The relation between Hume’s constructive and skeptical aims has been a central concern for Hume interpreters. Hume’s two definitions of ‘cause’ in the Treatise and first Enquiry apparently represent an important constructive achievement, but this paper argues that the definitions must be understood in terms of Hume’s skepticism. The puzzle I address is simply that Hume gives two definitions rather than one. I use Don Garrett’s interpretation as a foil to develop my alternative skeptical interpretation. Garrett claims the definitions exhibit (...) a general susceptibility to two kinds of definition that all “sense-based concepts” share. Against Garrett, I argue that the definitions express an imperfection Hume finds only in our concept of causation. That imperfection is absent from other sense-based concepts, and prompts skeptical sentiments in Hume’s conclusion to the Treatise’s Book 1. I close by comparing my interpretation with those of Helen Beebee, Stephen Buckle, Galen Strawson and Paul Russell. (shrink)

Human subjects seem to have a type of introspective access to their mental states that allows them to immediately judge the types and intensities of their occurrent emotions, as well as what those emotions are about or “directed at”. Such judgments manifest what I call “emotion-direction beliefs”, which, if reliably produced, may constitute emotion-direction knowledge. Many psychologists have argued that the “directed emotions” such beliefs represent have a componential structure, one that includes feelings of emotional responses and related but independent (...) representations of what those feelings are about. I argue that such componentiality may help to explain how emotion-direction knowledge is achievable. I begin by developing a hybrid view of introspection that combines David Chalmers’ phenomenal realism with Alvin Goldman’s “partial redeployment” account of meta-belief content. I then provide a process-reliabilist account of introspectively gained emotion-direction knowledge that outlines the minimum conditions of reliably forming emotion-direction beliefs, and specifies several ways in which the warrant of such beliefs could be defeated by relevant counterfactual alternatives. The overall account suggests how distinct introspective processes might be epistemically synergistic. (shrink)

Propositional temporalism is the view that there are temporary propositions: propositions that are true, but not always true. Factual futurism is the view that there are futurist facts: facts that obtain, but that will at some point not obtain. Most A-theoretic views in the philosophy of time are committed both to propositional temporalism and to factual futurism. Mark Richard, Jeffrey King and others have argued that temporary propositions are not fit to be the contents of propositional attitudes, or to be (...) the semantic values of natural language utterances. But these discussions have overlooked another role that the A-theorist’s posits struggle to play: the role of facts in explaining other facts. Focusing on the case of action explanation by reasons, this paper presents the challenge that explanation poses for factual futurism. It then brings that challenge to bear against propositional temporalism and the A-theory more generally. My argument saddles the factual futurist with surprising commitments concerning reasons, facts and explanation. The futurist might accept those commitments and pay the price. The alternative – which I prefer – is to reject factual futurism, and with it the A-theory. (shrink)

This essay considers the catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change in relation to two possible critical-theoretic dispositions. The first, represented by an emblematic passage from Adorno, retains the hope for the realization of a “rational society.” The second, represented by a complementary passage from Foucault, enjoins critical theory to abandon any ambition toward criticizing or transforming society at a totalizing level. We argue that the unfolding climate catastrophe demands a conception of critical theory more in line with the first disposition, and (...) that the relevance of the skeptical disposition is likewise seriously undermined if climate change is taken into account. (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy and neuroscience pertains to whether PFC activity plays an essential role in the neural basis of consciousness. Neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have revealed that the contents of conscious perceptual experience can be successfully decoded from PFC activity, but these findings might be confounded by post- perceptual cognitive processes, such as thinking, reasoning, and decision-making, that are not necessary for con- sciousness. To clarify the involvement of the PFC in consciousness, we present a synthesis of research (...) that has used intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) for the causal modulation of neural activity in the human PFC. This research provides compelling evidence that iES of only certain prefrontal regions (i.e., orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingu- late cortex) reliably perturbs conscious experience. Conversely, stimulation of anterolateral prefrontal sites, often con- sidered crucial in higher-order and global workspace theories of consciousness, seldom elicits any reportable alterations in consciousness. Furthermore, the wide variety of iES-elicited effects in the PFC (e.g., emotions, thoughts, and olfactory and visual hallucinations) exhibits no clear relation to the immediate environment. Therefore, there is no evidence for the kinds of alterations in ongoing perceptual experience that would be predicted by higher-order or global workspace theories. Nevertheless, effects in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices suggest a specific role for these PFC subregions in supporting emotional aspects of conscious experience. Overall, this evidence presents a challenge for higher-order and global workspace theories, which commonly point to the PFC as the basis for con- scious perception based on correlative and possibly confounded information. (shrink)

