Recent critics (Andrew Light, Bryan Norton, Anthony Weston, and Bruce Morito, among others) have argued that we should give up talk of intrinsic value in general and that of nature in particular. While earlier theorists might have overestimated the importance of intrinsic value, these recent critics underestimate its importance. Claims about a thing’s intrinsic value are claims about the distinctive way in which we have reason to care about that thing. If we understand intrinsic value in this manner, we can (...) capture the core claims that environmentalists want to make about nature while avoiding the worries raised by contemporary critics. Since the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value plays a critical role in our understanding of the different ways that we do and should care about things, moral psychology, ethical theory in general, and environmental ethics in particular shouldn’t give up on the concept of intrinsic value. (shrink)

We argue that concerns about double-counting—using the same evidence both to calibrate or tune climate models and also to confirm or verify that the models are adequate—deserve more careful scrutiny in climate modelling circles. It is widely held that double-counting is bad and that separate data must be used for calibration and confirmation. We show that this is far from obviously true, and that climate scientists may be confusing their targets. Our analysis turns on a Bayesian/relative-likelihood approach to incremental confirmation. (...) According to this approach, double-counting is entirely proper. We go on to discuss plausible difficulties with calibrating climate models, and we distinguish more and less ambitious notions of confirmation. Strong claims of confirmation may not, in many cases, be warranted, but it would be a mistake to regard double-counting as the culprit. 1 Introduction2 Remarks about Models and Adequacy-for-Purpose3 Evidence for Calibration Can Also Yield Comparative Confirmation3.1 Double-counting I3.2 Double-counting II4 Climate Science Examples: Comparative Confirmation in Practice4.1 Confirmation due to better and worse best fits4.2 Confirmation due to more and less plausible forcings values5 Old Evidence6 Doubts about the Relevance of Past Data7 Non-comparative Confirmation and Catch-Alls8 Climate Science Example: Non-comparative Confirmation and Catch-Alls in Practice9 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Two prevalent assumptions in the philosophy of sport literature are that all sports are games and that all games are contests, meant to determine who is the better at the skills definitive of the sport. If these are correct, it would follow that all sports are contests and that a range of sporting activities, including nature sports, are not in fact sports at all. This paper first confronts the notion that sport and games must seek to resolve skill superiority through (...) consideration of sport activities that have no such aim. The reduction of sport to game is also shown to be untenable and due to misunderstanding the point of sport activities, specifically, why people engage in them. This leads to reconsideration of the dominance of an instrumental conception of sport and the pursuit of excellence as anthropomaximising efficiency. The Norwegian tradition of frilutsliv is explored as a counterpoint to both conventional and nature sport. (shrink)

This paper responds to Kevin Krein’s claim in that the particular value of nature sports over traditional ones is that they offer intensity of sport experience in dynamic interaction between an athlete and natural features. He denies that this intensity is derived from competitive conflict of individuals and denies that nature sport derives its value from internal conflict within the athlete who carries out the activity. This paper responds directly to Krein by analysing ‘intensity’ in sport in terms of the (...) relationship between attention and reflection and the interaction between self and environment. I reply directly to Krein’s rejection of self-competition as based on a mischaracterisation of internal struggle and argue that the weighing of incompatible desires does not involve a fragmented self. I argue that the unique intensity to which Krein refers is strongly comparable to the Kantian conception of the sublime and explore how sublime experience fits Krein’s account and outline some serious problems that such an ideal of experience poses for nature sport. (shrink)

I respond to a hypothetical critique of sport, drawing on primarily post-modernist sources, that would view the high performance athlete in particular as a product of the application of technical disciplines of power and that opposes sport and play as fundamentally antithetical. Through extensive discussion of possible definitions of play, and of performance, I argue that although much of the critique is valid it confuses a method of sport for the whole of it. Play is indeed a noncompellable spontaneity, but (...) one that involves the improvisational transformation of the technical skills of a sport within the context of a dynamic situation. Technique is a condition of heightened play; it does not produce it. This also means that the best play is not undisciplined. Play and sport can exist apart, but both are better combined. (shrink)

