Generic generalisations like ‘Opioids are highly addictive’ are very useful in scientific communication, but they can often be interpreted in many different ways. Although this is not a problem when all interpretations provide the same answer to the question under discussion, a problem arises when a generic generalisation is used to answer a question other than that originally intended. In such cases, some interpretations of the generalisation might answer the question in a way that the original speaker would not endorse. (...) Rather than excising generic generalisations from scientific communication, I recommend that scientific communicators carefully consider the kinds of questions their words might be taken to answer and try to avoid phrasing that might be taken to provide unintended answers. (shrink)

The debate over the meanings of indexical expressions has relied heavily on the method of counterexamples. This paper challenges that method by showing that purported counterexamples can often be explained away by appeal to perspective shifts. For these counterexamples to establish anything about indexical reference, we must identify the conditions under which theorists can legitimately appeal to perspective shifts. Some tests for semantic content are considered and it is argued that none of them can tell us when appeal to perspective (...) shift is admissible. The paper then considers how we should proceed if we become convinced that there is no way to identify the content of indexical expressions, offering reasons in favour of a nihilist conception of character over an epistemicist or pluralist conception. (shrink)

This paper presents Elmar Unnsteinsson’s novel theory of Edenic Intentionalism, on which a speaker cannot refer to an object when the speaker is relevantly confused about its identity. A challenge to the theory is presented and several possible responses considered. The challenge is this: According to Edenic Intentionalism, reference often fails even when speakers seem to refer successfully. Elmar therefore supplements Edenic Intentionalism with an explanation of how communication can succeed without reference. If such an explanation is available, it isn’t (...) clear what need there is for Edenic Intentionalism. (shrink)

This is a co-authored dialogue which explores epistemological and metaphysical questions raised by a social constructivist approach to science.

We outline a novel theory of natural language meaning, Rich Situated Semantics [RSS], on which the content of sentential utterances is semantically rich and informationally situated. In virtue of its situatedness, an utterance’s rich situated content varies with the informational situation of the cognitive agent interpreting the utterance. In virtue of its richness, this content contains information beyond the utterance’s lexically encoded information. The agent-dependence of rich situated content solves a number of problems in semantics and the philosophy of language (...) (cf. [14, 20, 25]). In particular, since RSS varies the granularity of utterance contents with the interpreting agent’s informational situation, it solves the problem of finding suitably fine- or coarse-grained objects for the content of propositional attitudes. In virtue of this variation, a layman will reason with more propositions than an expert. (shrink)

Levinas never engaged closely with Fichte’s work, but there are two places in the chapter “Substitution,” in Otherwise than Being (1974), where he mentions Fichte by name. The point that Levinas underscores in both of these passages is that the other’s encounter with the subject is not the outcome of the subject’s freedom; it is not posited by the subject, as Fichte has it, but is prior to any free activity. The aim of this paper is to deepen the comparison (...) between Levinas and Fichte, giving special attention to Fichte's own novel theory of intersubjectivity and the summons. One result that emerges from this treatment is that both Levinas and Fichte view the second person in a way that has no equivalent in the current philosophical landscape. On this reading, each thinker views responsibility to the other, not only as an immediate and particular obligation, but also as an asymmetrical relation that gives the other moral priority. (shrink)

In this аrtiсlе, thе аuthоr fосusеs оn еluсidаting sоmе philоsоphiсаl аspесts оf intеrсulturаl соmmuniсаtiоn in thе соntеxt оf glоbаlizаtiоn оn thе bаsis оf rесоgnizing thе соntributiоns аnd limitаtiоns оf Wittgеnstеin tо thе birth оf philоsоphy. сulturе study. Thоsе philоsоphiсаl issuеs аrе: thе similаrity in thinking аnd асting оf pеоplе асrоss сulturеs; divеrsity оf сulturеs, wоrldviеws аnd wаys оf lifе. Frоm thе Mаrxist pоint оf viеw, thе аuthоr pоintеd оut аnd сritiсizеd thе limitаtiоns оf Wittgеnstеin's philоsоphiсаl соnсеptiоn; аnd аt thе sаmе (...) timе оffеr аnd еxplаin sоlutiоns tо implеmеnt intеrсulturаl соmmuniсаtiоn in thе соntеxt оf сurrеnt glоbаlizаtiоn. (shrink)

