantiate the epistemic structure of reasoning. Second, reasoning with imagination is not reducible to reasoning with doxastic states. Thus, the epistemic role of the imagination is that it is a distinctive way of reasoning out what follows from our prior evidence. This view has a number of important implications for the epistemology of the (...) imagination. For one thing, it clarifies the epistemic role of widely invoked “constraints” on the imagination. For another, it highlights important and underappreciated disanalogies between how perceptual experiences and imaginings justify beliefs. Ultimately, the view that we can reason with imagination offers an illuminating and theoretically fruitful framework through which to understand the epistemic structure of the imagination. (shrink)