Charles Mills adhered to the highest standards of philosophical scholarship, while seeing his work firmly as a contribution to the cause of social justice. He had a deep appreciation for historical context and a history of ideas approach to racial/philosophical questions. He was one of the foremost Rawls interpreters or our time, though only a few years before his passing was he so recognized. He channeled his analytic training in his habit of demonstrating how a view is strengthened when an (...) author shows how objections can be systematically replied to. I wish he had tried to integrate class and race into a larger theoretical system, of both an explanatory and normative character. Class is sometimes an unnoted presence in his explanation of white supremacy. Charles saw himself contributing to a collective scholarly social justice project and was happy to acknowledge the greater expertise of others in allied areas to his. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s account of “totalitarianism” in light of the climate catastrophe and the apparent inability of our political-economic system to respond to it adequately. In the last two chapters of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt focuses on the “ideology” of totalitarian regimes: a pathological denial of reality, a privileging of the ideological system over empirical evidence, and a simultaneous feeling of total impotence and total omnipotence—an analysis that maps remarkably well onto the climate zeitgeist. Thus, while Arendt (...) used the concept of “totalitarianism” to foreclose alternatives to liberal capitalist democracy, the climate impasse suggests that the totalitarian label more properly belongs to the prevailing system itself. (shrink)

Barbara Fried described John Rawls’s response to libertarianism as “the unwritten theory of justice.” This paper argues that while there is no need for a new theory of justice to address the libertarian challenge, there is a need for an additional chapter. Taking up Fried’s suggestion that the Rawlsian response would benefit from a revised list of primary goods, I propose to add employment to the list, thus leading to adoption of a full employment principle in the original position that (...) ensures that anyone who wants to work will be able to do so. I argue that although Rawls famously proposed government as employer of last resort, he never integrated that comment into his theory, which lacks a full employment principle and says nothing about the injustice of involuntary unemployment in its ideal theory. I first refute the received view of Rawls’s treatment of employment as required by its importance for citizens’ self-respect, then show that in fact, the full employment assumption is the result of the role of general equilibrium theory in Rawls’s model of a well-ordered society, and indicate why developments in economic theory and economic policy support the proposed revision. (shrink)

In this article, I present some worries about the possible impact of global efforts to aid the needy in some of the world’s most desperate regions. Among the worries I address are possible unintended negative consequences that may occur elsewhere in a society when aid agencies hire highly qualified local people to promote their agendas; the possibility that foreign interests and priorities may have undue influence on a country’s direction and priorities, negatively impacting local authority and autonomy; and the related (...) problem of outside interventions undermining the responsiveness of local and national governments to their citizens. -/- Another issue I discuss is the possibility that efforts to aid the needy may involve an Each-We Dilemma, in which case conflicts may arise between what is individually rational or moral, and what is collectively rational or moral. Unfortunately, it is possible that if each of us does what we have most reason to do, morally, in aiding the needy, we together will bring about an outcome which is worse, morally, in terms of its overall impact on the global needy. -/- The article ends by briefly noting a number of claims and arguments that I made in my 2017 Uehiro Lectures regarding how good people should respond in a world of need. As I have long argued, I have no doubt that those who are well off are open to serious moral criticism if they ignore the plight of the needy. Unfortunately, however, for a host of both empirical and philosophical reasons, what one should do in light of that truth is much more complex, and murky, than most people have realized. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 368-378, September 2021.

Jesse Prinz (2004) argues that emotional feelings (“state emotions”) can by themselves perceptually represent significant organism-environment relations. I object to this view mainly on the grounds that (1) it does not rule out the at least equally plausible view that emotional feelings are non-representational sensory registrations rather than perceptions, as Tyler Burge (2010) draws the distinction, and (2) perception of a relation requires perception of at least one of the relation’s relata, but an emotional feeling by itself perceives neither the (...) subject’s environment, nor in many cases the relevant subject itself. I then explore two ways in which emotional feelings as non-perceptual sensory registrations might still contribute to significant relation representation when associated with representations of the subject and/or its environment. After briefly discussing some difficulties presented by a multimodal, sensory-perceptual view of such representation, I argue in favor of a “cognitive recognition theory” that holds that significant relation instances are represented during emotion occurrences via applications of emotion-type concepts to "incoming" emotional feelings and their associated mental states. (shrink)

This article responds to four critics of Democracy in Spite of the Demos and reiterates its central thesis. Christopher Holman and Théophile Pénigaud attempt to maintain the critical value of democracy by invoking different elements of the deliberative tradition, while Benjamin Schupmann answers my charges by appealing to a strong liberal constitutionalism. I argue that these attempts repeat the ambivalence described and criticized in the book: democracy is taken as an end in itself, but with asterisks that introduce conditions and (...) qualifications. As long as democracy is only desirable given certain caveats, the critical weight is placed on these caveats and not on the figure of democracy. Andrew Norris takes a different approach, interrogating the book’s use of ideology critique and the concept of “socially necessary delusion.” This intervention presents difficulties to the concluding suggestion of the book, but I maintain that that these difficulties can be productive and generative rather than limiting or prohibitive. (shrink)

