This is an opinionated guide to the literature on epistemic dilemmas. It discusses seven kinds of situations where epistemic dilemmas appear to arise; dilemmic, dilemmish, and non-dilemmic takes on them; and objections to dilemmic views along with dilemmist’s replies to them.

This article argues that there can be epistemic dilemmas: situations in which one faces conflicting epistemic requirements with the result that whatever one does, one is doomed to do wrong from the epistemic point of view. Accepting this view, I argue, may enable us to solve several epistemological puzzles.

Epistemologists often appeal to the idea that a normative theory must provide useful, usable, guidance to argue for one normative epistemology over another. I argue that this is a mistake. Guidance considerations have no role to play in theory choice in epistemology. I show how this has implications for debates about the possibility and scope of epistemic dilemmas, the legitimacy of idealisation in Bayesian epistemology, uniqueness versus permissivism, sharp versus mushy credences, and internalism versus externalism.

Epistemologists spend a great deal of time thinking about how we should respond to our evidence. They spend far less time thinking about the ways that evidence can be acquired in the first place. This is an oversight. Some ways of acquiring evidence are better than others. Many normative epistemologies struggle to accommodate this fact. In this article I develop one that can and does. I identify a phenomenon – epistemic feedback loops – in which evidence acquisition has gone awry, (...) with the result that even beliefs based on the evidence are irrational. Examples include evidence acquired under the influence of confirmation bias and evidence acquired under the influence of cognitively penetrated experiences caused by implicit bias. I then develop a theoretical framework which enables us to understand why beliefs that are the outputs of epistemic feedback loops are irrational. Finally, I argue that many popular approaches to epistemic normativity may need to be abandoned on the grounds that they cannot comfortably explain feedback loops. The scope of this last claim is broad: it includes almost all contemporary theories of justified/rational belief and of the epistemology of cognitive penetration. (shrink)

In the past decade, policy-makers in science have been concerned with harmonizing research integrity standards across Europe. These standards are encapsulated in the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Yet, almost every European country today has its own national-level code of conduct for research integrity. In this study we document in detail how national-level codes diverge on almost all aspects concerning research integrity – except for what constitutes egregious misconduct. Besides allowing for potentially unfair responses to joint misconduct by (...) international collaborations, we argue that the divergences raise questions about the envisaged self-regulatory function of the codes of conduct. (shrink)

Some of the most significant policy responses to cases of fraudulent and questionable conduct by scientists have been to strengthen professionalism among scientists, whether by codes of conduct, integrity boards, or mandatory research integrity training programs. Yet there has been little systematic discussion about what professionalism in scientific research should mean. In this paper I draw on the sociology of the professions and on data comparing codes of conduct in science to those in the professions, in order to examine what (...) precisely the model of professionalism implies for scientific research. I argue that professionalism, more than any other single organizational logic, is appropriate for scientific research, and that codes of conduct for scientists should strengthen statements concerning scientific autonomy and competence, as well as the scientific service ideal. (shrink)

I develop a broadly reliabilist theory of non-ideal epistemic rationality and argue that if it is correct we should reject the recently popular idea that the standards of non-ideal epistemic rationality are mere social conventions.

When a loved one dies, it is common for the bereaved to feel profoundly lonely, disconnected from the world with the sense that they no longer belong. In philosophy, this experience of ‘loss and loneliness’ has been interpreted according to both a loss of possibilities and a loss of the past. But it is unclear how these interpretations apply to the distinctive way in which loss and loneliness manifest in old age. Drawing on the phenomenological analyses of old age given (...) by de Beauvoir and Améry, I consider how the diminishment of the capacity for projection and recollection complicate recent interpretations of loss and loneliness, whilst nevertheless reinforcing the conclusion that in old age subjectivity is necessarily impoverished. Developing a critical stance on de Beauvoir and Améry’s underlying conception of subjectivity, I turn to Levinas in considering whether or not there is a way to reimagine subjectivity such that the estrangement and alienation of older adults might be ameliorated rather than exacerbated. Grounded in the passive body-in-itself rather than the self-transcending capacity of the body-for-itself, I suggest it becomes possible to reconceptualise the experience of loss and loneliness in old age; both in terms of what is lost and what needs to be restored if older adults are to be helped to find themselves at home in the world in the midst of, and indeed because of, manifold loss. (shrink)

