La interpretación de la dialéctica hegeliana que el joven Marcuse lleva a cabo en sus escritos tempranos «Sobre el problema de la dialéctica I y II» (1930-1931) y «Ontología de Hegel y teoría de la historicidad» (1932) contrarresta las críticas de Heidegger a la dialéctica de Hegel. La lectura de ambos autores también diverge en su comprensión acerca del estatuto y el alcance del fenómeno de la temporalidad en la filosofía hegeliana. Sin embargo, cuando dilucida el concepto de historicidad (Geschichtlichkeit) (...) en Hegel, Marcuse advierte la tensión existente en su sistema entre el concepto ontológico de «vida» y la idea del «saber absoluto». A partir de su entrada en el Institut für Sozialforschung, el autor berlinés abandonará la tematización del concepto de historicidad —tarea que había ocupado un lugar central en sus primeros escritos— por considerar que dicho concepto, demasiado distorsionado por la tradición ontológico-existencial, es inconciliable con la dialéctica materialista. (shrink)

Dewey’s book is the first systematic attempt at a pragmatistic logic (since the work of Peirce). Because of the ambiguity of the concept of pragmatism, the author rejects the concept in general. But, if one interprets pragmatism correctly, then this book is ‘through and through Pragmatistic’. What he understands as ‘correct’ will become clear in the following account. The book takes its subject matter far beyond the traditional works on logic. It is a material logic first in the sense that (...) the matter of logic (the ‘objects’, that with which logical thought has to do) is thoroughly included in the cycle of investigation, and logical ‘forms’ are discussed only in their constitutional connection with this .. (shrink)

Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...) his argument suggestive, if not entirely transparent. I do think there is at least an important kernel of truth even in (iii), and that (i) ultimately explains what’s right about the other two. Consciousness of an impossibility makes belief in the obtaining of the corresponding state of affairs an impossibility. Interestingly, an appreciation of this fact brings into view a novel conception of inference, according to which it consists in the consciousness of necessity. This essay outlines and defends this position. A central element of the defense is that it reveals how reasoners satisfy what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition and do so without engendering regress. (shrink)

Co-parents who differ in their ideal child rearing policies should compromise, argues Marcus William Hunt. Josh Milburn and Carlo Alvaro dispute this when it comes to veganism. Milburn argues that veganism is a matter of justice and that to compromise over justice is (typically) impermissible. I suggest that compromise over justice is often permissible, and that compromise over justice may be required by justice itself. Alvaro offers aesthetic, gustatory, and virtue-based arguments for ethical veganism, showing that veganism involves sensibilities (...) and virtues, and argues that veganism involves a belief. Alvaro takes this to show that parental compromise is impermissible. I suggest that Alvaro’s arguments are implausible and that the shaping of a child’s sensibilities and virtues is an apt matter for parental compromise. (shrink)

Is it impossible for a person to do something intentionally without knowing that she is doing it? The phenomenon of self-deceived agency might seem to show otherwise. Here the agent is not lying, yet disavows a correct description of her intentional action. This disavowal might seem expressive of ignorance. However, I show that the self-deceived agent does know what she's doing. I argue that we should understand the factors that explain self-deception as masking rather than negating the practical knowledge characteristic (...) of intentional action. This masking takes roughly the following form: when we are deceiving ourselves about what we are intentionally doing, we don't think about our action because it's painful to do so. (shrink)

We argue that honesty in assertion requires non-empirical knowledge that what one asserts is what one believes. Our argument proceeds from the thought that to assert honestly, one must follow and not merely conform to the norm ‘Assert that p only if you believe that p’. Furthermore, careful consideration of cases shows that the sort of doxastic self-knowledge required for following this norm cannot be acquired on the basis of observation, inference, or any other form of detection of one’s own (...) doxastic states. It is, as we put it, transparent rather than empirical self-knowledge. (shrink)

I claim that there is pro tanto moral reason for parents to not raise their child on a vegan diet because a vegan diet bears a risk of harm to both the physical and the social well-being of children. After giving the empirical evidence from nutrition science and sociology that supports this claim, I turn to the question of how vegan parents should take this moral reason into account. Since many different moral frameworks have been used to argue for veganism, (...) this is a complex question. I suggest that, on some of these moral frameworks, the moral reason that some parents have for not raising their child on a vegan diet on account of this risk is plausibly as strong as the reason they have for raising their child on a vegan diet. In other words, the moral reason I outline is weighty enough to justify some vegan parents in plausibly finding it permissible to not raise their child on a vegan diet. (shrink)