Sexual lust – understood as a feeling of sexual attraction towards another – has traditionally been viewed as a sort of desire or at least as an appetite akin to hunger. I argue here that this view is, at best, significantly incomplete. Further insights can be gained into certain occurrences of lust by noticing how strongly they resemble occurrences of “attitudinal” (“object-directed”) emotion. At least in humans, the analogy between the object-directed appetites and attitudinal emotions goes well beyond their psychological (...) structure to include similar ways in which their occurrence can be introspectively recognized, resulting in similar extensions of their functionality and meaningfulness to the subject. I conclude that although further research is needed, given the strength of the analogy, the ability of lust to satisfy some general requirements for being an emotion, and perhaps certain neurological findings, lust may somewhat uniquely straddle the line between appetite and emotion. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to measure various prevailing democratic theories against an argument that Carl Schmitt advances in the first chapter of his ‘Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy’. In practice, he claims there, democratic politics is compelled to introduce a distinction between ‘the will of the people’ and the behaviour of the empirical people, thus justifying the bracketing and unlimited suspension of the latter in the name of the former, even to the point of dictatorship. I argue that no contemporary (...) approach to democracy as a fundamental value is able to mount a compelling response to this critique and that we should therefore reconsider the status of democracy as a normative commitment. I proceed by carefully and closely reading Schmitt’s chapter and then by juxtaposing various currents of democratic theory (including liberal, deliberative, epistemic and various hybrids thereof) with the trajectory of Schmitt’s argument. This essay is therefore less of a contribution to Schmitt scholarship, in the sense that it does not take a panoramic view of his corpus to determine his final stance on democracy, and more of an intervention into contemporary democratic theory using Schmitt’s argument as a kind of lever. (shrink)

An ongoing debate in the philosophy of emotion concerns the relationship between two prima facie aspects of emotional states. The first is affective: felt and/or motivational. The second, which I call object-identifying, represents whatever the emotion is about or directed towards. “Componentialists” – such as R. S. Lazarus, Jesse Prinz, and Antonio Damasio – assume that an emotion’s object-identifying aspect can have the same representational content as a non-emotional state’s, and that it is psychologically separable or dissociable from the emotion’s (...) affective aspect. Some further hold that emotions have no object-identifying aspects of their own, and can properly be said to be about things only in virtue of their associations with other mental states (such as beliefs or perceptions). By contrast, “blenderists” – such as Peter Goldie, York Gunther, and Matthew Ratcliffe – insist that the two aspects are indissociable, because the affective aspect “infuses” the object-identifying aspect, altering the subject’s concept or percept of the object. As a result, an emotion’s object-identifying aspect cannot possibly have the same representational content as any non-emotional state’s. I argue that the strongest blenderist arguments fail to rule out plausible componentialist alternatives, and that the blenderists’ broader motivations are orthogonal to structural issues. (shrink)

In this paper we explain Wittgenstein’s claim in a 1933 lecture that “aesthetics like psychoanalysis doesn’t explain anything away.” The discussions of aesthetics are distinctive: Wittgenstein gives a positive account of the relationship between aesthetics and psychoanalysis, as contrasted with psychology. And we follow not only his distinction between cause and reason, but also between hypothesis and representation, along with his use of the notion of ideals as facilitators of aesthetic discourse. We conclude that aesthetics, like psychoanalysis, preserves the verifying (...) phenomena in their fullness. (shrink)

What is it about serial killers that grips our imaginations? They populate some of our most important literature and art, and to this day, Jack the Ripper intrigues us. In this paper, we examine this phenomenon, exploring the idea that serial killers in part represent something in us that, if not good, is at least admirable. To get at this, we have to peel off layers of other causes of our attraction, for our attraction to serial killing is complex (it (...) mixes with repulsion, too). For example, part of the attraction is curiosity associated with the pragmatic desire to understand serial killers. Another part is the allure of safe violence, the very same allure that causes us to slow down to look at traffic accidents and that makes movies like Saw box office gold. Once we are through the initial layers of attraction, we expose the one we are interested in. Humans are not really Homo sapiens (the wise human), but rather Homo oboediens (the rule‐following human), and these rules can become oppressive. Serial killers, properly sanitized, show us something, albeit in a twisted way, that we long for – a life unfettered by rules, a life where we can do exactly what we want. We close by noting the paradox that an actual serial killer is not free at all. (shrink)