Distrust in scientific experts can be surprisingly stubborn, persisting despite evidence supporting the experts’ views, demonstrations of their competence, or displays of good will. This stubborn distrust is often viewed as a manifestation of irrationality. By contrast, this article proposes a logic of “status distrust”: low-status individuals are objectively vulnerable to collective decision-making, and can justifiably distrust high-status scientific experts if they are not confident that the experts do not have their best interests at heart. In phenomena of status distrust, (...) social status is thus an indicator of distrust, and this has wider implications for the literatures on trust in science and on expert communication. (shrink)

I discuss what Aquinas’ doctrine of divine simplicity is, and what he takes to be its implications. I also discuss the extent to which Aquinas succeeds in motivating and defending those implications.

Does the content of a physically dangerous job affect the moral permissibility of hiring for that job? To what extent may employers consider costs in choosing workplace safety measures? Drawing on Kantian ethical theory, this article defends two strong ethical standards of workplace safety. First, the content of a hazardous job does indeed affect the moral permissibility of offering it. Unless employees need hazard pay to meet basic needs, it is permissible to offer a dangerous job only if prospective employees (...) have a reason other than hazard pay to choose this job instead of safer alternatives. Second, employers typically cannot justify omitting expensive safety measures by paying employees more, even if employees prefer higher pay to greater safety. Employers offering dangerous jobs must meet these two standards to avoid treating their employees merely as means. (shrink)

As the principle of natural selection is generalized to explain (adaptive) patterns of human behavior, it becomes less clear what the selective environment empirically refers to. While the environment and individual are relatively separable in the non-human biological context, they are highly entangled in the context of moral, social, and institutional evolution. This chapter brings attention to the problem of generalizing the selective environment, and argues that it is ontologically disunified and definable only through its explanatory function. What unifies the (...) selective environment is that it explains adaptation in a non-agential way, by screening off various forms of agency, whether divine, organismic, or human. This explanatory function of the selective environment helps avoid some sources of confusion when the theory of natural selection is applied to humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Disturbances to one's sense of self, the feeling that one has ‘lost a part of oneself’ or that one ‘no longer feels like oneself,’ are frequently recounted throughout the bereavement literature. Engaging Allan Køster's important contribution to this issue, this article reinforces his suggestion that, by rupturing the existential texture of self-familiarity, bereavement can result in experiences of estrangement that can be meaningfully understood according to the concept of self-alienation. Nevertheless, I suggest that whilst Køster's relational interpretation of alienation as (...) the withdrawal of heteronomy can be applied to the experience of world-collapse in bereavement, what sets bereavement apart from other limit situations is the fact that it involves an intersubjective relation between the living and the dead. In contrast to Køster, therefore, I suggest that the experience of self-alienation that is distinctive to bereavement results from the fact that the bereaved is exposed to, and co-opted by, the absolute alterity of death itself. (shrink)

I argue that evidentialism should be rejected because it cannot be reconciled with empirical work on bias in cognitive and social psychology.