Across two studies the hypotheses were tested that stressful situations affect both leadership ethical acting and leaders' recognition of ethical dilemmas. In the studies, decision makers recruited from 3 sites of a Swedish multinational civil engineering company provided personal data on stressful situations, made ethical decisions, and answered to stress-outcome questions. Stressful situations were observed to have a greater impact on ethical acting than on the recognition of ethical dilemmas. This was particularly true for situations involving punishment and lack of (...) rewards. The results are important for the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of an organization, especially with regard to the analysis of the Stressors influencing managerial work and its implications for ethical behavior. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

How do you know what you want? Philosophers have lately developed sophisticated accounts of the practical and doxastic knowledge that are rooted in the point of view of the subject. Our ability to just say what we are doing or what we believe—that is, to say so authoritatively, but not on the basis of observation or evidence—is an aspect of our ability to reason about the good and the true. However, no analogous route to orectic self-knowledge is feasible. Knowledge of (...) desire is distinctive in being a matter of our affective response to imagined prospects. An examination of this idea yields the following thesis: I know what I want just in case the object pursued in anticipation of a certain pleasure actually yields the anticipated pleasure. (shrink)

This article argues that diverse theorists have reasons to theorize about fairness in nonideal conditions, including theorists who reject fairness in ideal theory. It then develops a new all-purpose model of ‘nonideal fairness.’ §1 argues that fairness is central to nonideal theory across diverse ideological and methodological frameworks. §2 then argues that ‘nonideal fairness’ is best modeled by a nonideal original position adaptable to different nonideal conditions and background normative frameworks (including anti-Rawlsian ones). §3 then argues that the parties to (...) the model have grounds to seek a variety of remedial social, legal, cultural, and economic ‘nonideal primary goods’ for combating injustice, as well as grounds to distribute these goods in an equitable and inclusive manner. Finally, I illustrate how the model indexes the nonideal primary goods it justifies to different nonideal contexts and background normative frameworks, illustrating why diverse theorists should find the model and its output principles attractive. (shrink)

This paper shows that several live philosophical and scientific hypotheses – including the holographic principle and multiverse theory in quantum physics, and eternalism and mind-body dualism in philosophy – jointly imply an audacious new theory of free will. This new theory, "Libertarian Compatibilism", holds that the physical world is an eternally existing array of two-dimensional information – a vast number of possible pasts, presents, and futures – and the mind a nonphysical entity or set of properties that "read" that physical (...) information off to subjective conscious awareness (in much the same way that a song written on an ordinary compact-disc is only played when read by an outside medium, i.e. a CD-player). According to this theory, every possible physical “timeline” in the multiverse may be fully physically deterministic or physically-causally closed but each person’s consciousness still entirely free to choose, ex nihilo, outside of the physical order, which physically-closed timeline is experienced by conscious observers. Although Libertarian Compatibilism is admittedly fantastic, I show that it not only follows from several live scientific and philosophical hypotheses, I also show that it (A) is a far more explanatorily powerful model of quantum mechanics than more traditional interpretations (e.g. the Copenhagen, Everett, and Bohmian interpretations), (B) makes determinate, testable empirical predictions in quantum theory, and finally, (C) predicts and explains the very existence of a number of philosophical debates and positions in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will. First, I show that whereas traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics are all philosophically problematic and roughly as ontologically “extravagant” as Libertarian Compatibilism – in that they all posit “unseen” processes – Libertarian Compatibilism is nearly identical in structure to the only working simulation that human beings have ever constructed capable of reproducing (and so explaining) every general feature of quantum mechanics we perceive: namely, massive-multiplayer-online-roleplaying videogames (or MMORPGs). Although I am not the first to suggest that our world is akin to a computer simulation, I show that existing MMORPGs (online simulations we have already created) actually reproduce every general feature of quantum mechanics within their simulated-world reference-frames. Second, I show that existing MMORPGs also replicate (and so explain) many philosophical problems we face in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will – all while conforming to the Libertarian Compatibilist model of reality. -/- I conclude, as such, that as fantastic and metaphysically extravagant as Libertarian Compatibilism may initially seem, it may well be true. It explains a number of features of our reality that no other physical or metaphysical theory does. (shrink)

Chapter 1 of this book argued that moral philosophy should be based on seven principles of theory selection adapted from the sciences. Chapter 2 argued that these principles support basing normative moral philosophy on a particular problem of diachronic instrumental rationality: the ‘problem of possible future selves.’ Chapter 3 argued that a new moral principle, the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative, is the rational solution to this problem. Chapter 4 argued that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three equivalent formulations akin to but superior to (...) Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Chapter 5 argued that my principle’s three formulations make it rational to adopt a Moral Original Position to derive moral principles. The present chapter derives Four Principles of Fairness from the Moral Original Position--principles of coercion minimization, mutual assistance, fair negotiation, and virtue—and unifies them into a single principle of rightness: Rightness as Fairness. Finally, this chapter argues that Rightness as Fairness entails a novel approach to applied ethics called ‘principled fair negotiation’, illustrating how the theory provides a plausible new framework for addressing applied cases including lying, suicide, trolleys, torture, distribution of scarce resources, poverty, and the ethical treatment of animals. (shrink)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)