Attempts to unify Marxist and feminist social critique have been vexed by the fact that ‘patriarchy’ predates the advent of capitalism (its transhistorical status). Feminists within the Marxist, socialist, and materialist traditions have responded to this point by either granting patriarchy a certain autonomy relative to capitalism (the ‘dual/triple systems’ approach), or by suggesting that patriarchal relations have a foundational and necessary status in the history of capitalist development (which we term the ‘origins-subsistence’ approach). This paper offers an alternative account (...) of the relationship between capitalism and the transhistorical status of ‘patriarchy’. In aid of a ‘unitary theory’ of Marxist Feminism, we argue that the transhistorical status of patriarchy is better understood through an application of Marx’s concepts of formal and real subsumption. A modified version of these concepts can illuminate not only capitalist appropriation of antecedent social and economic forms, but also its capacity to produce new forms of gendered exploitation and oppression. (shrink)

Causal reasoning and game-theoretic reasoning are fundamental topics in artificial intelligence, among many other disciplines: this paper is concerned with their intersection. Despite their importance, a formal framework that supports both these forms of reasoning has, until now, been lacking. We offer a solution in the form of (structural) causal games, which can be seen as extending Pearl's causal hierarchy to the game-theoretic domain, or as extending Koller and Milch's multi-agent influence diagrams to the causal domain. We then consider three (...) key questions: i) How can the (causal) dependencies in games - either between variables, or between strategies - be modelled in a uniform, principled manner? ii) How may causal queries be computed in causal games, and what assumptions does this require? iii) How do causal games compare to existing formalisms? To address question i), we introduce mechanised games, which encode dependencies between agents' decision rules and the distributions governing the game. In response to question ii), we present definitions of predictions, interventions, and counterfactuals, and discuss the assumptions required for each. Regarding question iii), we describe correspondences between causal games and other formalisms, and explain how causal games can be used to answer queries that other causal or game-theoretic models do not support. Finally, we highlight possible applications of causal games, aided by an extensive open-source Python library. (shrink)

[This paper will be presented at the APA Eastern Division Conference in New York City, January 2024] -/- Can one reasonably doubt that one is voluntarily making a commitment, even when one is doing so? Given that one voluntarily makes a commitment if and only if one (personally) knows that one is doing so, the answer appears to be “No.” After all, knowing implies justifiably believing, and it seems impossible that one could (synchronically and from a single personal perspective) reasonably (...) doubt what one justifiably believes. Indeed, assuming that one reasonably doubts that P only if one has sufficient evidence to believe that not-P, traditional epistemologists may hold that such “epistemic ambivalence” entails one’s believing a contradiction, while some Bayesians should hold that it entails violating “probabilism” (the norm that credences must conform to the axioms of probability). However, I argue that in at least some cases of romantic commitment-making, such ambivalence may not only be epistemically permissible, but even required, and perhaps best dealt with pragmatically. (shrink)

Over almost a half-century, evidence law scholars and philosophers have contended with what have come to be called the “Proof Paradoxes.” In brief, the following sort of paradox arises: Factfinders in criminal and civil trials are charged with reaching a verdict if the evidence presented meets a particular standard of proof—beyond a reasonable doubt, in criminal cases, and preponderance of the evidence, in civil trials. It seems that purely statistical evidence can suffice for just such a level of certainty in (...) a variety of cases where our intuition is that it would nonetheless be wrong to convict the defendant, or find in favor of the plaintiff, on merely statistical evidence. So, we either have to convict with statistical evidence, in spite of an intuition that this is unsettling, or else explain what (dispositive) deficiency statistical evidence has. -/- Most scholars have tried to justify the resistance to relying on merely statistical evidence: by relying on epistemic deficiencies in this kind of evidence; by relying on court practice; and also by reference to the psychological literature. In fact, I argue, the epistemic deficiencies philosophers and legal scholars allege are suspect. And, I argue, while scholars often discuss unfairness to civil defendants, they ignore a long history of relying on statistical evidence in a variety of civil matters, including employment discrimination, toxic torts, and market share liability cases. Were the dominant arguments in the literature to prevail, it would extremely difficult for plaintiffs to recover in a variety of cases. -/- The various considerations I advance lead to the conclusion that when it comes to naked statistical evidence, philosophers and legal scholars who argue for its insufficiency have been caught with their pants down. (shrink)

Schopenhauer repeatedly claims that all pleasure is negative, and this view seems to play key roles throughout his work. Nonetheless, many scholars have argued that Schopenhauer actually acknowledges certain positive pleasures. Two major arguments have been offered for this reading, one focused on the link between Schopenhauer's view of pleasure and Plato's, and one focused on Schopenhauer's distinction between two components of aesthetic pleasure. I argue that neither way of motivating the positive pleasure reading succeeds. Both overlook a key aspect (...) of Schopenhauer's account: namely, his suggestion that there are two distinct kinds of negative pleasure, pleasures of satisfaction and pleasures of distraction. When Schopenhauer claims that all pleasure is negative, he means it. (shrink)