The dominant view today on evolutionary progress is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Even value-neutral progress concepts are seen to lack important theoretical underpinnings: natural selection provides no rationale for progress, and natural selection need not even be invoked to explain large-scale evolutionary trends. In this paper I challenge this view by analysing how natural selection acts in heterogeneous environments. This not only undermines key debunking arguments, but also provides a selectionist rationale for a pattern of “evolutionary unfolding”, where (...) life radiates across an increased range of exploitation of environmental heterogeneity. (shrink)

Biologists explain organisms’ behavior not only as having been programmed by genes and shaped by natural selection, but also as the result of an organism’s agency: the capacity to react to environmental changes in goal-driven ways. The use of such ‘agential explanations’ reopens old questions about how justified it is to ascribe agency to entities like bacteria or plants that obviously lack rationality and even a nervous system. Is organismic agency genuinely ‘real’ or is it just a useful fiction? In (...) this paper we focus on two questions: whether agential explanations are to be interpreted ontically, and whether they can be reduced to non-agential explanations (thereby dispensing with agency). The Kantian approach we identify interprets agential explanations non-ontically, yet holds agency to be indispensable. Attributing agency to organisms is not to be taken literally in the way we attribute physical properties such as mass or acceleration, but nor is it a mere heuristic or predictive tool. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence of our own rational capacity: as long as we are rational agents ourselves, we cannot avoid seeing agency in organisms. (shrink)

A number of health care professionals assert a right to be exempt from performing some actions currently designated as part of their standard professional responsibilities. Most advocates claim that they should be excused from these duties simply by averring that they are conscientiously opposed to performing them. They believe that they need not explain or justify their decisions to anyone; nor should they suffer any undesirable consequences of such refusal. Those who claim this right err by blurring or conflating three (...) issues about the nature and role of conscience, and its significance in determining what other people should permit them to do (or not do). Many who criticize those asserting an exemption conflate the same questions and blur the same distinctions, if not expressly, by failing to acknowledge that sometimes a morally serious agent should not do what she might otherwise be expected to do. Neither side seems to acknowledge that in some cases both claims are true: a conscientious professional should not do her professional duty AND others need not permit or excuse her refusal. I identify these conflations and specify conditions in which a professional might reasonably refuse to do what she is required to do. Then I identify conditions in which the public should exempt a professional from some of her responsibilities. I argue that professionals should refuse far less often than most advocates do . . . and that they should be even less frequently exempt for that failure. Finally, there are compelling reasons why we could not implement a consistent moral policy giving advocates what they want, likely not even in qualified form. (shrink)

Darwin hypothesized that some animals, when selecting sexual partners, possess a genuine “sense of beauty” that cannot be accounted for by the logic of natural selection. This hypothesis has been notoriously controversial. In this chapter I propose that the concept of agency can be useful to operationalize the “sense of beauty”, and can help identify the conditions under which one can infer that animals are acting as (aesthetic) agents. Focusing on a case study of the behavior of the Pavo cristatus, (...) I identify the types of evidence that would allow for the inference of agency through aesthetic choice. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that humility is a dependent virtue: a virtue that depends on another virtue for its value. I consider three views about this relation: Specific Dependence, Unspecific Dependence, and Fittingness. I argue that, since humility cannot uniquely depend on another virtue, and since this uniqueness is desirable, we should reject Specific and Unspecific Dependence. I defend a Fittingness view, according to which the humble person possesses some objectively good quality fitting for humility. I show beyond Slote’s original characterization (...) of the dependence relation that, even if humility’s value depends on having objectively good qualities, humility itself can be one such quality. So, humility can depend on itself. I call this view Bootstrapped Fittingness. (shrink)

Boredom is an affective experience that can involve pervasive feelings of meaninglessness, emptiness, restlessness, frustration, weariness and indifference, as well as the slowing down of time. An increasing focus of research in many disciplines, interest in boredom has been intensified by the recent Covid-19 pandemic, where social distancing measures have induced both a widespread loss of meaning and a significant disturbance of temporal experience. This article explores the philosophical significance of this aversive experience of ‘pandemic boredom.’ Using Heidegger’s work as (...) a unique vantage point, this article draws on survey data collected by researchers in an ongoing project titled ‘Experiences of Social Distancing During the Covid-19 Pandemic’ to give an original phenomenological interpretation of the meaninglessness and monotony of pandemic boredom. On a Heideggerian interpretation, pandemic boredom involves either a situative confrontation with relative meaninglessness that upholds our absorption in the everyday world, or an existential confrontation with absolute meaninglessness that forces us to take up the question of our existence. Arguing that boredom during the pandemic makes this distinction difficult to sustain, I consider some of the ways in which pandemic boredom might be seen to expose and then exceed the distinctive methodological limitations of Heidegger’s philosophical interpretation of boredom. (shrink)

