The predicates 'is outgrown by Theaetetus,' 'is 300 miles west of a lemur,' and 'is such that 9 is odd' denote properties, but there is a sense in which these properties are not genuine features of the objects that have them. The fact that we find these mere-Cambridge properties odd has something to do with their relational character. But relationality in itself is not an adequate criterion for property-genuineness for there are many relational properties that do not qualify as (...) mere-Cambridge. The goal of this essay is to isolate the special type of relationality needed to explain what makes a property genuine. In the process, the author evaluates causal accounts of property-genuineness, and shows how the analysis presented is superior. (shrink)

This Chapter is concerned with cases in which we are justified in performing an otherwise prohibited action but not required to perform it. My discussion focusses on cases in which conduct is permitted because it amounts to a ‘lesser evil’. What interests me is the curious nexus that these cases illustrate between justifying reasons and the conclusion that conduct is either permitted or required. So-called reason-based or ‘reasons-first’ accounts hold that our normative conclusions—our conclusions about what we are required to (...) do and what is permissible—are explained by our practical reasons. It is difficult to offer a reason-based account of lesser evils justifications that does not collapse the distinction between the required and the permissible with respect to justified conduct. Some justifying reasons generate mere permissions, rather than requirements. I consider several prominent attempts to account for the distinction. I conclude by suggesting that none of these attempts is adequate without the further concession that some reasons lack deontic or requiring force. (shrink)

The received view is that Kant denies all moral luck. But I show how Kant affirms constitutive moral luck in passages concerning radical evil from Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. First, I explicate Kant’s claims about radical evil. It is a morally evil disposition that all human beings have necessarily, at least for the first part of their lives, and for which they are blameworthy. Second, since these properties about radical evil appear to contradict Kant’s even more (...) famous claims about imputation, ‘ought implies can’, and free will, I unpack Henry Allison’s proof of radical evil and show how it is consistent with interpretations of Kant’s broader views about morality. Third, I define and illustrate the category of constitutive moral luck and argue that Kant embraces the existence of constitutive moral luck given Allison-style interpretations of radical evil. This provides a reason for philosophers to reject the received view, and it creates an occasion for Kantians and Kant scholars to check their reasons if they deny moral luck. (shrink)

Bracket out the wrong of committing a wrong, or conspiring or colluding or conniving with others in their committing one. Suppose you have done none of those things, and you find yourself merely benefiting from a wrong committed wholly by someone else. What, if anything, is wrong with that? What, if any, duties follow from it? If straightforward restitution were possible — if you could just ‘give back’ what you received as a result of the wrongdoing to its rightful owner (...) — then matters are morally more straightforward. But in real-world cases that is often impossible, and questions of ‘how much, from whom and to whom?’ become far more vexing. The beneficiary disgorging all benefits of the wrong is part of the story, but where that is not possible or will not suffice to compensate the victim of wrongdoing we discuss various ways of allocating the cost of making the victim whole, including supplementation from public coffers. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Colin McGinn’s claim that the mind is not miraculous but merely mysterious, and that this mystery is due to the limits of our cognitive faculties. To adequately present the flow and unity of McGinn’s overall argument, I offer an extended and uninterrupted précis of his case, followed by a critique. I will argue that McGinn’s argument is unsuccessful if it is intended to persuade non-naturalists, but nevertheless may be a plausible position for a naturalist, qua (...) naturalist, to take on the mind. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen famously offers a version of the luck objection to libertarianism called the ‘Rollback Argument.’ It involves a thought experiment in which God repeatedly rolls time backward to provide an agent with many opportunities to act in the same circumstance. Because the agent has the kind of freedom that affords her alternative possibilities at the moment of choice, she performs different actions in some of these opportunities. The upshot is that whichever action she performs in the actual-sequence is (...) intuitively a matter of mere chance. I explore a new response to the Rollback Argument. If there are true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom, then the agent performs the same action each time she is placed in the same circumstance, because that is what she would freely do in that circumstance. This response appears to negate the chancy intuition. Ultimately, however, I argue that this new response is unsuccessful, because there is a variant of the Rollback Argument that presents the same basic challenge to the libertarian on the assumption that there are true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom. Thus, true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom do not provide the libertarian with a solution to the Rollback Argument. (shrink)