This paper considers the importance of play as a conventional space for hypothetical self-expression and self-trial, its importance for determination of identity, and for development of self-possibilities. Expanding such possibilities in play enables challenging of socially entrenched assumptions concerning possible and appropriate identities. Discussion is extended to the contexts of gender performance (drag) and sport-play. It is argued that play proceeds on the basis of a fundamental pretence of reality that must be taken seriously by its participants; this discussion includes (...) considerations of serious and ironical play, “playing-at”, and travesty. (shrink)

Excellence in sport performance is normally taken to be a matter of superior performance of physical movements or quantitative outcomes of movements. This paper considers whether a wider conception can be afforded by certain kinds of nature based sport. The interplay between technical skill and aesthetic experience in nature based sports is explored, and the extent to which it contributes to a distinction between different sport-based approaches to natural environments. The potential for aesthetic appreciation of environmental engagement is found to (...) be strongly dependent on whether or not environmental engagement is exploited for the end of producing a quantifiable result or enhancing technical skill. It is also argued that an existential rather than spectatorial attitude to aesthetic experience is offered by specifically nature oriented sport. Aesthetic experience achieved in this way is therefore neither passive nor detached, but extends Berleant's concept of participatory environmental aesthetics and underpins both an alternate (wide) conception of excellence in sport activity and a richer experience of aesthetic engagement than more objectivised standpoints. (shrink)

This article is about the special, subjective concepts we apply to experience, called “phenomenal concepts”. They are of special interest in a number of ways. First, they refer to phenomenal experiences, and the qualitative character of those experiences whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. Conscious experience strike many philosophers as philosophically problematic and difficult to accommodate within a physicalistic metaphysics. Second, PCs are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. The sense that there is something special about PCs (...) is very closely tied up with features of the epistemic access they afford to qualia. When we deploy phenomenal concepts introspectively to some phenomenally conscious experience as it occurs, we are said to be acquainted with our own conscious experiences. Accounts of PCs either have to explain the acquaintance relation, or acquaintance with our phenomenal experiences has to be denied. PCs have received much attention in recent philosophy of mind mainly because they figure in arguments for dualism and in physicalist responses to these arguments. The main topic of this paper is to explore different accounts of phenomenal concepts and their role in recent debates over the metaphysical status of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

The Bayesian maxim for rational learning could be described as conservative change from one probabilistic belief or credence function to another in response to newinformation. Roughly: ‘Hold fixed any credences that are not directly affected by the learning experience.’ This is precisely articulated for the case when we learn that some proposition that we had previously entertained is indeed true (the rule of conditionalisation). But can this conservative-change maxim be extended to revising one’s credences in response to entertaining propositions or (...) concepts of which one was previously unaware? The economists Karni and Vierø (2013, 2015) make a proposal in this spirit. Philosophers have adopted effectively the same rule: revision in response to growing awareness should not affect the relative probabilities of propositions in one’s ‘old’ epistemic state. The rule is compelling, but only under the assumptions that its advocates introduce. It is not a general requirement of rationality, or so we argue. We provide informal counterexamples. And we show that, when awareness grows, the boundary between one’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ epistemic commitments is blurred. Accordingly, there is no general notion of conservative change in this setting. (shrink)

The main aim of this book is to introduce the topic of limited awareness, and changes in awareness, to those interested in the philosophy of decision-making and uncertain reasoning.