The mental health crisis and loneliness epidemic have sparked a growing interest in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots as a potential solution. This report examines the benefits and risks of incorporating chatbots in mental health treatment. AI is used for mental health diagnosis and treatment decision-making and to train therapists on virtual patients. Chatbots are employed as always-available intermediaries with therapists, flagging symptoms for human intervention. But chatbots are also sold as stand-alone virtual therapists or as friends and lovers. (...) There is evidence that these uses of AI and chatbots can provide better quality service, improve accessibility, and lower costs. The systems can reduce the stigma and shame of sharing their problems and leverage a mass of biometric and behavioral data to supplement self-reports. As the systems' intelligence rapidly improves, they will need to be rigorously tested for the accuracy and precision of their diagnoses and the quality of their interactions with patients. As chatbots become indistinguishable from humans and leverage their superhuman capacity to detect affect and draw on knowledge of a patient’s life, patients will be drawn to attribute personality to and relationship with the chatbot. Consequently, it will be essential to study what the “therapeutic alliance” with an actual human counselor provides and the risks of patients attributing such a relationship to a one-sided or “parasocial” relationship. (shrink)

Codes of ethics currently offer no guidance to scientists acting in capacity of expert. Yet communicating their expertise is one of the most important activities of scientists. Here I argue that expert communication has a specifically ethical dimension, and that experts must face a fundamental trade-off between "actionability" and "transparency" when communicating. Some recommendations for expert communication are suggested.

The dominant view on the ethics of cognitive enhancement (CE) is that CE is beholden to the principle of autonomy. However, this principle does not seem to reflect commonly held ethical judgments about enhancement. Is the principle of autonomy at fault, or should common judgments be adjusted? Here I argue for the first, and show how common judgments can be justified as based on a principle of service.

Niche construction is a concept that captures a wide array of biological phenomena, from the environmental effects of metabolism to the creation of complex structures such as termite mounds and beaver dams. A central point in niche construction theory is that organisms do not just passively undergo developmental, ecological, or evolutionary processes, but are also active participants in them Evolution: From molecules to men, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Laland KN, Odling-Smee J, Feldman MW, In: KN Laland and T Uller (...) Evolutionary causation: Biological and philosophical reflections, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2019). In this paper, we distinguish between two fundamentally different ways in which organisms are active participants: as agents and as contributors. Roughly, organisms act as agents when niche constructing effects are a result of a goal-directed behavior over which the organisms have some degree of control. Organisms act as contributors when the niche constructing effects do not arise from a goal to perform the constructive activity. As illustrative examples we discuss plants altering leaf-morphology to optimize light exposure as reported by Sultan and bacteria creating novel niches through excreting energy-rich metabolites. The difference between agential and contributional niche construction is important for understanding the different ways organisms can actively participate in development, ecology, and evolution. Additionally, this distinction can increase our understanding of how the capacity of agency is distributed across the tree of life and how agency influences developmental and evolutionary processes. (shrink)

We propose that measures of information integration can be more straightforwardly interpreted as measures of agency rather than of consciousness. This may be useful to the goals of consciousness research, given how agency and consciousness are “duals” in many (although not all) respects.