The effect of violent video games is among the most widely discussed topics in media studies, and for good reason. These games are immensely popular, but many seem morally objectionable. Critics attack them for a number of reasons ranging from their capacity to teach players weapons skills to their ability to directly cause violent actions. This essay shows that many of these criticisms are misguided. Theoretical and empirical arguments against violent video games often suffer from a number of significant shortcomings (...) that make them ineffective. This essay argues that video games are defensible from the perspective of Kantian, Aristotelian, and utilitarian moral theories. (shrink)

I examine how co-parents should handle differing commitments about how to raise their child. Via thought experiment and the examination of our practices and affective reactions, I argue for a thesis about the locus of parental authority: that parental authority is invested in full in each individual parent, meaning that that the command of one parent is sufficient to bind the child to act in obedience. If this full-authority thesis is true, then for co-parents to command different things would be (...) for them to contest one another’s authority. The only course that respects the authority of both parents is for co-parents to agree to command the same thing. Further, what is commanded must not result from a ‘capitulation’ by one co-parent, rather, it should result from a compromise. Parental authority involves a duty to deliberate about which commands it is best to give the child. If a command results from a capitulation, one parent will rightly think of themselves as not having fulfilled their parental duty. Parental compromises are not best understood as bargains or conflicts, but by the metaphor of gifts given by each parent out of respect for the other’s authority. (shrink)

Peer review is often taken to be the main form of quality control on academic research. Usually journals carry this out. However, parts of maths and physics appear to have a parallel, crowd-sourced model of peer review, where papers are posted on the arXiv to be publicly discussed. In this paper we argue that crowd-sourced peer review is likely to do better than journal-solicited peer review at sorting papers by quality. Our argument rests on two key claims. First, crowd-sourced peer (...) review will lead on average to more reviewers per paper than journal-solicited peer review. Second, due to the wisdom of the crowds, more reviewers will tend to make better judgments than fewer. We make the second claim precise by looking at the Condorcet Jury Theorem as well as two related jury theorems developed specifically to apply to peer review. (shrink)

This book outlines a unified theory of prudence and morality that merges a wide variety of findings in behavioral neuroscience with philosophically sophisticated normative theorizing. Chapter 1 lays out the emerging behavioral neuroscience of prudence and morality. Chapter 2 then outlines a new theory of prudence as fairness to oneself across time. Chapter 3 then derives a revised version of my 2016 moral theory--Rightness as Fairness--from this theory of prudence, showing how the theory of prudence defends Rightness as Fairness against (...) various critiques and unifies prudence, morality, and justice. Chapter 4 then argues that this theory explains a variety of normative philosophical and empirical neuroscientific phenomena better than alternatives. Finally, Chapter 5 responds to potential objections and explores future research avenues. (shrink)

Anscombe famously argues that to act intentionally is to act under a description, and that “it is the agent's knowledge of what he is doing that gives the descriptions under which what is going on is the execution of an intention.” Further, she takes ‘knows’ to mean that the agent can give these descriptions herself. It would seem to follow that animals cannot act intentionally. However, she denies this, insisting that although animals cannot express intentions, they can have them. But (...) how can we speak without equivocation of humans and animals acting intentionally while maintaining that linguistic expressibility is an essential characteristic of only human action? The human capacity for articulation, I argue, transforms animal intention in the following way: Whereas animal intentions are immanent in their behavior, human action is an actualization of the power to make judgments about what is to-be-done; this confers on human intentions a distinctive sort of independence from behavior. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates something that Kant notoriously claimed to be possible, but which Kant scholars today widely believe to be impossible: unification of all three formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Part 1 of this paper tells a broad-brush story of how I understand Kant’s theory of practical reason and morality, showing how the three formulations of the Categorical Imperative appear to be unified. Part 2 then provides clear textual support for each premise in the argument for my interpretation.

How homogenous are the sources of human motivation? Textbook Humeans hold that every human action is motivated by desire, thus any heterogeneity derives from differing objects of desire. Textbook Kantians hold that although some human actions are motivated by desire, others are motivated by reason. One question in this vicinity concerns whether there are states such that to be in one is at once take the world to be a certain way and to be motivated to act: the state-question. My (...) question here is different: whether passion and reason constitute distinct sources of human motivation: the source question. In this essay, I defend an affirmative answer to the source-question while remaining neutral on the state-question. I distinguish between what I call orectic desires, which are associated with the appetites, and anorectic desires, which are associated with judgments of the good. I argue that the two sorts of desires constitute distinct sources of motivation initially on the basis of their differing epistemological profiles. Specifically, self-attributions of anorectic desires are governed by the transparency condition, self-attributions of orectic desires are not. It emerges from this discussion that the motivation for performing an action arises in very different ways from each sort of desire. This difference, in turn, is explained by their differing relations to the will. Roughly, an orectic desire influences the will, but an anorectic desire is the will. The motivation to perform some of our actions derives simply from the determination that they are to-be-done—from reason. (shrink)