In this essay I show that Kant intended his anthropology lectures and book, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, to be a Klugheitslehre (theory of prudence). The essay draws on many quotes from these sources to show that Kant wanted to develop a theory of how to use other people for one’s own ends. Although so much of the lectures and book are in conversation with Baumgarten’s empirical psychology, there are enough references to Klugheit (prudence) and klug (clever) action (...) to support this thesis. Prudence is a skill that human beings should develop and hence is not excluded from human life even though it is not the basis of morality. The purpose of Klugheit is to achieve happiness but the means to that happiness involves using other people for one’s own ends. In order to use others as a means to one’s own ends, a person must in someway satisfy the inclinations of the other person so that they cooperate in one’s ends. However it is also possible to dominate another person and use them as well if they are dominated by a passion but this is not prudent since it does not achieve happiness except in the case of a husband and wife. Kant’s distinction between Weltklugheit and Privatklugheit also appears to be confirmed in that he advances the idea that sociable means of gaining the cooperation of others (Privatklugheit) leads to the lasting happiness of a person and to the development of civilization. (shrink)

This paper defends David Hume's "Of Miracles" from John Earman's (2000) Bayesian attack by showing that Earman misrepresents Hume's argument against believing in miracles and misunderstands Hume's epistemology of probable belief. It argues, moreover, that Hume's account of evidence is fundamentally non-mathematical and thus cannot be properly represented in a Bayesian framework. Hume's account of probability is show to be consistent with a long and laudable tradition of evidential reasoning going back to ancient Roman law.

James Shaw has written an excellent book on Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. It manages to provide fresh perspectives on a topic on which it seemed.

Among recent developments in the anthropological sciences, hardly any have found so much attention and led to so much controversy as have the views advanced by the late Benjamin Whorf.The hypothesis offered by Whorf is,“that the commonly held belief that the cognitive processes of all human beings possess a common logical structure which operates prior to and independently of communication through language, is erroneous. It is Whorf's view that the linguistic patterns themselves determine what the individual perceives in this world (...) and how he thinks about it. Since these patterns vary widely, the modes of thinking and perceiving in groups utilizing different linguistic systems will result in basically different world views”.“We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar. … We cut up and organize the spread and flow of events as we do largely because, through our mother tongue, we are parties to an agreement to do so, not because nature itself is segmented in exactly that way for all to see”. (shrink)

Le but de ce texte est de mettre en évidence les équi­valences entre la façon dont le concept de conatus résout, dans l'Éthique, le problème de l'unité modale complexe. en rendant consis­tant le concept de chose singulière en tant que celle-ci doit être consi­dérée comme un légitime sujet d'attribution d'états, et la façon dont ce même concept dessine le rapport cognitif de l'esprit avec lui-même, rapport par lequel l'esprit se saisit comme sujet de ses états et qui ca­ractérise la notion (...) moderne de subjectivité. Ainsi, en éclairant cet as­pect du concept spinoziste de chose singulière. on comprendra aussi, de façon indirecte, l'une des conditions par lesquelles les choses peuvent, dans la doctrine spinoziste, devenir des objets ou des signes pour la connaissance humaine. (shrink)

The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology and others in the Open (...) Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry library, provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions. In this paper, we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new Biological Collections Ontology, the Environment Ontology, and the Population and Community Ontology. These ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes (for example, collection, extraction, and preservation techniques), as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling. Together they encompass studies of: 1) individual organisms, including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens, 2) bulk or environmental samples (e.g., gut contents, soil, water) that include DNA, other molecules, and potentially many organisms, especially microbes, and 3) survey-based ecological observations. We discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic, organismal, and ecosystem levels of organization. We argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community, these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers. (shrink)

Theorists of the welfare state increasingly recognize that social insurance programs are not well-justified by distributive egalitarianism—meaning concern for equality considered as a pattern in the distribution of some good. However, recent work by several relational egalitarian theorists suggests that these programs may be justified on relational egalitarian grounds. Relational egalitarians hold that the proper object of egalitarian concern is the way that citizens relate to one another. In this paper, I review the problems facing a distributive egalitarian justification for (...) social insurance before considering and rejecting three relational egalitarian justifications. I close by offering a justification for these programs grounded in efficiency, not equality. (shrink)

One of the reasons why there is no Hegelian school in contemporary ethics in the way that there are Kantian, Humean and Aristotelian schools is because Hegelians have been unable to clearly articulate the Hegelian alternative to those schools’ moral psychologies, i.e., to present a Hegelian model of the motivation to, perception of, and responsibility for moral action. Here it is argued that in its most basic terms Hegel's model can be understood as follows: the agent acts in a responsible (...) and thus paradigmatic sense when she identifies as reasons those motivations which are grounded in his or her talents and support actions that are likely to develop those talents in ways suggested by his or her interests. (shrink)