The success of precision medicine depends on obtaining large amounts of information about at-risk populations. However, getting consent is often difficult. Why? In this commentary I point to the differentials in social status involved. These differentials are inevitable once personal information is surrendered, but are particularly intense when the studied populations are socioeconomically or socioculturally disadvantaged and/or ethnically stigmatized groups. I suggest how the deep distrust of the latter groups can be partially justified as a lack of confidence that their (...) core values or interests will sufficiently be taken into account. Hence, the ethical challenge here lies not in avoiding status differentials, but in dealing with them appropriately. Scientists should not assume trust from others but adopt a norm of “demonstrating trustworthiness”. (shrink)

Recently, dramatic price increases by several pharmaceutical companies have provoked public outrage. These scandals raise questions both about how pharmaceutical firms should be regulated and about how pharmaceutical executives ethically ought to make pricing decisions when drug prices are largely unregulated. Though there is an extensive literature on the regulatory question, the ethical question has been largely unexplored. This article defends a Kantian approach to the ethics of pharmaceutical pricing in an unregulated market. To the extent possible, pharmaceutical companies must (...) price drugs so that those who genuinely need them can get them without financial ruin. This requirement is an ethical side constraint, like the moral prohibitions on deception and theft, that takes precedence over a business’s interest in maximizing profit. That said, the requirement’s application is sensitive to the need to recoup the costs of research and to produce a return that financially justifies the original investment. It may not be either feasible or desirable for government to attempt to enforce the ethical requirements concerning just pharmaceutical pricing. Either price regulation or subsidy could fulfill government’s obligation to protect patients from being objectionably vulnerable to pricing decisions by private companies. (shrink)

Melancholia is an attunement of despair and despondency that can involve radical disruptions to temporal experience. In this article, I extrapolate from the existing analyses of melancholic time to examine some of the important existential implications of these temporal disruptions. In particular, I focus on the way in which the desynchronization of melancholic time can complicate the melancholic’s relation to death and, consequently, to the meaning and significance of their life. Drawing on Heidegger’s distinction between death and demise, I argue (...) that melancholic time leaves the melancholic in an impossible state of existing, where they are both unable to live and unable to die. Turning to the role of the physician, I consider the significant role that clinical interventions might have in resynchronizing the melancholic with time and examine these ideas further through a case study on physician-assisted suicide. In so doing, I demonstrate that the desynchronization of melancholic time should indeed be understood as a matter of life and death. (shrink)

Increasingly complex and autonomous systems require machine ethics to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks to society arising from the new technology. It is challenging to decide which type of ethical theory to employ and how to implement it effectively. This survey provides a threefold contribution. First, it introduces a trimorphic taxonomy to analyze machine ethics implementations with respect to their object (ethical theories), as well as their nontechnical and technical aspects. Second, an exhaustive selection and description of relevant (...) works is presented. Third, applying the new taxonomy to the selected works, dominant research patterns, and lessons for the field are identified, and future directions for research are suggested. (shrink)

Background Professional communities such as the medical community are acutely concerned with negligence: the category of misconduct where a professional does not live up to the standards expected of a professional of similar qualifications. Since science is currently strengthening its structures of self-regulation in parallel to the professions, this raises the question to what extent the scientific community is concerned with negligence, and if not, whether it should be. By means of comparative analysis of medical and scientific codes of conduct, (...) we aim to highlight the role of negligence provisions in codes of conduct for scientists, and to discuss the normative consequences for future codes of conduct. -/- Methods We collected scientific and medical codes of conduct in a selection of OECD countries, and submitted each code of conduct to comparative textual analysis. -/- Results Negligence is invariably listed as an infraction of the norms of integrity in medical codes of conduct, but only rarely so in the scientific codes. When the latter list negligence, they typically do not provide any detail on the meaning of ‘negligence’. -/- Discussion Unlike codes of conduct for professionals, current codes of conduct for scientists are largely silent on the issue of negligence, or explicitly exclude negligence as a type of misconduct. In the few cases where negligence is stipulated to constitute misconduct, no responsibilities are identified that would help prevent negligence. While we caution against unreasonable negligence provisions as well as disproportionate sanctioning systems, we do argue that negligence provisions are crucial for justified trust in the scientific community, and hence that there is a very strong rationale for including negligence provisions in codes of conduct. (shrink)

Philosophers of science and metascientists alike typically model scientists’ behavior as driven by credit maximization. In this article I argue that this modeling assumption cannot account for how scientists have a default level of trust in each other’s assertions. The normative implication of this is that science policy should not focus solely on incentive reform.