This article argues that if panpsychism is true, then there are grounds for thinking that digitally-based artificial intelligence may be incapable of having coherent macrophenomenal conscious experiences. Section 1 briefly surveys research indicating that neural function and phenomenal consciousness may be both analog in nature. We show that physical and phenomenal magnitudes—such as rates of neural firing and the phenomenally experienced loudness of sounds—appear to covary monotonically with the physical stimuli they represent, forming the basis for an analog relationship between (...) the three. Section 2 then argues that if this is true and micropsychism—the panpsychist view that phenomenal consciousness or its precursors exist at a microphysical level of reality—is also true, then human brains must somehow manipulate fundamental microphysical-phenomenal magnitudes in an analog manner that renders them phenomenally coherent at a macro level. However, Sect. 3 argues that because digital computation abstracts away from microphysical-phenomenal magnitudes—representing cognitive functions non-monotonically in terms of digits—digital computation may be inherently incapable of realizing coherent macroconscious experience. Thus, if panpsychism is true, digital AI may be incapable of achieving phenomenal coherence. Finally, Sect. 4 briefly examines our argument’s implications for Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory theory of consciousness, which we contend may need to be supplanted by a theory of macroconsciousness as analog microphysical-phenomenal information integration. (shrink)

This study examined correlations between moral value judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), and participant scores on the Short-D3 “Dark Triad” Personality Inventory—a measure of three related “dark and socially destructive” personality traits: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy. Five hundred sixty-seven participants (302 male, 257 female, 2 transgendered; median age 28) were recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk and Yale Experiment Month web advertisements. Different responses to MIS items were initially hypothesized to be “conservative” or “liberal” in line with (...) traditional public divides. Our demographic data confirmed all of these hypothesized categorizations. We then tested two broad, exploratory hypotheses: (H1) the hypothesis that there would be “many” significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad, and (H2) the hypothesis that there would be no significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Machiavellianism or Psychopathy, but “some” significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Narcissism. Because our hypotheses were exploratory and we ran a large number of statistical tests (62 total), we utilized a Bonferroni Correction to set a very high threshold for significance (p = .0008). Our results broadly supported our two hypotheses. We found eleven significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad—all at significance level of p < .00001—but no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and liberal MIS judgments. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments. (shrink)

The paper argues that ‘All varieties of gratitude are only overall fitting when targeted towards agents,’ for instance that any variety of gratitude for the beautiful sunset is only overall fitting if a supernatural agent such as God exists. The first premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ For this premise, intuitive judgments are offered. The second premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is the paradigmatic variety of gratitude.’ For this premise, an aspect of the (...) common consent of philosophers about gratitude is noted and the metaphysical basicness of prepositional gratitude is argued for. This gives the intermediate conclusion that ‘The paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ The fourth premise is that ‘If the paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents, then all varieties of gratitude are overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ To supply the conditional of this premise, the Paradigmatic Fittingness Principle is offered, which states that ‘Paradigmatic emotions set the fittingness conditions for their non-paradigmatic varieties.’ This principle is argued for by noting that it vindicates some popular and plausible intuitive judgements and gives an error theory of why one might think that gratitude could be fittingly targeted towards non-agents, and by suggesting the absence of any other plausible source of fittingness conditions for non-paradigmatic emotions. (shrink)

School boosters are tax-exempt organizations that engage in fundraising efforts to provide public schools with supplementary resources. This paper argues that prevailing forms of school boosting are defeasibly unjust. Section 1 shows that inequalities in public education funding in the United States violate John Rawls’s two principles of domestic justice. Section 2 argues that prevailing forms of school boosting exacerbate and plausibly perpetuate these injustices. Section 3 then contends that boosting thereby defeasibly violates Rawlsian principles of nonideal theory for rectifying (...) injustice. Thus, boosting should be presumptively either made illegal or substantially reformed. Finally, Section 4 responds to potential objections. (shrink)

This chapter discusses different perspectives and trends in social decision making, especially the actual processes used by humans when they make decisions in their everyday lives or in business situations. The chapter uses cognitive psychological techniques to break down these processes and set them in their social context. Most of our decisions are made in a social context and are therefore influenced by other people. If you are at an auction and bidding on a popular item, you will try to (...) guess how long the others will keep in the bidding race. Likewise, when you and another person have to coordinate your decision to win a card game you will also try to think about what the other person know and what s/he will do, so you can adjust your choice. In other words, you are trying to come up with a model of the person and his decision-making process. This involves the capability to think about the thoughts and intentions of others, to put yourself in another person's shoes (perspective taking), and to think recursively about your and another person's over several steps (like in a game of chess). Especially, recursive social reasoning is one of the hallmarks of social decision-making. Whereas observational, competitive and cooperative decision-making can all be seen as trying to maximize the own reward or profit, altruistic decision-making blatantly violates this axiomatic principle of behavioral economics. Yet, altruistic behavior is quite common throughout human society. -/- . (shrink)