Deafferented subjects, while lacking proprioceptive awareness of much of their bodies, are nevertheless able to use their bodies in basic action. Sustained visual contact with the body parts of which they are no longer proprioceptively aware enables them to move these parts in a controlled way. This might be taken to straightforwardly show that proprioceptive awareness is inessential to bodily action. I, however, argue that this is not the case. Proprioceptive awareness figures essentially in our self-conscious unity as practical subjects. (...) Recognizing this allows us to better understand the nature of the impairment with which deafferented subjects live. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop a novel response to counterfactual scepticism, the thesis that most ordinary counterfactual claims are false. In the process we aim to shed light on the relationship between debates in the philosophy of science and debates concerning the semantics and pragmatics of counterfactuals. We argue that science is concerned with many domains of inquiry, each with its own characteristic entities and regularities; moreover, statements of scientific law often include an implicit ceteris paribus clause that restricts the (...) scope of the associated regularity to circumstances that are ‘fitting’ to the domain in question. This observation reveals a way of responding to scepticism while, at the same time, doing justice both to the role of counterfactuals in science and to the complexities inherent in ordinary counterfactual discourse and reasoning. (shrink)

The ecosystem services argument is a highly publicised instrumental argument for protecting biodiversity. I develop a new objection to this argument based on the lack of a causal connection from global species losses to local ecosystem changes. I survey some alternative formulations of services arguments, including ones incorporating option value or a precautionary principle, and show that they do not fare much better than the standard version. I conclude that environmental thinkers should rely less on ecosystem services as a means (...) to defend biodiversity, and that attention should be focused on additional types of value which might be attributed to global biodiversity. (shrink)

Resentment, as it is currently understood in the philosophical literature, is individual. That is, it is anger about a moral injury done to oneself. But in some cases, resentment responds to systemic harms and injustices rather than direct moral injuries. The purpose of this paper is to move beyond individualistic conceptions of resentment to develop an account of collective resentment that better captures the character and effects of the emotion in these cases. I use the example of indigenous and settler (...) Canadians’ reciprocal resentments in response to the Indian Residential Schools and continuing political disagreements as an example of a context in which understanding collective resentment is important. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kevin Krein argues that the notion of self-competition is misplaced in adventure sports and of only limited application altogether, for two main reasons: (i) the need for a consistent and repeatable measure of performance; and (ii) the requirement of multiple competitors. Moreover, where an individual is engaged in a sport in which the primary feature with which they are engaged is a natural one, Krein argues that the more accurate description of their activity is not 'competition', (...) but an attempt at harmonious interaction. I raise a number of problems against both criteria and argue that traditional and adventure sports do both involve self-competition on at least two levels: bettering one's previous performance and resisting the desire to quit. I argue that self-reflexive competition is not so much with one's self (which is philosophically absurd), but within one's self, between conflicting motivations and desires. I explore what is involved in self-reflexive competition, particularly at a phenomenological, self-constituting level, and raise the question of whether it is appropriate for activity in wilder natural environments. (shrink)

Previous discussions on the value of sport in remote locations have concentrated on 1) environmental and process concerns, with the rejection of competition and goal-directed or use oriented activity, or 2) the value of risk and dangerous sport for self-affirmation. It is argued that the value of risk in remote sport is in self-knowledge rather than self-affirmation and that risk in remote sport, while enhancing certain kinds of experience, is not necessary. The value of remote sport is in offering the (...) opportunity for experience that enhances the participants’ knowledge both of self and of the environment with which they interact. (shrink)

I argue that understanding the self in terms of narrative construction does not preclude the possibility of error concerning one’s own self. Identity is a projection of first and second-order desires and a product of choice in relation to desire. Self-deceit appears in this connection as a response to an identity that one has constructed through choice and/or desire but not acknowledged in one’s self-account, reflecting a conflict between desires or a motivated failure to account. This analysis is applied primarily (...) to acknowledgement of one’s sexual identity. (shrink)