Enlightenment values are built around the presumption of an independent rational self, citizen, consumer and pursuer of self-interest. Even the authoritarian and communitarian variants of the Enlightenment presumed the existence of autonomous individuals, simply arguing for greater weight to be given to their collective interests. Since Hume, however, radical Enlightenment empiricists have called into question the existence of a discrete, persistent self. Today neuroscientific reductionism has contributed to the rejection of an essentialist model of personal identity. Contemporary transhumanism has yet (...) to grapple with the radical consequences of the erosion of liberal individualism on their projects of individually chosen enhancement and longevity. Most transhumanists still reflect an essentialist idea of personal identity, even as they embrace projects of radical cognitive enhancement that would change every constituent element of consciousness. Transhumanists need to grapple with how their projects and ethics would change if personal identity is an arbitrary, malleable fiction. (shrink)

Social media has invaded our private, professional, and public lives. While corporations continue to portray social media as a celebration of self-expression and freedom, public opinion, by contrast, seems to have decidedly turned against social media. Yet we continue to use it just the same. What is social media, and how should we live with it? Is it the promise of a happier and more interconnected humanity, or a vehicle for toxic self-promotion? In this essay I examine the very structure (...) of social media communications in order to sketch how we should engage with social media. Social media communications are, I argue, a public communication of private content. This allows connections to be made with others in ways that would not otherwise be possible; however, it also submits the private to a status competition, which in turn is linked to mental health challenges. A ‘virtuous’ engagement with social media means being aware of these dynamics, and choosing to subordinate social media to other, more important goods. (shrink)

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied for decision-making processes, ethical decisions pose challenges for AI applications. Given that humans cannot always agree on the right thing to do, how would ethical decision-making by AI systems be perceived and how would responsibility be ascribed in human-AI collaboration? In this study, we investigate how the expert type (human vs. AI) and level of expert autonomy (adviser vs. decider) influence trust, perceived responsibility, and reliance. We find that participants consider humans to be (...) more morally trustworthy but less capable than their AI equivalent. This shows in participants’ reliance on AI: AI recommendations and decisions are accepted more often than the human expert’s. However, AI team experts are perceived to be less responsible than humans, while programmers and sellers of AI systems are deemed partially responsible instead. (shrink)

Environmental heterogeneity is invoked as a key explanatory factor in the adaptive evolution of a surprisingly wide range of phenomena. This article aims to analyze this explanatory scheme of categorizing traits or properties as adaptations to environmental heterogeneity. First it is suggested that this scheme can be understood as a reaction to how heterogeneity adaptations were discounted or ignored in the modern synthesis. Then a positive account is proposed, distinguishing between two broad categories of adaptation to environmental heterogeneity: properties selected (...) for by well-defined patterns of environmental heterogeneity, and properties that help organisms exploit novel patterns of environmental heterogeneity. (shrink)

People have sought ways to improve their physical and mental capabilities for thousands of years. For those of us who believe that human enhancement technologies include clothes, tools and weapons, the politics of enhancement started in prehistory. The norms of pre-industrial societies that only certain castes or genders could touch specific tools or wear certain clothes were preliminary politics of enhancement. Prosthetic limbs are thousands of years old, and by the 15th century, there were multiple experiments with vaccination around the (...) world. Although it would be appropriate to write a history of the various forms of empowerment that have taken place since the dawn of civilisation, this volume – that now we can present to the lectors – will be on the debates about human enhancement that began in the early 20th century, once modern medicine had begun to suggest actual technologies for human augmentation. Before examining the relationship between human enhancement and biopolitics (the subject of our work), it is helpful to say a few words about the series in which this volume appears, a series that bears the same title as this first text and which opens with contributions from the best scientific experts on the subject. (shrink)

Government’s use of imprisonment raises distinctive moral issues. Even if government has broad authority to make and to enforce law, government may not be entitled to use imprisonment as a punishment for all the criminal laws it is entitled to make. Indeed, there may be some serious crimes that it is wrong to punish with imprisonment, even if the conditions of imprisonment are humane and even if no adequate alternative punishments are available.