This paper considers ten questions that those puzzled by or skeptical of extended cognition have posed. Discussion of these questions ranges across substantive, methodological, and dialectical issues in the ongoing debate over extended cognition, such as whether the issue between proponents and opponents of extended cognition is merely semantic or a matter of convention; whether extended cognition should be treated in the same way as extended biology; and whether conscious mental states pose a special problem for the extended mind thesis. (...) Lethocerus, the giant water bug, will be a recurrent reference point for much of the discussion. (shrink)

There is an ethics of blaming the person who deserves blame. The Christian scriptures imply the following no-vengeance condition: a person should not vengefully overtly blame a wrongdoer even if she gives the wrongdoer the exact negative treatment that he deserves. I explicate and defend this novel condition and argue that it demands a revolution in our blaming practices. First, I explain the no-vengeance condition. Second, I argue that the no-vengeance condition is often violated. The most common species of blame (...) involves anger; anger conceptually includes a desire for vengeance; and there are many pleasures in payback. Third, I clarify that it is possible to blame non-vengefully in anger and highlight three good uses for anger in non-vengeful blame. Fourth, I offer two reasons that justify the divine command prohibiting vengeance, and I note that the Christian God is merely sufficient to make non-vengeance morally obligatory. Fifth, I defend the no-vengeance condition against four biblical objections. (shrink)

Causal Determinism (CD) entails that all of a person’s choices and actions are nomically related to events in the distant past, the approximate, but lawful, consequences of those occurrences. Assuming that history cannot be undone nor those (natural) relations altered, that whatever results from what is inescapable is itself inescapable, and the contrariety of inevitability and freedom, it follows that we are completely devoid of liberty: our choices are not freely made; our actions are not freely performed. Instead of disputing (...) the soundness of this reasoning, some philosophers prefer to maintain that we could yet have a small measure of freedom were CD true of our world: although being unable to choose or act differently, one could at least under normal circumstances truly claim to be acting ‘on one’s own’, beyond the control of ‘outside forces’, in a word, autonomous. They further argue that being free in this sense suffices for moral responsibility. Call their philosophy ‘Autonomy Compatibilism’ (AC). -/- In adopting here reactive attitudes towards an agent, one is choosing to highlight the fact that the individual in question is of sound mind, reasoning and acting free from the interference of others. These facts alone, the adherent of AC claims, justify his stance, despite the necessity of the agent’s choices. Why would we not regard a sane individual who is not being coerced, intimidated, deceived or unduly put upon as in charge of his life so as to be responsible for his activities? -/- The Manipulation Argument (MA) is supposed to cut off this line of retreat. Its authors hold that, were CD true of our world, we would be no more autonomous than a victim of “covert, non-constraining control” (CNC): manipulation whereby one person causes another, through the use of methods such as brainwashing or circumspect operant conditioning, to ‘do his bidding’ without the latter being aware of his subjugation or feeling in any way coerced. Since a CNC victim obviously lacks autonomy, then so must “persons” living in a deterministic universe. Defenders of AC have, then, the following argument with which to contend: -/- 1. Victims of CNC (obviously) lack autonomy. 2. Thus, AC would be true only if some definition of autonomy succeeds in specifying a freedom relevant difference between victims of CNC and agents whose choices/actions are necessary consequences of prior events. 3. There could be no such definition. 4. Therefore, AC must be false. -/- The challenge issued here is clear: find a way to refute the claim that being subject to natural laws would be tantamount to being a victim of CNC, to show that Nature is no manipulator. Moreover, this challenge cannot be met by responding with a Frankfurt case: a situation in which things have been surreptitiously arranged so that an agent is unable to avoid doing something that he manages to do ‘on his own’, thus, being autonomous despite his inability to act otherwise. For, even if CD is not inconsistent with autonomy because it eliminates the ability to do otherwise per se, it may yet entail that no human agent ever does act of his own accord, an implication of which would be a lack of alternatives on anyone’s part. In other words, the fact that causally determined beings could never act differently than they do does is perhaps only symptomatic of the reason why such beings would lack autonomy: forces beyond their control would have dominion over their psychological development. Thus, AC advocates must show that the way that an agent’s character would be shaped, were she (merely) subject to natural laws, would leave unimpaired an ability that CNC would destroy. What follows is a definition of this ability, which I also use to solve the Problem of Freedom and Foreknowledge. (shrink)