While holist views such as ecocentrism have considerable intuitive appeal, arguing for the moral considerability of ecological wholes such as ecosystems has turned out to be a very difficult task. In the environmental ethics literature, individualist biocentrists have persuasively argued that individual organisms—but not ecological wholes—are properly regarded as having a good of their own . In this paper, I revisit those arguments and contend that they are fatally flawed. The paper proceeds in five parts. First, I consider some problems (...) brought about by climate change for environmental conservation strategies and argue that these problems give us good pragmatic reasons to want a better account of the welfare of ecological wholes. Second, I describe the theoretical assumptions from normative ethics that form the background of the arguments against holism. Third, I review the arguments given by individualist biocentrists in favour of individualism over holism. Fourth, I review recent work in the philosophy of biology on the units of selection problem, work in medicine on the human biome, and work in evolutionary biology on epigenetics and endogenous viral elements. I show how these developments undermine both the individualist arguments described above as well as the distinction between individuals and wholes as it has been understood by individualists. Finally, I consider five possible theoretical responses to these problems. (shrink)

Neosentimentalist accounts of value need an explanation of which of the sentiments they discuss are pro-attitudes, which attitudes are con-attitudes, and why. I argue that this project has long been neglected in the philosophical literature, even by those who make extensive use of the distinction between pro- and con-attitudes. Using the attitudes of awe and respect as exemplars, I argue that it is not at all clear what if anything makes these attitudes pro-attitudes. I conclude that neither our intuitive sense (...) of the distinction nor the vague accounts of it that exist in the philosophical literature are especially helpful in sorting out the hard cases. What is needed is a more explicit and thorough account of what the valence of our attitudes consists in. (shrink)

This paper explores ludonarrative dissonance as it occurs in sport, primarily as the conflict experienced by participants between dominant narratives and self-generated interpretations of embodied experience. Taking self-narrative as a social rather than isolated production, the interaction with three basic categories of dominant narrative is explored: transformative, representing a spectrum from revelatory to distorting, bullying and colonising. These forms of dominant narrative prescribe interpretations of the player’s experience of play and of self that displace their own, with the end result (...) of dissonance and self-alienation. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of moral shock as an emotional response to intensely bewildering events that are also of moral significance. This theory stands in contrast to the common view that shock is a form of intense surprise. On the standard model of surprise, surprise is an emotional response to events that violated one's expectations. But I show that we can be morally shocked by events that confirm our expectations. What makes an event shocking is not that it violated (...) one's expectations, but that the content of the event is intensely bewildering. What causes moral shock is, I argue, our lack of emotional preparedness for the event. And I show that, despite the relative lack of attention to shock in the philosophical literature, the emotion is significant to moral, social, and political life. (shrink)

Most ethicists agree that at least some nonhumans have interests that are of direct moral importance. Yet with very few exceptions, both climate ethics and climate policy have operated as though only human interests should be considered in formulating and evaluating climate policy. In this paper I argue that the anthropocentrism of current climate ethics and policy cannot be justified. I first describe the ethical claims upon which my analysis rests, arguing that they are no longer controversial within contemporary ethics. (...) Next, I review work in climate ethics and policy, demonstrating the absence of consideration of nonhuman interests in both domains. Finally, I consider five possible justifications for omitting nonhuman interests in the evaluation climate policy options, arguing that none of these arguments succeeds. (shrink)

I develop an account of ecological role functions—the functions of species within ecosystems—which is informed by alternative regime phenomena in ecology. My account is a causal-role theory which includes a counterfactual sensitivity condition. The account tracks and explains a distinction ecologists make between functions and various activities which are not functions. My counterfactual sensitivity condition resolves the liberality problem often attributed to causal-role theories of function, while also illuminating the explanatory centrality of role functions within ecology.

