Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

A ‘vestigial social practice' is a norm, convention, or social behavior that persists even when few endorse it or its original justifying rationale. Begby (2021) explores social explanations for the persistence of prejudice, arguing that even if we all privately disavow a stereotype, we might nevertheless continue acting as if it is true because we believe that others expect us to. Meanwhile the persistence of the practice provides something like implicit testimonial evidence for the prejudice that would justify it, making (...) it rational for members of the next generation to acquire the corresponding prejudiced beliefs. This paper distinguishes between three different types of vestigial social practice in terms of the underlying explanatory mechanisms, and argues that the persistence of prejudicial social stereotypes is most tightly linked not to others’ beliefs or expectations, but to the ways that material infrastructure constrains options shapes social outcomes. Given that, the persistence of a practice only provides grounds to infer that most people endorse the corresponding prejudiced belief only if we are in a position to dismiss relevant alternative explanations. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

The problem of moral disagreement has been presented as an objection to contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, since it is not clear that contextualism can accommodate or give a convincing gloss of such disagreement. I argue that independently of our semantics, disagreements over ‘ought’ in non-cooperative contexts are best understood as indirect metalinguistic disputes, which is easily accommodated by contextualism. If this is correct, then rather than posing a problem for contextualism, the data from moral disagreements provides some reason to adopt (...) a semantics that allows contextual variance in the meanings of ‘ought’. (shrink)

Some, but not all, of the mistakes a person makes when acting in apparently necessary self-defense are reasonable: we take them not to violate the rights of the apparent aggressor. I argue that this is explained by duties grounded in agents' entitlements to a fair distribution of the risk of suffering unjust harm. I suggest that the content of these duties is filled in by a social signaling norm, and offer some moral constraints on the form such a norm can (...) take. (shrink)

Sometimes speakers within a linguistic community use a term that they do not conceptualize as a slur, but which other members of that community do. Sometimes these speakers are ignorant or naïve, but not always. This article explores a puzzle raised when some speakers stubbornly maintain that a contested term t is not derogatory. Because the semantic content of a term depends on the language, to say that their use of t is semantically derogatory despite their claims and intentions, we (...) must individuate languages in a way that counts them as speaking our language L, assigns t a determinately derogatory content in L, and still accommodates the other features of slurs’ linguistic profile. Given the difficulty of doing this, there is some reason to give a non-semantic analysis of the derogatory aspect of slurs. The author suggests that rather than dismissing the stubborn as semantically incompetent, we would do better to appeal to expected uptake as moral reasons for the stubborn to adjust their linguistic practices. (shrink)

A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, even if they did, they introduce (...) new costs likely to cancel out any justificatory contribution of the statistic, but even if they didn’t, demographic facts are the wrong sort to make a moral difference to agents’ negative rights. I conclude that the popular argument should be rejected, and evidence-relative theories do not have the worrisome implication. (shrink)

Résumé Si l’absence de moralité des psychopathes a été largement étudiée, il existe peu de recherches sur leurs capacités esthétiques. Pourtant, beaucoup d’études cliniques de cas montrent qu’ils présentent un grave déficit dans ce domaine. Cet article se propose d’en chercher les causes. Il analyse les forces et les limites de l’hypothèse d’un manque d’empathie pour expliquer ces carences esthétiques, et montre pourquoi l’hypothèse d’un manque de distance psychique se révèle plus féconde. Celle-ci permet en outre de comprendre le lien (...) de l’esthétique et de l’éthique par leur filiation commune : elles ont pour socle commun la capacité à prendre de la distance par rapport à des intérêts étroitement égoïstes. (shrink)

A type of argument occasionally made in metaethics, epistemology and philosophy of science notes that most ordinary uses of some expression fail to satisfy the strictest interpretation of the expression, and concludes that the ordinary assertions are false. This requires there to be a presumption in favour of a strict interpretation of expressions that admit of interpretations at different levels of strictness. We argue that this presumption is unmotivated, and thus the arguments fail.