The going-on problem (GOP) is the central concern of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. It informs not only his epistemology and philosophy of mind, but also his views on mathematics, universals, and religion. In section I, I frame this issue as a matter of accounting for intentionality. Here I follow Saul Kripke's lead. My departure therefrom follows: first, a criticism of Wittgenstein's “straight” conventionalism and, secondly, a defense of a solution Kripke rejects. I proceed under the assumption, borne out in the end, (...) that statements of rule-following have truth-conditions and are not, as Kripke seems willing to concede, merely "assertible" in circumstances of a specified sort. Ultimately, my goal is to demonstrate that intending can be understood in terms of an individual's dispositions rather than those of the community to which she belongs. (shrink)

This essay argues that Anselm’s Proslogium II is self-invalidating and that it must be so in order for Proslogium III to be a valid argument. It begins by differentiating between necessary existence, logical possibility, and contingency, establishing that necessary existence can never be treated as a matter of logical possibility. In turn, possibility must always be defined alongside the concept of contingency. It is then further shown that necessity can in no sense be possible, for the possible implies the contingent (...) at some future time. In the context of Anselm’s Proslogium II, this means that the proposition that that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conceived could exist invalidates Anselm’s conclusion that it does exist in reality for it confines Deity to contingent actuality only. Furthermore, it is shown that the conclusion of Proslogium III—that a necessary being is that than which nothing greater can be conceived—rests on the invalidity of the contingent actuality established in Proslogium II, which is shown to be invalid retrospectively as a logical consequence of the validity of III and prospectively as the condition for the validity of III. It is not that III is merely the stronger of the two arguments; it is, if correct, the only valid argument. (shrink)

I argue that certain kinds of luck can partially determine an agent’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. To make this view clearer, consider some examples. Two identical agents drive recklessly around a curb, and one but not the other kills a pedestrian. Two identical corrupt judges would freely take a bribe if one were offered. Only one judge is offered a bribe, and so only one judge takes a bribe. Put in terms of these examples, I argue that the killer driver and (...) bribe taker are more blameworthy than their counterparts. I offer three arguments for that view, and, in doing so, I exemplify a general way to advance the moral luck debate. First, I argue against an account of moral responsibility that implies that the judges are equally blameworthy. Second, I argue that the killer driver is more blameworthy than the merely reckless driver. Third, I locate an alternative sense in which the agents in each case pair are morally on par. (shrink)

Against several recent interpretations, I argue in this chapter that Immanuel Kant's support for enlightened absolutism was a permanent feature of his political thought that fit comfortably within his larger philosophy, though he saw such rule as part of a transition to democratic self-government initiated by the absolute monarch himself. I support these contentions with (1) a detailed exegesis of Kant’s essay "What is Enlightenment?" (2) an argument that Kantian republicanism requires not merely a separation of powers but also a (...) representative democratic legislature, and (3) a demonstration that each stage of a democratic transition can potentially be in an absolute monarch’s short-run self-interest. (shrink)