While the debate on values in science focuses on normative questions on the level of the individual (e.g. should researchers try to make their work as value free as possible?), comparatively little attention has been paid to the institutional and professional norms that researchers are expected to follow. To address this knowledge gap, we conduct a content analysis of leading national codes of conduct for research integrity of European countries, and structure our analysis around the question: do these documents allow (...) for researchers to be influenced by “non-epistemic” (moral, cultural, commercial, political, etc.) values or do they prohibit such influence in compliance with the value-free ideal (VFI) of science? Our results return a complex picture. On the one hand, codes of conduct consider many non-epistemic values to be a legitimate influence on the decision-making of researchers. On the other, most of these documents include what we call _VFI-like positions_: passages claiming that researchers should be free and independent from any external influence. This shows that while many research integrity documents do not fully endorse the VFI, they do not reject it and continue to be implicitly influenced by it. This results in internal tensions and underdetermined guidance on non-epistemic values that may limit some of the uses of research integrity codes, especially for purposes of ethical self-regulation. While codes of conduct cannot be expected to decide how researchers should act in every instance, we do suggest that they acknowledge the challenges of how to integrate non-epistemic values in research in a more explicit fashion. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the apraxia argument in Cicero’s Academica. It proposes that the argument assumes two modes: the evidential mode maintains that skepticism is false, while the pragmatic claims that it is disadvantageous. The paper then develops a tension between the two modes, and concludes by exploring some differences between ancient and contemporary skepticism.

I argue that in the Phaedo, Plato maintains that the soul is located in space and is capable of locomotion and of interacting with the body through contact. Numerous interpreters have dismissed these claims as merely metaphorical, since they assume that as an incorporeal substance, the soul cannot possess spatial attributes. But careful examination of how Plato conceives of the body throughout his corpus reveals that he does not distinguish it from the soul in terms of spatiality. Furthermore, assigning spatial (...) attributes to the soul plays an important role in Plato’s account of the relation of body and soul. (shrink)

Near the middle of his first discussion with Lysis, Socrates asks an odd question—he asks if Lysis’ mother lets him play with her loom or touch her woolworking tools (208d1-e2). It is one of many odd questions, of course, but it is odd nonetheless. Odd, and also funny: it is the one of just two comments in the book that makes Lysis laugh. This question, I argue, reveals the profound depth of Socrates’ inquiry about Lysis’ views about himself and his (...) loved ones. Indeed, the challenge is so profound that at first the only response is laughter. One aspect is a challenge to certain ideals of masculinity, and so I briefly discuss Athenian conceptions of gender and masculinity, along with some Platonic questioning of these conceptions. Reading the Lysis through the lens of gender reveals not only the continued relevance of such a lens, but also the intensity of Socrates’ work, which calls into question basic social structures and markers of identity, like gender, in its pursuit of a liberatory turn to philosophy. We gain insight into his challenge to Athenian understanding of masculinity by observing the way that Socrates’ argumentation undermines much of it, and we more fully appreciate Socrates’ arguments if we see that they intend to subvert gendered expectations. The setting of the dialogue, the questions Socrates asks, and the responses from Lysis all reinforce that what is at stake in the text is Lysis’ character, including his masculinity. (shrink)

Implicit contextual factors mean that the boundary between causal and noncausal explanation is not as neat as one might hope: as the phenomenon to be explained is given descriptions with varying degrees of granularity, the nature of the favored explanation alternates between causal and non-causal. While it is not surprising that different descriptions of the same phenomenon should favor different explanations, it is puzzling why re-describing the phenomenon should make any difference for the causal nature of the favored explanation. I (...) argue that this is a problem for the ontic framework of causal and noncausal explanation, and instead propose a pragmatic-modal account of causal and non-causal explanation. This account has the added advantage of dissolving several important disagreements concerning the status of non-causal explanation. (shrink)