This article argues that common intuitions regarding (a) the specialness of ‘use-novel’ data for confirmation and (b) that this specialness implies the ‘no-double-counting rule’, which says that data used in ‘constructing’ (calibrating) a model cannot also play a role in confirming the model’s predictions, are too crude. The intuitions in question are pertinent in all the sciences, but we appeal to a climate science case study to illustrate what is at stake. Our strategy is to analyse the intuitive claims in (...) light of prominent accounts of confirmation of model predictions. We show that on the Bayesian account of confirmation, and also on the standard classical hypothesis-testing account, claims (a) and (b) are not generally true; but for some select cases, it is possible to distinguish data used for calibration from use-novel data, where only the latter confirm. The more specialized classical model-selection methods, on the other hand, uphold a nuanced version of claim (a), but this comes apart from (b), which must be rejected in favour of a more refined account of the relationship between calibration and confirmation. Thus, depending on the framework of confirmation, either the scope or the simplicity of the intuitive position must be revised. (shrink)

This paper refines a number of theoretical distinctions relevant to deceptive play, in particular the difference between merely misleading actions and types of simulation commonly considered beyond the pale, such as diving. To do so, I rely on work in the philosophy of language about conversational convention and implicature, the distinction between lying and misleading, and their relation to concepts of seduction and bullshit. The paper works through a number of possible solutions to the question of what is wrong with (...) simulation and its difference from strategic fouling, including the argument that games and their rules operate like contracts. I conclude that the wrongness lies in the injustice of unfair advantage gained through actions that silence opposition by resort to unanswerable play. (shrink)

This paper addresses the stalemate on the question whether biodiversity has intrinsic value. I distinguish between a “weak” conception and two “strong” conceptions of intrinsic value in the environmental ethics literature. The strong conceptions of intrinsic value are connected, respectively, to moral standing and to a strongly objectivist account of value. Neither of these forms of value likely applies to biodiversity. However, the weak conception of intrinsic value is neutral about both moral standing and the nature of value and plausibly (...) applies to biodiversity. In addition, weak intrinsic value avoids common objections to the claim that biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. I develop a cumulative argument showing that environmentalists should presume that biodiversity has intrinsic value in the weak sense. (shrink)

Kierkegaard shows two contrary attitudes to woman and the feminine: misogyny and celebration. The Kierkegaardian structure of selfhood, because combined with a hierarchical assumption about the relative value of certain human characteristics, and their identification as male or female, argues that woman is a lesser self. Consequently, the claim that the Kierkegaardian ideal of selfhood is androgynist is rejected, though it is the latter assumptions alone that force this conclusion.

Philosophers have started to theorize the concept of ‘affective injustice’ to make sense of certain ways in which people’s affective lives are significantly marked by injustice. This new research has offered important insights into people’s lived experiences under oppression. But it is not immediately clear how the concept ‘affective injustice’ picks out something different from the closely related phenomenon of ‘psychological oppression.’ This paper considers the question of why we might need new theories of affective injustice in light of the (...) well-established cross-disciplinary literature on psychological oppression. I suggest that, whereas psychological oppression is found in the hearts and minds of people who are oppressed, affective injustice is most fruitfully understood as a structural phenomenon. It operates primarily outside of us: in affective norms, practices, and relationships that are embedded in social conditions of injustice. The account I offer is tentative and incomplete. But my hope is that it will help show how theorizing affective injustice has the potential to enrich existing theories of justice and theories of psychological oppression. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of the concept of recognition and its connection with identity and respect. This is related to the question of how women are or are not adequately recognised or respected for their achievements in sport and whether eliminating sex segregation in sport is a solution. This will require an analysis of the concept of excellence in sport, as well as the relationship between fairness and inclusion in an activity that is fundamentally about bodily movement. I argue (...) that attempts to address the problem of women’s recognition in sport need to do so in ways that neither eliminate sport as a fairness regulated system for developing individual excellence in bodily movement nor that prevent women’s achievement of sporting excellence, with the regard that belongs to them. Doing this requires us to decide whether sport is about champions or about individual excellence. (shrink)