Can one’s belief that one romantically loves another be false? If so, under what conditions may one come to reasonably doubt, or at least suspend belief, that one does so? To begin to answer these questions, I first outline an affective/volitional view of love similar to psychologist R. J. Sternberg’s “triangular theory”, which analyzes types of love in terms of the degrees to which they include states of passion, emotion, and commitment. I then outline two sources of potential bias that (...) may cause one to believe that one romantically loves another when one does not. Partly on the basis of those potential sources of bias and partly on the basis of more specific issues, I then argue that at least to the extent that one is aware of these issues, one may reasonably doubt that one is experiencing romantic love’s emotional feelings, and one may reasonably doubt that one is making romantic love’s commitments. Finally, I order by relative dubitability the propositions that must be true about one’s passions, emotions, and commitments toward another in order for one to romantically love them. (shrink)

Among moral philosophers, general disapproval of genetic enhancement has in recent years given way to the view that the permissibility of a eugenic policy depends only on its particular features. Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler have extensively defended such a view. However, while these authors go so far as to argue that there are conditions under which parents are not only permitted but also obligated to procure genetic treatments for their intended child, they stop short of arguing that there are (...) conditions under which parents are required to procure enhancements. By contrast, David Heyd argues that parents are required to procure treatments or enhancements for their future child, but only if the intervention would not alter the future child’s personal identity. In this paper I take the case for genetic enhancement a step further by arguing that there are conditions under which parents are morally required to procure genetic interventions for their intended child, regardless of whether the intervention is a treatment or an enhancement, and regardless of whether it would alter the child’s personal identity. (shrink)

Almost all philosophers agree that a necessary condition on lying is that one says what one believes to be false. But, philosophers haven’t considered the possibility that the true requirement on lying concerns, rather, one’s degree-of-belief. Liars impose a risk on their audience. The greater the liar’s confidence that what she asserts is false, the greater the risk she’ll think she’s imposing on the dupe, and, therefore, the greater her blameworthiness. From this, I arrive at a dilemma: either the belief (...) requirement is wrong, or lying isn’t interesting. I suggest an alternative necessary condition for lying on a degree-of-belief framework. (shrink)

Absurdist accounts of life’s meaning posit that life is absurd because our pretensions regarding its meaning conflict with the actual or perceived reality of the situation. Relationary accounts posit that contingent things gain their meaning only from their relationship to other meaningful things. I take a detailed look at the two types of account, and, proceeding under the assumption that they are correct, combine them to see what the implications of such a combination might be. I conclude that another way (...) of looking at the absurdity of life is to see it as a conflict between our dual beliefs that there exist intrinsically meaningful contingent things, and that contingent things may only gain their meaning extrinsically through their relationships to other meaningful things. In this way, I provide another lens through which feelings of life’s absurdity may be interpreted and analysed: as the conflict between the simultaneous beliefs in both intrinsically and relationally meaningful contingent things. Looking through this lens gives us an entirely different framework for analysing life’s absurdity than that which Nagel described in 1971, providing opportunity for more potential avenues of analysis and discussion. (shrink)

In Climate Leviathan, Mann and Wainwright address the political implications of climate change by theorizing four possible planetary futures: Climate Leviathan as capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Mao as non-capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Behemoth as capitalist non-planetary sovereignty, and Climate X as non-capitalist non-planetary sovereignty. The authors of the present article agree that the depth and scale of destabilizations induced by climate change cannot be navigated justly from within the present social-political-economic system. We disagree, however, on which of the non-capitalist orientations (...) is better suited for generating viable alternatives to the worst dystopian futures. The article thus stages a debate to elucidate the theoretical and political divergence between Climate X and Climate Mao. (shrink)