This article attempts to answer a question that many dancers and non-dancers may have. What is dance according to the media? Furthermore, how does the written word portray dance in the media? To answer these ques-tions, this research focuses on the role that the discourse of dance in media plays in the public sphere’s knowledge construction of dance. This is impor-tant to study because the public sphere’s meaning of dance will determine whether dance education is promoted or banned in schools (...) and in society. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature of dance in the media. One limitation of this contribution is that the research uses only newspaper articles as a source of analysis. Future research should include an analysis of visual and audio clips of dance as portrayed in the media. (shrink)

The dilemma mentioned in the title have long been a puzzle to logic. To solve it, it was necessary to make some philosophical decisions. The article provides these decisions and discusses the way to solve the problem.

Resolving the Ross and Prior paradoxes proved to be a difficult task. Its first two stages, involving the identification of the true natures of the implication and truth values, are described in the articles "Solving the Paradox of Material Implication – 2024" and "Solving Jörgensen's Dilemma – 2024". This article describes the third stage, which involves the discovery of missing modal operators and the Classical Modal Calculus. Finally, procedures for solving both paradoxes are provided.

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo uma apresentação da proposta de Charles Kielkopf, de tradução da lógica deôntica standard em uma lógica normal alética e de seusresultados quanto à construção de um sistema de lógica deôntica que capture conceitos eprincípios kantianos como necessidade causal e as formulações do Imperativo Categórico acerca do Reino da Natureza e do Reino dos Fins. Uma vez que este processo resulta em uma interpretação de aspectos da filosofia kantiana, optou-se inicialmente por uma apresentação em linhas (...) gerais destas concepções e, tendo em vista as dificuldades referentes a aplicabilidade de um processo de tradução entre princípios deônticos e ônticos,fez-se necessária também uma exposição acerca do problema das barreiras inferenciais, bem como de sua conseqüência mais imediata, a saber, o Dilema de Jörgensen. Num segundo momento, também foi feita uma caracterização dos sistemas modais normais, tanto deônticos quanto aléticos, bem como da noção de tradução entre lógicas e dos modelos de Dawson. O capítulo final consiste justamente num exame crítico da proposta de Kielkopf, o qual faz uso dos modelos de Dawson para desenvolver uma lógica deôntica a partir do sistema lógico K1. Tais modelos de Dawson permitem a definição de uma lógica deôntica em termos de modalidades aléticas iteradas, com o que este modelo constitui-se em uma maneira de evitar os problemas referentes às barreiras inferenciais. O desenvolvimento de uma alternativa para a atribuição de um status lógico a concepções deônticas não constitui,contudo, o aspecto inovador desta proposta, tal aspecto encontra-se justamente na utilização por Kielkopf, de seu modelo formal como uma ferramenta para a investigação de concepções filosóficas, no caso, as concepções kantianas já citadas. -/- The current dissertation has as its main objective an exposition and critical analysis of Charles Kielkopf's translation of the Standard Deontic Logic (SDL) into a normal alethic logic, and the resulting construction of a system of deontic logic that captures Kantian fundamental concepts and principles such as the concept of causal necessity and the formulations of the Categorical Imperative concerning Kingdom of Nature and Kingdom of Ends. Since this process results in an interpretation of aspects of the Kantian philosophy, it has been chosen,initially, a presentation in general lines of these concepts and, considering the difficulties regarding the applicability of a translation process between deontic and ontic principles, it was done necessary also an exhibition concerning the problem of the inferential barriers, as well as of his more immediate consequence, i. e., Jörgensen's Dilemma. In a secon dmoment, it was also made a characterization of normal modal systems, deontic ones andalethic ones, as well as of the notions of translation between logics and of Dawson modelling. The final chapter consists of a critical examination of Kielkopf's proposal, which uses Dawson modelling to develop a deontic logic based on the alethic system K1. Such Dawson modelling allows the definition of a deontic modalities in terms of iterated alethic modalities,therefore this model constitutes a way of avoiding the problems regarding inferential barriers. The development of an alternative for attribution of logical status to deontic concepts doesn't constitute, however, in an innovative aspect of this proposal, such aspect can be founded inthe use made by Kielkopf of his formal model as a tool for the investigation of philosophical concepts, such as the Kantian concepts already mentioned. (shrink)