The paper offers a three-premise argument that a person with first-hand experience of possession and exorcism, such as an exorcist, can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. (1) “Exorcism involves a process by which the exorcist comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” Cited for (1) are the Gospels, the Roman Ritual, some modern cases of exorcism, and exorcism practices in non-Christian contexts. (2) “If defeaters are absent, the exorcist may treat as reliable the (...) process by which he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” For (2) a case is offered that we have a reliable ability to identify when testimony is being offered and when it is being offered by particular types of agents, what is termed testifier-identification. (3) “In many cases of exorcism, defeaters are absent.” An inductive case is given for (3) by responding to possible defeaters, including several suggested recently by David Kyle Johnson. Therefore, in many cases of exorcism the exorcist may treat as reliable the processes by which he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon, and so can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. (shrink)

In the present study it was shown that decision heuristics and confidence judgements play important roles in the building of preferences. Based on a dual-process account of thinking, the study compared people who did well versus poorly on a series of decision heuristics and overconfidence judgement tasks. The two groups were found to differ with regard to their information search behaviour in introduced multiattribute choice tasks. High performers on the judgemental tasks were less influenced in their decision processes by numerical (...) information format (probabilities vs. frequencies) compared to low performers. They also looked at more attributes and spent more time on the multiattribute choice tasks. The results reveal that performance on decision heuristics and overconfidence tasks has a bearing both on heuristic and analytic processes in multiattribute decision making. (shrink)

In reasoning, we draw conclusions from multiple premises. But thinkers can be fragmented. And if there is no single fragment of the agent that thinks all of the premises, then the agent cannot draw any conclusions from them. It follows that reasoning from multiple premises depends on their being thought together. But what is it to think premises together? What is the condition that contrasts with fragmentation? This paper provides an answer to this question that is simple but compelling: to (...) think premises together is to attribute those very thoughts to one and the same self. The ability to reason depends on the ability to attribute the thoughts from which one reasons to oneself. Reasoning—at least the sort of reasoning that we do—requires de se thought. (shrink)

Many critics, Descartes himself included, have seen Hobbes as uncharitable or even incoherent in his Objections to the Meditations on First Philosophy. I argue that when understood within the wider context of his views of the late 1630s and early 1640s, Hobbes's Objections are coherent and reflect his goal of providing an epistemology consistent with a mechanical philosophy. I demonstrate the importance of this epistemology for understanding his Fourth Objection concerning the nature of the wax and contend that Hobbes's brief (...) claims in that Objection are best understood as a summary of the mechanism for scientific knowledge found in his broader work. Far from displaying his confusion, Hobbes's Fourth Objection in fact pinpoints a key weakness of Descartes's faculty psychology: its unintelligibility within a mechanical philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter makes it clear that a significant element of both leadership and decision making is the development aspect. Leaders develop in their decision making by being confronted with difficult decision situations. However, they also develop through various forms of systemized training and education. Different leaders tend to develop in different directions. For this reason, one can identify a number of key leadership styles based on different ways of leading. These different styles are appropriate for various types of organization. Some (...) organizations require a strict and authoritative style, while others are in greater need of a more democratic style. Senior leaders often have the capacity to switch between different leadership styles depending on how the situation develops. In addition, there are a number of key decision-making roles that leaders are expected to manage. These include the role of entrepreneur, problem-solver, resource-allocator and negotiator. Leaders must also learn to work with clarity, conviction, courage, and communication in order to facilitate their decisions. Research shows that leaders who face severe adversity in their careers often are forced to make many difficult decisions. As a result they develop. Being forced to make difficult decisions actually leads to reflection, self-awareness and self-knowledge of one’s own values. Leaders also develop by communicating their problems in a structured way with more experienced colleagues. The fact that leaders develop by making difficult decisions leads to various forms of action having a central role. It is by putting decisions into action that leaders develop, as well as by reflecting on what alternative decisions could have been made. An action perspective on leadership decisions is closely linked to the concept of sense-making. This phenomenon implies observation, action, revision and communication in the aftermath of a decision. There is research indicating that reflection, critical thinking, intuition, ethics and communication are important dimensions of leaders and decision makers who are generally perceived as wise. -/- . (shrink)