In engineering, as in other scientific fields, researchers seek to confirm their models with real-world data. It is common practice to assess models in terms of the distance between the model outputs and the corresponding experimental observations. An important question that arises is whether the model should then be ‘tuned’, in the sense of estimating the values of free parameters to get a better fit with the data, and furthermore whether the tuned model can be confirmed with the same data (...) used to tune it. This dual use of data is often disparagingly referred to as ‘double-counting’. Here, we analyse these issues, with reference to selected research articles in engineering. Our example studies illustrate more and less controversial practices of model tuning and double-counting, both of which, we argue, can be shown to be legitimate within a Bayesian framework. The question nonetheless remains as to whether the implied scientific assumptions in each case are apt from the engineering point of view. (shrink)

Ecological neutral theory has been controversial as an alternative to niche theory for explaining community structure. Neutral theory, which explains community structure in terms of ecological drift, is frequently charged with being unrealistic, but commentators have usually not provided an account of theory or model realism. In this paper, I propose a framework for comparing the “realism” or accuracy of alternative theories within a domain with respect to the extent to which the theories abstract and idealize. Using this framework I (...) argue, contrary to most previous commentators, that neutral and niche theories are similarly realistic. Realism cannot provide a basis for accepting or rejecting either type of theory; instead, community ecologists should continue working with a plurality of models. While theoretical unification may become possible, we should treat a plurality of complementary, partial models as the expected situation within community ecology. (shrink)

This paper argues against the conception of sport as theatre. Theatre and sport share the characteristic that play is set in a conventionally-defined hypothetical reality, but they differ fundamentally in the relative importance of audience and the narrative point of view. Both present potential for participants for development of selfhood through play and its personal possibilities. But sport is not essentially tied to audience as is theatre. Moreover, conceptualising sport as a form of theatre valorises the spectator’s narrative as normative (...) for sport experience over that of the participant athlete or player, eliding player experience. Imposition of external narratives over experience risks fossilising interpretation and inhibits the beneficial effects of play for self-realisation, especially as a form of self-examination and creation through internal self-narrative. (shrink)

This article defends an account of collective hope that arises through solidarity in the pursuit of justice. I begin by reviewing recent literature on the nature of hope. I then explore the relationship between hope and solidarity to demonstrate the ways in which solidarity can give rise to hope. I suggest that the hope born of solidarity is collective when it is shared by at least some others, when it is caused or strengthened by activity in a collective action setting, (...) and when the reciprocal hopeful expressions of individual group members result in an emotional atmosphere of hope that extends across the group. In the context of social movements, collective hope emerges alongside the collective intentions and actions of the solidarity group; namely, in the pursuit of a form of social justice that inspires the movement. I then suggest that the object of collective hope born of solidarity is the guiding ideal of justice and reflect on what it might mean to hope well for justice. (shrink)

Ambiguity in the athlete’s perception and description of pain that opens the door to a series of reinterpretations of athletic experience and events that argue the development of an increasingly inauthentic relation to self and others on the part of those who consume performance as third parties (spectators) and ultimately those who produce it first hand (athletes). The insertion of the spectator into the sport situation as a consumer of the athlete’s activity and the preference given to spectator interpretation shift (...) control of meaning away from the athlete and encourage a demand for athlete suffering in aid of the spectator’s own need for meaning. Through discussions of the function of narrative in sport spectacle, the witnessing role of spectators, and the phenomenon of vicarious substitution, I discuss the representation of the athlete as a character ideal and moral exemplar. At a more developed level of external interpretation, the athlete (or team) becomes the champion of the spectator, the role model or focal point of civic pride whose victory asserts the ascendence of my team and town over yours; and finally, the athlete or team is the intentional object of fan identification: my team is me. I conclude that the existential commitment of the spectator as devoted fan is an inauthentic one. (shrink)