A principal challenge facing the progressive bioethics project is the crafting of a consistent message on biopolitical issues that divide progressives. -/- The regulation of enhancement technologies is one of the issues central to this emerging biopolitics, pitting progressive defenders of enhancement, “technoprogressives,” against progressive critics. This essay [PDF] will argue that technoprogressive biopolitics express the consistent application of the core progressive values of the Enlightenment: the right of individuals to control their own bodies, brains and reproduction according to their (...) own conscience, under democratic states that work for the public good. -/- Insofar as left bioconservatives want to ensure the safety of therapies and their equitable distribution, these concerns can be addressed by thorough and independent regulation and a universal health care system, and a progressive bioethics of enhancement can unite both enthusiasts and skeptics. Insofar as bioconservative concerns are motivated by deeper hostility to the Enlightenment project however, by assertion of pre-modern reverence for human uniqueness for instance, then a common program is unlikely. -/- imageAfter briefly reviewing the political history and contemporary landscape of biopolitical debates about enhancement, the essay outlines three meta-policy contexts that will impact future biopolicy: the pressure to establish a universal, cost-effective health insurance system, the aging of industrial societies, and globalization. Technoprogressive appeals are outlined that can appeal to key constituencies, and build a majority coalition in support of progressive change. Finally, some guiding principles for a technoprogressive approach to biopolicy are offered. (shrink)

In “Melancholia, temporal disruption, and the torment of being both unable to live and unable to die”, I discuss the way in which the temporal desynchronization of melancholia can disrupt the melancholic’s relation to their own death and, on a Heideggerian interpretation, the meaning and significance of their life. In their thoughtful commentaries, Kevin Aho and Gareth Owen draw out some important points for further elaboration and clarification, the most pressing of which invoke Heidegger’s interpretation of time and the radical (...) temporalities of fundamental attunements. As Aho anticipates, this is the conception of time that underpins my interpretation of melancholia and, because this is important... (shrink)

Many assume that whenever government is entitled to make a law, it is entitled to enforce that law coercively. I argue that the justification of legal authority and the justification of governmental coercion come apart. Both in ideal theory and in actual human societies, governments are sometimes entitled to make laws that they are not entitled to enforce coercively.

The elimination of gatekeepers for scientific publication has been represented as a means to promote the core moral values of open science, including democratic decision-making and inclusiveness. I argue that this framing ignores the reality that gatekeeping is a way of structuring prestige hierarchies, and that without gatekeeping, some other structuring would be needed: the flattening of prestige hierarchies is not possible given scientists’ need to navigate information overload. I consider two potential restructurings of prestige hierarchies, one based on citation (...) count and the other on search algorithm rank. These are shown to simply reintroduce status biases and hierarchies in ways that either do not further the open science ideals of democracy and inclusiveness, or else involve some de facto gatekeeping. Gatekeeper elimination should not be thought of as an intrinsic part of the open science movement. In fact, insofar as gatekeeping is guided by professional ideals of impartiality and diligence, it can be thought of as an ally of open science values. (shrink)

When a business has competitors that break a burdensome law, is it morally required to obey this law, or may it break the law to avoid an unfair competitive disadvantage? Though this ethical question is pervasive in the business world, many non-skeptical theories of the obligation to obey the law cannot give it a clear answer. A broadly Kantian account, by contrast, can explain why businesspeople ought to obey laws of a certain type even under competitive pressure, namely laws that (...) play a direct role in defining rights to use physical or financial resources free from substantial interference. Businesspeople must obey these laws even at the cost of allowing their businesses to fail and even when the acts proscribed are mala prohibita. This argument for obeying the law in competitive contexts has limited scope. Considerations of fairness or self-preservation may justify violating laws of other types under competitive pressure. (shrink)