Our interest in understanding belief stems partly from our being creatures who think. However, the term ‘belief’ is used to refer to many states: from the fully conscious rational state that partly constitutes knowledge to the fanciful states of alarm clocks. Which of the many ‘belief’ states must a theory of belief be answerable to? This is the scope question. I begin my answer with a reply to a recent argument that belief is invariably weak, i.e., that the evidential standards (...) that are required for belief are low. Although one state we refer to using the term ‘belief’ fits this profile, other ‘belief’ states do not. Crucially, when ‘belief’ is heard in a weak sense, it attributes a state that only a rational creature can be in. I will use this observation as a starting point for an argument that the study of (our) belief should not be constrained by the requirement that the illuminated state be held in common with any non-rational being. This lends support to the Transformative Theory of Rationality, according to which rationality does not merely add powers or complexity to the animal mind, but transforms it into a different kind of mind altogether. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify how IT managers' decision styles affect their evaluation of information technology. Design/methodology/approach – Four different decision styles were assessed in a leadership test directed towards IT managers. Each style included two dimensions: confidence judgment ability and decision heuristic usage. Participants belonging to each style were interviewed and their answers analysed with regard to their reasoning about central areas of IT management. Findings – Results suggest that a decision style combining intuitive (...) and analytical capabilities lead to better evaluations of information technology. Originality/value – The results of the present study are valuable for the understanding of how decision styles impact on IT management in everyday life. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This article argues that philosophers and laypeople commonly conceptualize moral truths or justified moral beliefs as discoverable through intuition, argument, or some other purely cognitive or affective process. It then contends that three empirically well-supported theories all predict that this ‘Discovery Model’ of morality plays a substantial role in causing social polarization. The same three theories are then used to argue that an alternative ‘Negotiation Model’ of morality—according to which moral truths are not discovered but instead created by actively negotiating (...) compromises—promises to reduce polarization by fostering a progressive willingness to ‘work across the aisle’ to settle moral issues cooperatively. This article then examines potential methods for normatively evaluating polarization, arguing there are prima facie reasons to favor the Negotiation Model over the Discovery Model based on their hypothesized effects on polarization. Finally, I outline avenues for further empirical and philosophical research. (shrink)

In a recent study appearing in Neuroethics, I reported observing 11 significant correlations between the “Dark Triad” personality traits – Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy – and “conservative” judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey. Surprisingly, I observed no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments. In order to determine whether these results were an artifact of the particular issues I selected, I ran a follow-up study testing the Dark Triad against conservative and liberal judgments on 15 additional moral (...) issues. The new issues examined include illegal immigration, abortion, the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools, the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terrorism, laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and environmentalism. 1154 participants (680 male, 472 female; median age 29), recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk, completed three surveys: a 15-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), the 28-item Short Dark Triad personality inventory, and a five-item demographic survey. The results strongly reinforce my earlier findings. Twenty-two significant correlations were observed between “conservative” judgments and the Dark Triad (all of which were significant past a Bonferonni-corrected significance threshold of p = .0008), compared to seven significant correlations between Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments (only one of which was significant past p = .0008). This article concludes by developing a novel research proposal for determining whether the results of my two studies are “bad news” for conservatives or liberals. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a unifying approach to the analysis of understanding coherencies and understanding subject matters by highlighting the contextualist nature of understanding. Inspired by the relevant alternatives contextualism about knowledge, I will argue that understanding inherently has context-sensitive features and that a theory of understanding that highlights those features can incorporate our intuitions towards understanding as well as consolidate the different accounts of how to analyse understanding. In developing a contextualist account of understanding, I will argue that (...) an account of the features commonly taken to be central to understanding greatly benefits from a contextualist framework. Central to my analysis will be the claim that a person has to fulfill the function of a competent problem solver in order to qualify for the ascription of understanding. In addition to the theoretical elucidation of my contextualist approach to understanding, a demanding hypothetical scenario will be developed to function as a test case. (shrink)

Liberalism is often claimed to be at odds with feminism and critical race theory (CRT). This article argues, to the contrary, that Rawlsian liberalism supports the central commitments of both. Section 1 argues that Rawlsian liberalism supports intersectional feminism. Section 2 argues that the same is true of CRT. Section 3 then uses Young’s ‘Five Faces of Oppression’—a classic work widely utilized in feminism and CRT to understand and contest many varieties of oppression—to illustrate how Rawlsian liberalism supports diverse feminist (...) and CRT projects, and why it may be critical to achieve solidarity between feminism, CRT, and Rawlsian liberalism. Finally, Section 4 responds to five objections. (shrink)

Many of Margaret Cavendish’s criticisms of Thomas Hobbes in the Philosophical Letters (1664) relate to the disorder and damage that she holds would result if Hobbesian pressure were the cause of visual perception. In this paper, I argue that her “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV is aimed at a different goal: to show the explanatory potency of her account. First, I connect Cavendish’s view of visual perception as “patterning” to the “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV. Second, (...) I provide a potential reply on Hobbes’s behalf that appeals to physiological differences between perceivers’ sense organs, drawing upon Hobbes’s optics in De homine. Third, I argue that such a reply would misunderstand Cavendish’s objective of showing the limited explanatory resources available in understanding visual perception as pressing when compared to her view of visual perception as patterning. (shrink)