This paper motivates the idea that social robots should be credited as moral patients, building on an argumentative approach that combines virtue ethics and social recognition theory. Our proposal answers the call for a nuanced ethical evaluation of human-robot interaction that does justice to both the robustness of the social responses solicited in humans by robots and the fact that robots are designed to be used as instruments. On the one hand, we acknowledge that the instrumental nature of robots and (...) their unsophisticated social capabilities prevent any attribution of rights to robots, which are devoid of intrinsic moral dignity and personal status. On the other hand, we argue that another form of moral consideration—not based on rights attribution—can and must be granted to robots. The reason is that relationships with robots offer to the human agents important opportunities to cultivate both vices and virtues, like social interaction with other human beings. Our argument appeals to social recognition to explain why social robots, unlike other technological artifacts, are capable of establishing with their human users quasi-social relationships as pseudo-persons. This recognition dynamic justifies seeing robots as worthy of moral consideration from a virtue ethical standpoint as it predicts the pre-reflective formation of persistent affective dispositions and behavioral habits that are capable of corrupting the human user’s character. We conclude by drawing attention to a potential paradox drawn forth by our analysis and by examining the main conceptual conundrums that our approach has to face. (shrink)

Metaethical expressivism is typically characterised as the view that normative statements express desire-like attitudes instead of beliefs. However, in this paper I argue that expressivists should claim that normative statements express beliefs in normative propositions, and not merely in some deflationary sense but in a theoretically robust sense explicated by a theory of propositional attitudes. I first argue that this can be achieved by combining an interpretationist understanding of belief with a nonfactualist view of normative belief content. This results in (...) a view I call ‘interpretative expressivism’. I then argue that traditional arguments employed by expressivists that normative statements express noncognitive attitudes can just as well support the claim that normative statements express nonfactual or nonrepresentational beliefs. Finally, I argue that this view has a number of advantages to versions of expressivism that deny that normative statements express non-deflationary normative beliefs. (shrink)

The genetic modification of pigs as a source of transplantable organs is one of several possible solutions to the chronic organ shortage. This paper describes existing ethical tensions in xenotransplantation (XTx) that argue against pursuing it. Recommendations for lifelong infectious disease surveillance and notification of close contacts of recipients are in tension with the rights of human research subjects. Parental/guardian consent for pediatric xenograft recipients is in tension with a child’s right to an open future. Individual consent to transplant is (...) in tension with public health threats that include zoonotic diseases. XTx amplifies concerns about justice in organ transplantation and could exacerbate existing inequities. The prevention of infectious disease in source animals is in tension with the best practices of animal care and animal welfare, requiring isolation, ethologically inappropriate housing, and invasive reproductive procedures that would severely impact the well-being of intelligent social creatures like pigs. (shrink)

[This download includes the table of contents and chapter 1.] -/- When we praise, blame, punish, or reward people for their actions, we are holding them responsible for what they have done. Common sense tells us that what makes human beings responsible has to do with their minds and, in particular, the relationship between their minds and their actions. Yet the empirical connection is not necessarily obvious. The “guilty mind” is a core concept of criminal law, but if a defendant (...) on trial for murder were found to have serious brain damage, which brain parts or processes would have to be damaged for him to be considered not responsible, or less responsible, for the crime? The authors argue that evidence from neuroscience and the other cognitive sciences can illuminate the nature of responsibility and agency. They go on to offer a novel and comprehensive neuroscientific theory of human responsibility. (shrink)

Je cherche à explorer comment l'expérience de la temporalité est multiforme et fortement perturbée à l'époque de la pandémie Covid-19 et des politiques de confinement, générant une expérience d'hétérochronie, qui remet en question notre rapport à la vie.

This addendum expands upon the arguments made in the author’s 2020 essay, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligence: Citizenship as the Exception to the Rule”, in an effort to display the significance human augmentation technologies will have on (feasibly) inadvertently providing legal protections to artificial intelligence systems (AIS)—a topic only briefly addressed in that work. It will also further discuss the impacts popular media have on imprinting notions of computerised behaviour and its subsequent consequences on the attribution of legal protections to (...) AIS and on speculative technological advancement that would aid the sophistication of AIS. (shrink)

Philosophers of experiment have acknowledged that experiments are often more than mere hypothesis-tests, once thought to be an experiment's exclusive calling. Drawing on examples from contemporary biology, I make an additional amendment to our understanding of experiment by examining the way that `wide' instrumentation can, for reasons of efficiency, lead scientists away from traditional hypothesis-directed methods of experimentation and towards exploratory methods.