This chapter considers the possibility and ethics of collective forgiveness. I begin by distinguishing between different forms of forgiveness to illustrate what it might look like for a collective to forgive that is distinct from the individual and group-based forgiveness of its members. I then consider how emotional models of forgiveness might capture the phenomenon of collective forgiveness. I argue that shortcomings with emotional models suggest that performative and social practice models of forgiveness more plausibly extend to collective forgiveness. I (...) close by exploring a range of moral questions and objections to practices of collective forgiveness. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what the attitude of hope consists in. We argue that shortcomings in recent theories of hope have methodological roots in that they proceed with little regard for the rich body of literature on the emotions. Taking insights from work in the philosophy of emotions, we argue that hope involves a kind of normative perception. We then develop a strategy for determining the content of this perception, arguing that hope is a perception of practical reasons. (...) Our proposal stands in contrast with familiar views on which hope is fundamentally about the good. We conclude by considering the increasingly popular idea that some hopes are non-intentional and thus, by implication, non-perceptual. We reply by arguing that our perceptual theory plausibly generalizes to these instances of hope. (shrink)

Laurie Paul argues that, when it comes to many of your most significant life-changing decisions, the principles of rational choice are silent. That is because, in these cases, you anticipate that one of your choice options would yield a transformative experience. We argue that such decisions are best seen as ones in which you anticipate awareness growth. You do not merely lack knowledge about which possible outcome will arise from a transformative option; you lack knowledge about what are the possible (...) outcomes. We show how principles of rational choice can be extended to cases of anticipated awareness growth. (shrink)

Many philosophers of science are ontologically committed to a lush rainforest of special science entities ), but are often reticent about the criteria that determine which entities count as real. On the other hand, the metaphysics literature is much more forthcoming about such criteria, but often links ontological commitment to irreducibility. We argue that the irreducibility criteria are in tension with scientific realism: for example, they would exclude viruses, which are plausibly theoretically reducible and yet play a sufficiently important role (...) in scientific accounts of the world that they should be included in our ontology. In this paper, we show how the inhabitants of the rainforest can be inoculated against the eliminative threat of reduction: by demonstrating that they are emergent. According to our account, emergence involves a screening off condition as well as novelty. We go on to demonstrate that this account of emergence, which is compatible with theoretical reducibility, satisfies common intuitions concerning what should and shouldn't count as real: viruses are emergent, as are trouts and turkeys, but philosophically gerrymandered objects like trout-turkeys do not qualify. (shrink)

In this essay, we suggest practical ways to shift the framing of crisis standards of care toward disability justice. We elaborate on the vision statement provided in the 2010 Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) “Summary of Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations,” which emphasizes fairness; equitable processes; community and provider engagement, education, and communication; and the rule of law. We argue that interpreting these elements through disability justice entails a commitment to both (...) distributive and recognitive justice. The disability rights movement's demand “Nothing about us, without us” requires substantive inclusion of disabled people in decision‐making related to their interests, including in crisis planning before, during, and after a pandemic like Covid‐19. (shrink)

Since Case and Deaton (2015) coined the term ‘deaths of despair,’ there has been significant empirical work and public interest in the topic. Yet social scientists studying this topic lament the absence of a clear theory of despair. Philosophical inquiry into the nature and value of hope has begun to fill this gap, with despair often cited as the opposite of hope. The assumption that hope and despair are opposites has helped to motivate two central tasks in the literature: how (...) a theory of hope can make sense of the difference between hope and despair, and how hope might prevent people from falling into despair. Yet the focus of inquiry has been principally on hope. This paper builds on the existing literature to offer a theory of despair. We argue that despair is a mode of sadness whereby one experiences the loss of reasons to take seriously that which one desires. Our account of despair captures a set of desiderata that any theory of despair should explain, and it offers useful conceptual resources to social scientists studying deaths of despair. (shrink)

The spreading of false information on social media platforms is becoming increasingly common and thus, is creating an epistemic environment where people don’t know what to believe. Within this essay, I will argue that measures should be taken to address and reduce the spreading of false information on social media platforms, furthermore, accountability mechanisms should be implicated in order to do so.