Challenging the basic assumptions of a meat-eating society, Deep Vegetarianism is a spirited and compelling defense of a vegetarian lifestyle. Considering all of the major arguments both for and against vegetarianism and the habits of meat-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans alike, Michael Allen Fox addresses vegetarianism's cultural, historical, and philosophical background; details vegetarianism's impact on one's living and thinking; and relates vegetarianism to classical and recent defenses of the moral status of animals. Demonstrating how a vegetarian diet is related to our (...) awareness of the world and our ethical outlook on life, Fox looks at the different kinds of vegetarian commitments people make and their reasons for making them. In chapters that address such issues as the experiences, emotions, and grounds that are part of choosing vegetarianism, Fox discusses not only good health, animal suffering, and the environmental impacts of meat production, but such issues as the meaning of food, world hunger, religion and spirituality, and, significantly, the links share between vegetarianism and other human rights movements and ideologies, particularly feminism. In an extensive chapter that addresses arguments made by advocates of meat-eating, Fox speaks to claims of humans as natural carnivores, animals as replaceable, and vegetarians as anti-feminist. He also addresses arguments surrounding the eating habits of indigenous peoples, eating free-range animals, and carnivorous behavior among animals. The most complete examination of the vegetarian outlook to date, Deep Vegetarianism reveals the broad range of philosophical views that contribute to such a choice. It recognizes, and calls for, a conscious awareness of -- and an individual responsibility to -- the issues that exist in the moral, political, and social spheres of our existence. With its lively and controversial discussion, Deep Vegetarianism promises to appeal to anyone looking to explore the relationship between dietary choice, lifestyle, the treatment of animals and the environment, and personal ethical responsibility. It will also be particularly useful for students and teachers of moral philosophy, ethics, religion, comparative cultures, ecology, and feminism. (shrink)

We often encounter people who we believe are behaving immorally. We routinely try to change minds and often donate to charitable organizations that do the same. Of course, this does not always work. In a liberal, rights-based society, we have to tolerate this. But legal entitlements to act in ways that others find immoral are inefficiently allocated. For example, some meat-eaters value eating meat less than some vegetarians would be willing to pay them to stop. While many have written about (...) the limits of the market, market design, and abuse of right, few have considered the sale of these entitlements. This article proposes a market-based solution, encouraging the sale of these entitlements under certain conditions. This would lead to improvements both on an economic efficiency analysis and on a moral analysis. (shrink)

Brief review of William Baude and Ryan Doerfler, Arguing with Friends, 117 Mich. L. Rev. 319 (2018).

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)

Letters commenting on Hardwig, J "Is There a Duty to Die?" with a reply to those letters by the author.

Summary Background Self-binding directives instruct clinicians to overrule treatment refusal during future severe episodes of illness. These directives are promoted as having potential to increase autonomy for individuals with severe episodic mental illness. Although lived experience is central to their creation, service users’ views on self-binding directives have not been investigated substantially. This study aimed to explore whether reasons for endorsement, ambivalence, or rejection given by service users with bipolar disorder can address concerns regarding self-binding directives, decision-making capacity, and human (...) rights. Methods This study used qualitative data from an internet-based survey distributed to the mailing list of the UK charity Bipolar UK, which contained multiple closed and open questions on advance decision-making in bipolar disorder. Quantitative analysis of a closed question about self-binding directives had already demonstrated endorsement amongst a very high proportion of participants with bipolar disorder who completed the survey. We conducted thematic analysis of responses from those participants who answered a subsequent open question about reasons for their view. Research was co-produced within a multi-disciplinary team, with clinical, legal, and ethical expertise, and lived experience of bipolar disorder. Ideas and methodologies associated with all these areas of expertise were used in the analysis of these reasons and to gain insight into the thoughts of individuals with bipolar disorder about self-binding directives and associated issues. Findings Between Oct 23 and Dec 5, 2017, 932 individuals with a self-reported clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder completed the internet survey, with 565 (154 men; 400 women; 11 transgender or other) providing free text answers to the open question. A large majority of respondents endorsed self-binding directives, nearly all describing a determinate shift to types of distorted thinking and decision-making when unwell as their key justification. Responses indicating ambivalence were dominated by logistical concerns about the drafting and implementation of self-binding directives, while those who rejected self-binding directives also cited logistical concerns, validity of their thinking when unwell, and potential contravention of human rights. Interpretation This study is, to our knowledge, the first large study of reasons why mental health service users might endorse or reject the use of self-binding directives. The findings provide empirical support for introducing self-binding directives into mental health advance decision-making practice and policy and may help to address enduring ethical concerns surrounding possible implementation of the directive while a person retains decision-making capacity. The opinions expressed here in responses given by multiple service users with bipolar disorder challenge a prominent view within international disability rights debates that involuntary treatment and recognition of impaired mental capacity constitute inherent human rights violations. Funding The Wellcome Trust . (shrink)

The article reflects on where AI is headed and the world along with it, considering trust, ethics and safety. Implicit in artificial thinking and doomsday appraisals is the engineered divorce from reality of sublime human embodiment. Jeffrey White, Dietrich Brandt, Jan Soeffner, and Larry Stapleton, four scholars associated with AI & Society, address these issues, and more, in the following exchange.