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept and scope of public health and to argue that particularly in low-income contexts, where social injustice and poverty often impact significantly on the overall health of the population, the link between public health and social justice should be a very firm one. Furthermore, social justice in these contexts must be understood as not simply a matter for local communities and nation-states, but in so far as public health is concerned, as (...) a matter of global concern and responsibility. The interpretation of the scope of public health by any particular nation is I believe contingent on the current socio-political context and the conception of social or distributive justice that underpins this context. Furthermore I will argue here that the link between public health and social justice ought to be founded on a conception of social justice that adequately addresses issues of social injustice, and patterns of systematic disadvantage, that contribute to ill health and that so commonly prevail in many low- and middle-income social contexts. (shrink)

In this field questions arise which are certainly difficult; but as I listened last time to members of the group, I felt that the main difficulty perhaps lay in determining precisely what questions we are trying to answer. I have the conviction that if we could only say clearly what the questions are, the answers to them might not appear so elusive. So I have begun with a simple list of questions about discretion which in one form or another were, (...) as it seemed to me, expressed by the group last time. I may indeed have omitted something and inserted something useless: if so, no doubt I shall be informed of this later. The central questions then seem to me to be the following: 1. What is discretion, or what is the exercise of discretion? 2. Under what conditions and why do we in fact accept or tolerate discretion in a legal system? 3. Must we accept discretion or tolerate discretion, and if so, why? 4. What values does the use of discretion menace, and what values does it maintain or promote? 5. What can be done to maximize the beneficial operation of the use of discretion and to minimize any harm that it does? (shrink)

This discussion revises and extends Jonny Anomaly's ‘public goods’ account of public health ethics in light of recent criticism from Richard Dees. Public goods are goods that are both non-rival and non-excludable. What is significant about such goods is that they are not always provided efficiently by the market. Indeed, the state can sometimes realize efficiency gains either by supplying such goods directly or by compelling private purchase. But public goods are not the only goods that the market may fail (...) to provide efficiently. This point to a way of broadening the public goods account of public health to accommodate Dees' counterexamples, without abandoning its distinctive appeal. On the market failures approach to public health ethics, the role of public health is to correct public health-related market failures of all kinds, so far as possible. The underlying moral commitment is to economic efficiency in the sense of Pareto: if we can re-allocate resources in the economy so as to raise the welfare of some without lowering the welfare of any other, we ought to do so. (shrink)

Our interpretive resources enable us to make sense of, navigate, and communicate about our shared world. These resources not only carve the world up into categories, but also guide how we, individually and collectively, are oriented towards it. In this thesis, I examine how these resources, and the dispositions they guide, may be harmful. A vital kind of interpretive resources are frames, which equip us with unified perspectives on the world. Perspectives are suites of open-ended interpretive (inquisitive, attentional, inferential, evaluative, (...) and affective) dispositions. Frames thereby guide how we interpret, respond to, and navigate the world. I show that these perspectives are epistemically powerful and indispensable. I argue that flawed perspectives, and the distorting frames that produce them, are deeply pernicious and I examine their relationship to oppression. (shrink)

The tripartite account of propositional, fallibilist knowledge that p as justified true belief can become adequate only if it can solve the Gettier Problem. However, the latter can be solved only if the problem of a successful coordination of the resources (at least truth and justification) necessary and sufficient to deliver propositional, fallibilist knowledge that p can be solved. In this paper, the coordination problem is proved to be insolvable by showing that it is equivalent to the ''''coordinated attack'''' problem, (...) which is demonstrably insolvable in epistemic logic. It follows that the tripartite account is not merely inadequate as it stands, as proved by Gettier-type counterexamples, but demonstrably irreparable in principle, so that efforts to improve it can never succeed. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of species have focused on multicellular, sexual animals and have often neglected to consider unicellular organisms like bacteria. This article begins to fill this gap by considering what species concepts, if any, apply neatly to the bacterial world. First, I argue that the biological species concept cannot be applied to bacteria because of the variable rates of genetic transfer between populations, depending in part on which gene type is prioritized. Second, I present a critique of phylogenetic bacterial species, (...) arguing that phylogenetic bacterial classification requires a questionable metaphysical commitment to the existence of essential genes. I conclude by considering how microbiologists have dealt with these biological complexities by using more pragmatic and not exclusively evolutionary accounts of species. I argue that this pragmatism is not borne of laziness but rather of the substantial conceptual problems in classifying bacteria based on any evolutionary standard. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil: moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, (...) a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics. It is argued that this goes some way towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE’s concerns; and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent’s action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil but conversely to ‘receive’ or ‘suffer from’ it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively, in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics is proposed for that theory. It is argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