The special and unique attitudes that we take towards events in our futures/pasts—e.g., attitudes like the dread of an impeding pain—create a challenge for “Reductionist” accounts that reduce persons to aggregates of interconnected person stages: if the person stage currently dreading tomorrow’s pain is numerically distinct from the person stage that will actually suffer the pain, what reason could the current person stage have for thinking of that future pain as being his? One reason everyday subjects believe they have a (...) substantially extended temporal existence stems from introspection—they introspectively experience their selves as being temporally extended. In this paper, I examine whether a Reductionist about personal identity can co-opt this explanation. Using Galen Strawson’s recent work on self-experience as a resource, I reach both a negative and a positive conclusion about the prospects of such a position. First, the relevant kind of self-experience—i.e., the introspective experience of one’s self as being a substantially temporally extended entity—will not automatically arise within a person stage simply in virtue of that stage being psychologically connected to/continuous with other person stages. Second, the relevant kind of self-experience will arise, however, in virtue of person stages weaving together their respective experiences, actions, etc. via a narrative. This positive conclusion points towards a new Reductionist position that focuses upon a narrative, and not mere psychological continuity, in attempting to justify the special attitudes we take towards events in our futures/pasts. (shrink)

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)

Episodic memory is sometimes described as mental time travel. This suggests three ideas: that episodic memory offers us access to the past that is quasi-experiential, that it is a source of knowledge of the past, and that it is, at root, passive. I offer an account of episodic memory that rejects all three ideas. The account claims that remembering is a matter of representing the past to oneself, in a way suitably responsive to how one experienced the remembered episode to (...) be. I argue that episodic memory is active, in the way this view suggests. I clarify the idea that it is, as the view also implies, not a source of knowledge but an expression of knowledge the subject already has. And I suggest the view need not limit memories to states that are in any way experience-like. This position offers a way to articulate the relations between episodic memory and related phenomena: factual memory, generic memory, remembering-how and anticipation. And it allows us to explain how we know which aspects of our episodic memory states to take seriously and which (such as the shift to an observer perspective on the remembered events) to treat as merely incidental. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg claims that the weakness of evidence for God’s existence is not merely a sign that God is hidden, “it is a revelation that God does not exist.” In Divine Hiddenness : New Essays, Michael J. Murray provides a “soul-making” defense of God’s hiddenness, arguing that if God were not hidden, then some of us would lose what many theists deem a good thing: the ability to develop morally significant characters. In this paper, I argue that Murray’s soul-making (...) defense not only fails to defend God’s hiddenness, it produces an argument for the nonexistence of God. (shrink)

Should we insist on prediction, i.e. on correctly forecasting the future? Or can we rest content with accommodation, i.e. empirical success only with respect to the past? I apply general considerations about this issue to the case of economics. In particular, I examine various ways in which mere accommodation can be sufficient, in order to see whether those ways apply to economics. Two conclusions result. First, an entanglement thesis: the need for prediction is entangled with the methodological role of (...) orthodox economic theory. Second, a conditional predictivism: if we are not committed to orthodox economic theory, then we should demand prediction rather than accommodation – against most current practice. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that large language models (LLMs) subvert the traditional undergraduate philosophy paper. For the enthusiastic, LLMs merely subvert the traditional idea that students ought to write philosophy papers “entirely on their own.” For the more pessimistic, LLMs merely facilitate plagiarism. We believe that these controversies neglect a more basic crisis. We argue that, because one can, with minimal philosophical effort, use LLMs to produce outputs that at least “look like” good papers, many students will complete paper assignments (...) in a way that fails to develop their philosophical abilities. We argue that this problem exists even if students can produce better papers with AI and even if instructors can detect AI-generated content with decent reliability. But LLMs also create a pedagogical opportunity. We propose that instructors shift the emphasis of their assignments from philosophy papers to “LLM dialogues”: philosophical conversations between the student and an LLM. We describe our experience with using these types of assignments over the past several semesters. We argue that, far from undermining quality philosophical instruction, LLMs allow us to teach philosophy more effectively than was possible before. (shrink)