Alex Byrne contends that women are (simply) adult human females, claiming that this thesis has considerably greater initial appeal than the justified true belief (JTB) theory of knowledge. This paper refutes Byrne’s thesis in the same way the JTB theory of knowledge is widely thought to have been refuted: through simple counterexamples. Lessons are drawn. One lesson is that women need not be human. A second lesson is that biology and physical phenotypes are both irrelevant to whether someone is a (...) woman, and indeed, female in a gendered sense. A third lesson is that trans women, cis women, alien women, and robot women are all women because to be a woman is to be an adult gendered female. This paper does not purport to settle complex normative questions of ethics or justice, including whether the ordinary meaning of “woman” ought to be retained or changed—though I do note plausible implications for these debates. This paper does purport to settle what the ordinary meaning of “woman” is, and in that regard contribute to important conceptual ground-clearing regarding what constitutes an ameliorative or revisionary definition of “woman.”. (shrink)

This chapter derives and refines a novel normative moral theory and descriptive theory of moral psychology--Rightness as Fairness--from the theory of prudence defended in Chapter 2. It briefly summarizes Chapter 2’s finding that prudent agents typically internalize ‘moral risk-aversion’. It then outlines how this prudential psychology leads prudent agents to want to know how to act in ways they will not regret in morally salient cases, as well as to regard moral actions as the only types of actions that satisfy (...) this prudential interest. It then uses these findings to defend a new derivation of my (2016) theory of morality, Rightness as Fairness, showing how the derivation successfully defends Rightness as Fairness against a variety of objections. The chapter also details how this book’s theory helps to substantiate the claim that Rightness as Fairness unifies a variety of competing moral frameworks: deontology, consequentialism, contractualism, and virtue ethics. Finally, the chapter shows how Chapter 2’s theory of prudence entails some revisions to Rightness as Fairness, including the adoption of a series of Rawlsian original positions to settle moral and social-political issues under ideal and nonideal circumstances—thus entailing a unified normative and descriptive psychological framework for prudence, morality, and justice. (shrink)

Are the circumstances in which moral testimony serves as evidence that our judgement-forming processes are unreliable the same circumstances in which mundane testimony serves as evidence that our mundane judgement-forming processes are unreliable? In answering this question, we distinguish two possible roles for testimony: (i) providing a legitimate basis for a judgement, (ii) providing (‘higher-order’) evidence that a judgement-forming process is unreliable. We explore the possibilities for a view according to which moral testimony does not, in contrast to mundane testimony (...) play role (i), but can play role (ii). We argue that standard motivations for rejecting this hybrid position are unpersuasive but suggest that a more compelling reason might be found in considering the social nature of morality. (shrink)

The status of the laws of nature in Hobbes’s Leviathan has been a continual point of disagreement among scholars. Many agree that since Hobbes claims that civil philosophy is a science, the answer lies in an understanding of the nature of Hobbesian science more generally. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes’s view of the construction of geometrical figures sheds light upon the status of the laws of nature. In short, I claim that the laws play the same role as (...) the component parts – what Hobbes calls the “cause” – of geometrical figures. To make this argument, I show that in both geometry and civil philosophy, Hobbes proceeds by a method of synthetic demonstration as follows: 1) offering a thought experiment by privation; 2) providing definitions by explication of “simple conceptions” within the thought experiment; and 3) formulating generative definitions by making use of those definitions by explication. In just the same way that Hobbes says that the geometer should “put together” the parts of a square to learn its cause, I argue that the laws of nature are the cause of peace. (shrink)

Several recent commentators argue that Thomas Hobbes’s account of the nature of science is conventionalist. Engaging in scientific practice on a conventionalist account is more a matter of making sure one connects one term to another properly rather than checking one’s claims, e.g., by experiment. In this paper, I argue that the conventionalist interpretation of Hobbesian science accords neither with Hobbes’s theoretical account in De corpore and Leviathan nor with Hobbes’s scientific practice in De homine and elsewhere. Closely tied to (...) the conventionalist interpretation is the deductivist interpretation, on which it is claimed that Hobbes believed sciences such as optics are deduced from geometry. I argue that Hobbesian science places simplest conceptions as the foundation for geometry and the sciences in which we use geometry, which provides strong evidence against both the conventionalist and deductivist interpretations. (shrink)