If you utter sentence (1) ‘Obama was born in 1961’ now, you say something true about the past. Since the past will always be such that the year 1961 has the property of being a time in which Obama was born, it seems impossible that could ever be false in a future context of utterance. We shall consider the case of a sentence about the past exactly like (1), but which was true when uttered a few years ago and is (...) no longer true now. On this basis, we shall conclude that the past has changed. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Philosophy East and West Douglas Berger defends a new reading of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XXIV : 18, arguing that most contemporary translators mistranslate the important term prajñaptir upādāya, misreading it as a compound indicating "dependent designation" or something of the sort, instead of taking it simply to mean "this notion, once acquired." He attributes this alleged error, pervasive in modern scholarship, to Candrakīrti, who, Berger correctly notes, argues for the interpretation he rejects.Berger's analysis, and the reading of (...) the text he suggests is grounded on that analysis, is insightful and fascinating, and certainly generates an understanding of Nāgārjuna's enterprise that is welcome .. (shrink)

Most opponents of somatic cell nuclear transfer and embryonic stem cell technologies base their arguments on the twin assertions that the embryo is either a human being or a potential human being, and that it is wrong to destroy a human being or potential human being in order to produce stem cell lines. Proponents’ justifications of stem cell research are more varied, but not enough to escape the charge of obsession with the status of the embryo. What unites the two (...) warring sides in ‘the stem cell wars’ is that women are equally invisible to both: ‘the lady vanishes.’ Yet the most legitimate property in the body is that which women possess in their reproductive tissue and the products of their reproductive labour. By drawing on the accepted characterisation in the common law of property as a bundle of rights, and on a Hegelian model of contract as mutual recognition, we can lessen the impact of the tendency to regard women and their ova as merely receptacles and women’s reproductive labour as unimportant. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 165-189, May 2022. It is generally acknowledged that a certain amount of state intervention in health and health care is needed to address the significant market failures in these sectors; however, it is also thought that the primary rationale for state involvement in health must lie elsewhere, for example in an egalitarian commitment to equalizing access to health care for all citizens. This paper argues that a complete theory of justice in (...) health can be derived from a commitment to correcting market failure, or in other words promoting Pareto-efficiency, in the domain of health. This approach can address familiar problems around access to care, as well as problems related to resource allocation and rationing, the control of health care costs, and the foundations of public health. Egalitarian theories of justice in health cannot make sense of the depth and pervasiveness of state involvement in health and health care; only a theory rooted in the need to correct market failure can. (shrink)

The standard model of precedential constraint holds that a court is equally free to modify a precedent of its own and a precedent of a superior court—overruling aside, it does not differentiate horizontal and vertical precedents. This paper shows that no model can capture the U.S. doctrine of precedent without making that distinction. A precise model is then developed that does just that. This requires situating precedent cases in a formal representation of a hierarchical legal structure, and adjusting the constraint (...) that a precedent imposes based on the relationship of the precedent court and the instant court. The paper closes with suggestions for further improvements of the model. (shrink)

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.

Many hold that distributing healthcare according to medical need is a requirement of equality. Most egalitarians believe, however, that people ought to be equal on the whole, by some overall measure of well-being or life-prospects; it would be a massive coincidence if distributing healthcare according to medical need turned out to be an effective way of promoting equality overall. I argue that distributing healthcare according to medical need is important for reducing individuals' uncertainty surrounding their future medical needs. In other (...) words, distributing healthcare according to medical need is a natural feature of healthcare insurance; it is about indemnity, not equality. (shrink)

Rival causal and interpretive approaches to explaining social phenomena have important ethical differences. While human actions can be explained as a result of causal mechanisms, as a meaningful choice based on reasons, or as some combination of the two, it is morally important that social scientists respect others by recognizing them as persons. Interpretive explanations directly respect their subjects in this way, while purely causal explanations do not. Yet although causal explanations are not themselves expressions of respect, they can be (...) used in respectful ways if they are incorporated into subjects’ self-directed projects. This can occur when subjects correctly understand and freely adopt researchers’ goals through a process of informed consent. It can also occur when researchers correctly understand and adopt their subject’s goals, using their research to empower those they study. (shrink)