This chapter reports on Sweden as an active and critical player within the European sharing economy. With a key focus on cities, Sweden has launched a national program, “Sharing Cities Sweden”—a strategic innovation program for smart and sustainable cities with an allocated budget of 12 million EUR over four years. The objectives of the program are to develop world-leading test-beds for the sharing economy in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, and Umeå, as well as develop a national node to significantly improve national (...) and international cooperation and promote an exchange of experience on sharing cities. In the following pages, the sharing economy in Sweden is outlined, first, through exploring the definitions adopted by various actors and key questions to be addressed, and second, with the help of examples of existing collaborative economy platforms. The report concludes with a discussion on the collaborative economy in a Swedish context, forthcoming developments in the sector, and the associated issues and challenges. (shrink)

Brouwer’s intuitionism was a far-reaching attempt to reform the foundations of mathematics. While the mathematical community was reluctant to accept Brouwer’s work, its response to later-developed brands of intuitionism, such as those presented by Hermann Weyl and Arend Heyting, was different. The paper accounts for this difference by analyzing the intuitionistic versions of Brouwer, Weyl, and Heyting in light of a two-tiered model of the body and image of mathematical knowledge. Such a perspective provides a richer account of each story (...) and points to a possible connection between the community’s reaction and the changes each mathematician had proposed. (shrink)

In the biomedical context, policy makers face a large amount of potentially discordant evidence from different sources. This prompts the question of how this evidence should be aggregated in the interests of best-informed policy recommendations. The starting point of our discussion is Hunter and Williams’ recent work on an automated aggregation method for medical evidence. Our negative claim is that it is far from clear what the relevant criteria for evaluating an evidence aggregator of this sort are. What is the (...) appropriate balance between explicitly coded algorithms and implicit reasoning involved, for instance, in the packaging of input evidence? In short: What is the optimal degree of ‘automation’? On the positive side: We propose the ability to perform an adequate robustness analysis as the focal criterion, primarily because it directs efforts to what is most important, namely, the structure of the algorithm and the appropriate extent of automation. Moreover, where there are resource constraints on the aggregation process, one must also consider what balance between volume of evidence and accuracy in the treatment of individual evidence best facilitates inference. There is no prerogative to aggregate the total evidence available if this would in fact reduce overall accuracy. (shrink)

Heyes presents a compelling account of how cultural evolutionary processes shape and create “rules,” or norms, of social behavior. She suggested that normativity depends on implicit, genetically inherited, domain-general processes and explicit, culturally inherited, domain-specific processes. Her approach challenges the nativist point of view and provides supporting evidence that shows how social interactions are responsible for creating mental processes that assist in understanding and behaving according to rules or norms. We agree. In our commentary, we suggest that it is not (...) only that mental processes for grasping norms are recreated in each generation but also that social interactions shape the kinds of social groups that are recognized (for a more extensive discussion, see Kish Bar-On & Lamm, 2023). We highlight evidence showing that accounts of norm psychology thus require a richer notion of human groups. (shrink)

Society is a composite of interacting people and groups. These groups play a significant role in maintaining social status, establishing group identity and social identity, and enforcing norms. As such, groups are essential for understanding human behavior. Nevertheless, the study of groups in everyday group life yields many diverse and sometimes contradicting theories of group behavior, and researchers tend to agree that we have yet to understand the emergence of groups out of aggregates of individuals. The current paper aims to (...) shed new light on the convoluted interrelation between groups and individuals by focusing on individuals’ social identities and group categorization. It does so by exploring the dynamic nature of the self and its implications on identity and group membership, and introducing a framework recognizing the fluidity of groups and group categorization. Incorporating historical insights with contemporary theories, this paper argues for a flexible understanding of group dynamics that surpasses rigid in-group and out-group classifications, proposing instead that group affiliations exist along a continuum that reflects the ever-changing social landscape. (shrink)