Theorists have long debated whether John Rawls’ conception of justice as fairness can be extended to nonideal (i.e. unjust) social and political conditions, and if so, what the proper way of extending it is. This paper argues that in order to properly extend justice as fairness to nonideal conditions, Rawls’ most famous innovation – the original position – must be reconceived in the form of a “nonideal original position.” I begin by providing a new analysis of the ideal/nonideal theory distinction (...) within Rawls’ theoretical framework. I then systematically construct a nonideal original position, showing that although its parties must have Rawls’ principles of ideal justice and priority relations as background aims, the parties should be entirely free to weigh those aims against whatever burdens and benefits they might face under nonideal conditions. Next, I show that the parties ought to aim to secure for themselves a special class of nonideal primary goods: all-purpose goods similar to Rawls’ original primary goods, but which in this case are all-purpose goods individuals might use to (A) promote Rawlsian ideals under nonideal conditions, (B) weigh Rawls’ principles of ideal justice and priority relations against whatever burdens and benefits they might face under nonideal conditions, and (C) effectively pursue their most favored weighting thereof. I then defend a provisional list of nonideal primary goods which include opportunities to participate effectively in equitable and inclusive grassroots reform movements guided by a series of substantive aims. Finally, I briefly speculate on how the parties to the nonideal original position might deliberate to principles of nonideal justice for distributing nonideal primary goods, suggesting that those goods should be distributed in proportion to unjust disadvantage. (shrink)

The thesis that mental states are physical states enjoys widespread popularity. After the abandonment of typeidentity theories, however, this thesis has typically been framed in terms of state tokens. I argue that token states are a philosopher’s fiction, and that debates about the identity of mental and physical state tokens thus rest on a mistake.

According to the standard interpretation of Einstein’s field equations, gravity consists of mass-energy curving spacetime, and an additional physical force or entity—denoted by Λ (the ‘cosmological constant’)—is responsible for the Universe’s metric-expansion. Although General Relativity’s direct predictions have been systematically confirmed, the dominant cosmological model thought to follow from it—the ΛCDM (Lambda cold dark matter) model of the Universe’s history and composition—faces considerable challenges, including various observational anomalies and experimental failures to detect dark matter, dark energy, or inflation-field candidates. This (...) paper shows that Einstein’s Equivalence Principle entails two possible physical interpretations of General Relativity’s field equations. Although the field equations facially appear to support the standard interpretation—that gravity consists of mass-energy curving spacetime—the field equations can be equivalently understood as holding that gravitational effects instead result from mass-energy accelerating the metric-expansion of a second-order spacetime fabric superimposed upon an absolute, first-order Euclidean space, resulting in the observational appearance of spacetime curvature. This alternative interpretation of relativity is shown to be empirically equivalent to the standard interpretation of relativity, albeit with a changing value for Λ (which is similar to how Λ is understood in the conception of Λ as ‘quintessence’, but in this case takes Λ to be gravity). The reconceptualization is then shown to potentially resolve major observational anomalies for the ΛCDM model, including recent observations conflicting with ΛCDM predictions, as well as failures to directly detect dark matter, dark energy, and inflation field/particle candidates. (shrink)

To begin to answer the question of whether every moral truth could be known by any one individual, this paper examines David Chalmers’ views on the scrutability of moral truths in Constructing the World. Chalmers deals with the question of the scrutability of moral truths ecumenically, claiming that moral truths are scrutable on all plausible metaethical views. I raise two objections to Chalmers’ approach. The first objection is that he confl ates the claim that moral truths are scrutable from PQTI (...) with the claim that moral truths are scrutable from nonmoral truths. The upshot of this objection is that Chalmers has not in fact shown the scrutability of moral truths from the scrutability base from which he proposed to do so, PQTI. The second objection concerns his handling of moral sensibility theory, which fails to take into account certain features of the emotions—features which generate what I term synchronic and diachronic emotional co-instantiation problems. The upshot of this objection is that we have good reason to deny that any one individual could ascertain all moral truths, if moral sensibility theory is true, no matter how idealized the emoter. (shrink)

The life-cycle theory of saving behavior (Modigliani, 1988) suggests that humans strive towards an equal intertemporal distribution of wealth. However, behavioral life-cycle theory (Shefrin & Thaler, 1988) proposes that people use self-control heuristics to postpone wealth until later in life. According to this theory, people use a system of cognitive budgeting known as mental accounting. In the present study it was found that mental accounts were used differently depending on if the income change was positive or negative. This was shown (...) both in a representative nationwide sample of households and in a student sample. Respondents were more willing to cut down on their propensity to consume when faced with an income decrease than to raise it when the income increased. Furthermore, contrary to the predictions of behavioral life-cycle theory, it was found that the respondents adjusted their propensity to consume the most when the income increases or decreases took place immediately. Hence, it is suggested that theories of intertemporal choice (e.g., Loewenstein, 1988; Loewenstein & Prelec, 1992) provide a better account of the data than does the behavioral lifecycle theory. (shrink)