In this paper I consider Corneliu Porumboiu’s ‘Police, Adjective’ (Romania, 2009) as an instance of a puzzling work of art. Part of what is puzzling about it is the range of extreme responses to it, both positive and negative. I make sense of this puzzlement and try to alleviate it, while considering the film alongside Ludwig Wittgenstein’s arguably puzzling “Lectures on Aesthetics” (from 1938). I use each work to illuminate possible understandings of the other. The upshot is that it is (...) is plausible to regard both as engaged, in part, in preparing us to make sense both of themselves, and then also of other works. (shrink)

An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander. Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents. But these contents may be orthogonal to the processes that determine how thoughts unfold over time, remaining stable or wandering from one topic to another. In this chapter, we emphasize the importance of incorporating such processes into current definitions of mind-wandering, and propose that mind-wandering and other forms of spontaneous thought (such as (...) dreaming and creativity) are mental states that arise and transition relatively freely due to an absence of constraints on cognition. We review existing psychological, philosophical and neuroscientific research on spontaneous thought through the lens of this framework, and call for additional research into the dynamic properties of the mind and brain. (shrink)

The chromodielectric soliton model is Lorentz and chirally invariant. It has been demonstrated to exhibit dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and spatial confinement in the locally uniform approximation. We here study the full nonlocal quark self-energy in a color-dielectric medium modeled by a two-parameter Fermi function. Here color confinement is manifest. The self-energy thus obtained is used to calculate quark wave functions in the medium which, in turn, are used to calculate the nucleon and pion masses in the one-gluon-exchange approximation. The (...) nucleon mass is fixed to its empirical value using scaling arguments; the pion mass (for massless current quarks) turns out to be small but nonzero, depending on the model parameters. (shrink)

An overview and comparison of the major teaching philosophies is discussed to determine their applications in the field of education. In the end, it is important to reflect on how our practices align with our philosophies.

Humans and artificial intelligences (AI) will increasingly participate digitally and physically in conflicts yet there is a lack of trusted communications across agents and platforms. For example, humans in disasters and conflict already use messaging and social media to share information, however, international humanitarian relief organisations treat this information as unverifiable and untrustworthy. AI may reduce the ‘fog-of-war’ and improve outcomes, however current AI implementations are often brittle, have a narrow scope of application and wide ethical risks. Meanwhile, human error (...) causes significant civilian harms even by combatants committed to complying with international humanitarian law. AI offers an opportunity to help reduce the tragedy of war and better deliver humanitarian aid to those who need it. However, to be successful, these systems must be trusted by humans and their information systems, overcoming flawed information flows in conflict and disaster zones that continue to be marked by intermittent communications, poor situation awareness, mistrust and human errors. In this paper, we consider the integration of a communications protocol (the ‘Whiteflag protocol’), distributed ledger technology, and information fusion with artificial intelligence (AI), to improve conflict communications called “Protected Assurance Understanding Situation & Entities” PAUSE. Such a trusted human-AI communication network could provide accountable information exchange regarding protected entities, critical infrastructure; humanitarian signals and status updates for humans and machines in conflicts. Trust-based information fusion provides resource-efficient use of diverse data sources to increase the reliability of reports. AI can be used to catch human mistakes and complement human decision making, while human judgment can direct and override AI recommendations. We examine several case studies for the integration of these technologies into a trusted human-AI network for humanitarian benefit including mapping a conflict zone with civilians and combatants in real time, preparation to avoid incidents and using the network to manage misinformation. (shrink)

In “Harmful Choices, the Case of C, and Decision-Making Competence,” Pickering and colleagues advance an argument in favor of externalism, a view in which the competence of a decision maker is judged relative to factors external to their cognition. In advancing this argument, Pickering and colleagues focus on the external factor of harm: In their view, it is the harmfulness of a considered or chosen action that provides evidence against the competence of the decision maker. However, the proper identification of (...) harmful choices and outcomes remains a demanding task, largely because our understanding of what harm is remains deeply incomplete. Despite 50 years of tempestuous debate, the metaphysics of harm remains an unsettled question. The existence of such a debate does not, in and of itself, provide evidence against the externalist position; rather, it is the theories of harm themselves that pose meaningful challenges for the externalist. Our purpose, here, is to illuminate these challenges. (shrink)

Empathy is essential in story comprehension as it requires understanding of the emotions and intentions of the characters. We evaluated the sensitivity of an emotional perspective-taking task using Aesop’s Fables in relation to empathy. Participants (N = 301) were presented with 15 short fables and were asked to rate the intensity of the emotions they would feel (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, joy, trust, and anticipation) by adopting the perspective of one of the characters (offender, victim) or the observer’s perspective. (...) A data-driven approach revealed that participants’ responses were aligned with the characters’ intentions, suggesting successful emotional perspective-taking. Participants sympathized with the victim rather than the offender, demonstrating affective sharing processes. Further, participants with higher empathy scores exhibited stronger negative emotions from the victim’s perspective, independently of their level of distress. Our task was not influenced by gender effects. We suggest that the Aesop’s Fables task could provide an indirect instrument to study empathy. (shrink)

Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox is about Mr. Fox's attempt to flourish as both a wild animal and a consumer. As such, this film raises some interesting and difficult questions about what it means to be a member of a certain kind, what is required to flourish as a member of that kind, and how consumerism either promotes or inhibits such flourishing. In this paper I use Fantastic Mr. Fox as an entry point into an examination of the relationship between (...) consumerism and human flourishing. More specifically, I use this film as a way to engage with a worry that many philosophers have expressed: namely, the worry that consumerism threatens the identity of individual consumers. I begin by bringing certain of Mr. Fox's worries into contact with an Aristotelian account of flourishing. I then press Aristotle's account further by arguing that consumerism threatens one's ability to flourish as a human being because it tends to discourage one from engaging in distinctly human activities. I then conclude by looking to Aristotle and Mr. Fox for some ways to respond to this threat. My ultimate goals are, first, to shed light on certain dangers that are associated with consumerism, and second, to indicate how people living in consumerist societies might nonetheless overcome those dangers. (shrink)

This essay seeks to explicate several strands of Environmental Philosophy by applying them to agenuine example of environmental conflict. The recent invasion of the Tasmanian wilderness bythe European Fox, threatens several critically endangered mammals, not to mention the ecosystem as a whole. The DPIW has begun placing poisoned bait in the Tasmanian wilderness in an attempt to rid it of the fox. Rather than prescribing a solution to this complex problem, this essay tests the capacity of pre-existing ethics to protect (...) the endangered mammals of Tasmania. In elucidating the Utilitarian and Rights Based approaches to ethics, it becomes clear that they harbour highly problematic elements. Following this, the essay explores the benefits of holistic ethics, and ethics based on difference. Ultimately, this essay seeks to discover what an ethical response to the Tasmanian situation would look like. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin maintains that value is unitary, in the sense that different values do not conflict. This article resists this ‘hedgehog’ view with reference to the values of equality and utility. These appear to yield conflicting prescriptions in cases where one possible distribution gives different individuals the same amount of advantage, and the other contains an unequal distribution of a greater overall amount of advantage. Hedgehogs might respond to such a case in two ways. First, they might claim that equality (...) and utility are not truly in conflict. However, this claim seems implausible on our ordinary concepts of these values, and Dworkin does not provide grounds for revising our concepts. Second, they might deny that one of these values – utility – is a genuine value. However, one of the two aspects of Dworkin’s fundamental principle of equal concern appears to be supportive of utility, and he offers no good arguments for his preferred strategy of accommodating this aspect of equal concern within the value of equality. Furthermore, the alternative ‘fox’ view, which recognizes equality and utility as conflicting values, each accommodating one aspect of equal concern, has the advantage that it stays truer to familiar moral concepts. (shrink)

Esta pesquisa analisa alguns tópicos sobre a metodologia de acordo com a filosofia da ciência de Larry Laudan, além de examinar, na área da educação, esta proposta de interpretação filosófica. Trouxemos como elementos algumas considerações e definições sobre a metodologia em Laudan, isto é, da metodologia como um instrumento para a realização da axiologia (que são as metas e os valores cognitivos), porém, apresentando também interessantes relações para com as teorias específicas, como o de justificar as teorias específicas e (...) de ser restringida por elas. A metodologia é também, dentro do modelo reticulado de Laudan, justificada pela axiologia. Para além desta análise, há também uma defesa da metodologia enquanto o estudo dela própria, o que permite encontrarmos conexões interessantes em teorias da educação, como no caso da investigação-ação, onde vemos que estamos diante de uma tradição de pesquisa nos moldes defendidos pela filosofia da ciência de Laudan, por reconhecermos que temos um modelo reticular composto por teorias específicas, metodologias e axiologia também na área da educação. Veremos também que a metodologia em Laudan possui um caráter dinâmico, tensionando e sendo tensionada pelos componentes da tradição de pesquisa, caracterizando o modelo reticulado de racionalidade proposto pelo filósofo. Este debate em Laudan, juntamente com a tradição de pesquisa da investigação-ação da área da educação serão investigados neste artigo. Como base para a construção deste texto, utilizamos as seguintes obras de Laudan: The Progress and its problems: towards a theory of scientific growth (1977), Science and Values (1984a), Explaining the success of science: beyond epistemic realism and relativism (1984b), Methodology’s prospects (1986), Progress or Rationality? The Prospects for Normative Naturalism (1987a), Aim-less Epistemology? (1990a) e Normative Naturalism (1990b). (shrink)