This commentary continues an exchange on eugenics in Monash Bioethics Review between Anomaly (2018), Wilson (2019), and Veit, Anomaly, Agar, Singer, Fleischman, and Minerva (2021). The eponymous question, “Can ‘Eugenics’ be Defended?”, is multiply ambiguous and does not receive a clear answer from Veit et al.. Despite their stated desire to move beyond mere semantics to matters of substance, Veit et al. concentrate on several uses of the term “eugenics” that pull in opposite directions. I argue, first, that Veit (...) et al. (2021) makes much the same error as does Anomaly (2018) in characterizing eugenics; second, that the paper misunderstands the relationship between eugenics and enhancement; and third, that it distorts the views expressed in my “Eugenics Undefended”. (shrink)

According to manipulationist accounts of causal explanation, to explain an event is to show how it could be changed by intervening on its cause. The relevant change must be a ‘serious possibility’ claims Woodward 2003, distinct from mere logical or physical possibility—approximating something I call ‘scientific possibility’. This idea creates significant difficulties: background knowledge is necessary for judgments of possibility. Yet the primary vehicles of explanation in manipulationism are ‘invariant’ generalisations, and these are not well adapted to encoding such (...) knowledge, especially in the social sciences, as some of it is non-causal. Ceteris paribus (CP) laws or generalisations labour under no such difficulty. A survey of research methods such as case and comparative studies, randomised control trials, ethnography, and structural equation modeling, suggests that it would be more difficult and in some instances impossible to try to represent the output of each method in invariant generalisations; and that this is because in each method causal and non-causal background knowledge mesh in a way that cannot easily be accounted for in manipulationist terms. Ceteris paribus-generalisations being superior in this regard, a theory of explanation based on the latter is a better fit for social science. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind commonly draw a distinction between the personal level – the distinctive realm of conscious experience and reasoned deliberation – and the subpersonal level, the domain of mindless mechanism and brute cause and effect. Moreover, they tend to view cognitive science through the lens of this distinction. Facts about the personal level are given a priori, by introspection, or by common sense; the job of cognitive science is merely to investigate the mechanistic basis of these facts. I argue (...) that this view misrepresents the structure of cognitive-scientific enquiry. Taken at face value, cognitive science makes no commitment to the existence of a distinctive level at which persons or selves appear. Thus, in the age of cognitive science, we should not expect to find the self in an ontologically distinct realm. Instead, we should expect to locate it in cognitive-scientific models themselves. In closing, I indicate likely results of this approach. (shrink)

Against several recent interpretations, I argue in this paper that Immanuel Kant's support for enlightened absolutism was a permanent feature of his political thought that fit comfortably within his larger philosophy, though he saw such rule as part of a transition to democratic self-government initiated by the absolute monarch himself. I support these contentions with (1) a detailed exegesis of Kant’s essay "What is Enlightenment?" (2) an argument that Kantian republicanism requires not merely a separation of powers but also a (...) representative democratic legislature, and (3) a demonstration that each stage of a democratic transition can potentially be in an absolute monarch’s short-run self-interest. I conclude the paper by defending Kant's theory of democratization against charges of consequentialism and paternalism and by pointing out its similarity to other accounts of democratic transitions (for example, those of Samuel Huntington and Guillermo O'Donnell), suggesting a previously unnoticed opportunity for cross-fertilization between political philosophy and comparative politics. (shrink)

Conservationists have two types of arguments for why we should conserve ecosystems: instrumental and intrinsic value arguments. Instrumental arguments contend that we ought to conserve ecosystems because of the benefits that humans, or other morally relevant individuals, derive from ecosystems. Conservationists are often loath to rely too heavily on the instrumental argument because it could potentially force them to admit that some ecosystems are not at all useful to humans, or that if they are, they are not more useful than (...) alternative configurations of those ecosystems. Consequently, conservationists often resort to an intrinsic value argument, contending that ecosystems are objectively valuable as ends in themselves, rather than merely as means to an end. If ecosystems have intrinsic value, then they have moral standing, which means that we must consider their needs and interests in any decisions we make about them. This paper concerns the significance of this move for... (shrink)