The renaissance of epistemology between the two world wars forms a bridge between early modern and contemporary philosophy of knowledge. This paper traces the resurgence of interest in epistemology at the turn of the century, as a reaction against the nineteenth-century development of Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian idealism, through the interwar renaissance of epistemology, prompted by major advances in mathematics, logic, and physics, and its ultimate transformation from a theory of ideas and judgement into a theory of propositional attitudes, sentences, and (...) meanings. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

Citizens in wealthy liberal democracies are typically expected to see to basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter out of their own income, and those without the means to do so usually receive assistance in the form of cash transfers. Things are different with health care. Most liberal societies provide their citizens with health care or health care insurance in kind, either directly from the state or through private insurance companies that are regulated like public utilities. Except perhaps for small (...) co-pays or deductibles, citizens are not expected to see to their health needs out-of-pocket, at least for some basic level of care. Instead, when a citizen gets sick, the state or her insurance company foots the... (shrink)

Oliver's and Rodriguez-Pereyra's important interpretation of the problem of universals as one concerning truthmakers neglects something crucial: that there is a numerical identity between numerically distinct particulars. The problem of universals is rather how to resolve the apparent contradiction that the same things are both numerically distinct and numerically identical. Baxter's account of instantiation as partial identity resolves the apparent contradiction. A seeming objection to this account is that it appears to make instantiation symmetric, since partial identity is symmetric. Armstrong's (...) standard reply is that the difference between a particular and a universal is what makes instantiation asymmetric. Brown suggests, though, that the instantiation of a universal by a universal is sometimes symmetric. However, the examples on which he relies are not universals. (shrink)

Two problems are considered here. One relates to who has moral status, and the other relates to who has moral responsibility. The criteria for mattering morally have long been disputed, and many humans and nonhuman animals have been considered “marginal cases,” on the contested edges of moral considerability and concern. The marginalization of humans and other species is frequently the pretext for denying their rights, including the rights to health care, to reproductive freedom, and to bodily autonomy. There is broad (...) agreement across cultural and philosophical traditions about the capacities and responsibilities of moral agents. I propose an inclusive and expansive way of thinking about moral status, situating it not in the characteristics or capacities of individuals, but in the responsibilities and obligations of moral agents. Moral agents, under this view, are not privileged or entitled to special treatment but rather have responsibilities. I approach this by considering some African communitarian conceptions of moral status and moral agency. I propose that moral agency can also be more expansive and include not just individual moral agents but collective entities that have some of the traits of moral agents: power, freedom, and the capacity to recognize and act on the demands of morality and acknowledge and respect the rights of others. Expanding who and what is a moral agent correspondingly extends moral responsibility for respecting rights and fostering the conditions for the health and well-being of humans and animals onto the collective entities who uniquely have the capacity to attend to global-scale health threats such as pandemics and human-caused climate change. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish two conceptions of solidarity, which I call solidarity as beneficence and solidarity as mutual advantage. I argue that only the latter is capable of providing a complete foundation for national universal health care programs. On the mutual advantage account, the rationale for universal insurance is parallel to the rationale for a labor union’s “closed shop” policy. In both cases, mandatory participation is necessary in order to stop individuals free-riding on an ongoing system of mutually advantageous (...) cooperation. (shrink)

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, represents H.L.A. Hart's landmark contribution to the philosophy of criminal responsibility and punishment. Unavailable for ten years, this new edition reproduces the original text, adding a new critical introduction by John Gardner, a leading contemporary criminal law theorist.

Herman Philipse considers “religious beliefs, faith and religion [to be] incompatible with science or reason”; he defines religion scientifically and specifically rejects religious doctrine. He describes reason “… as the whole of methods of empirical scientific research and critical discursive thinking as they have evolved in the scientific tradition and will continue to develop in the future” and he defines “… the phenomenon of conscience as a mental organ that can be scientifically explained and that makes the religious explanation superfluous (...) …”. Herman Philipse classifies science as the highest in rank, discards religion and sees philosophy, a rational view of the world, as based solely on the sciences. For his subject, Hans Achterhuis “… primarily cites biologists, ethologists and evolutionary psychologists with a philosophical interest” because “they presently have more to offer [him] than do his immediate colleagues”. Furthermore, “… it will be clear that ethologists and sociobiologists are of the opinion that the violent behaviour of human beings must be understood in part from the point of view of the evolutionary history of the sort ….. most philosophers and anthropologists are not aware of this. Their considerations suggest that violence only entered our world together with humankind”. Achterhuis’s choice is a “historic concept of violence”. (shrink)