What is the relation between affective states, such as emotions and pleasure, and imagining? Do the latter cause the former, just as perceptual states do? Or are the former merely imagined, along with suitable objects? I consider this issue against the backdrop of Sartre’s theory of imagination, and drawing on his highly illuminating discussion of it. I suggest that, while it is commonly assumed that imaginative states cause affective responses much as do perceptions, the alternatives merit more careful consideration than (...) they are usually given. (shrink)

A common claim in the philosophy-of-race literature is that the unearned benefits of whiteness can by themselves burden their recipients with special antiracist obligations, i.e., that these benefits can impose duties unilaterally, without the mediation of their recipients’ wills, and that these duties go beyond our general antiracist duties, which derive from our common liberal-democratic citizenship and shared humanity. I will argue against this claim, though I acknowledge that there may be duties that follow from these benefits when they are (...) combined with the affirmation or assertion of, assent to, or even mere acquiescence in white identity. Without such ratification, however, there will be no basis for either special white duties or a distinctively white guilt. (shrink)

The thesis that subsumption is sufficient for explanation is dying out, but the thesis that it is necessary is alive and well. It is difficult to attack this thesis: non-subsumptive counter-examples are declared incomplete, or mere promissory notes. No theory, it is thought, can be explanatory unless it resorts to subsumption at some point. In this paper I attack this thesis by describing a theory that (1) would explain every event it could describe, (2) does not explain by subsumption, (...) and (3) is fundamental in that it is understood to be irreducible (hence there are no unstated laws waiting in the wings). (shrink)

The view that the fetus' potential for human consciousness confers upon it the right to life has been widely criticised on the basis that the notion of potentiality is so vague as to be meaningless, and on the basis that actual rights cannot be deduced from the mere potential for personhood. It has also been criticised, although less commonly, on the basis that it is not the potential to assume consciousness, but rather the potential to resume consciousness which is (...) morally significant, and on the basis that the fetus does not really possess the potential for consciousness. In response, I argue that these criticisms are mistaken and that the potential for human consciousness is a sufficient condition not simply of potential, but actual, personhood. Since it possesses this potential from the moment of conception, the fetus should be considered an actual person from the moment of its conception. (shrink)

One powerful argument against self-ownership is that it degrades personhood by leading individuals to view themselves and others as mere instrumental goods, alienable commodities to be exchanged in markets like other products and services. In general terms, this line of criticism (called the “commodification argument”) maintains that a direct and causal relationship exists between certain legal institutions (self-ownership) and certain attitudes (instrumentalism) and that the undesirability of the latter justifies restrictions on the former. In this article, I will critically (...) examine Margaret Jane Radin’s book Contested Commodities (1996), which presents a well-developed, compelling version of the commodification argument. I will advance three central points over the course of the article: first, the purported causal connection between self-ownership and instrumentalism is either weak or nonexistent; second, the commodification argument does little independent moral work, tending instead to be parasitic on arguments against economic, racial, and gender inequality; and third, what independent moral work it does do seems to be directed not so much at self-ownership as at liberal neutrality. I will conclude by showing that the weaknesses of Radin’s diverse defenses of the commodification argument cast doubt upon the anticommodificationist enterprise as a whole. (shrink)

The as-structure provided by language, even in the sciences, is always constitutive of experience and never merely designative. “From Saying…it comes to pass that the World is made to appear” (Heidegger 1971 [1957]: 101).

Many ethicists maintain that medical research on human subjects that presents no prospect of direct medical benefit must have a prospect of social benefit to be ethical. Payment is not the sort of benefit that justifies exposing subjects to risk. Alan Wertheimer has raised a serious challenge to this view, pointing out that in industry, social value is not considered necessary to make dangerous jobs ethical. This article argues that Wertheimer was correct to think that the ethics of hazard pay (...) should be the same in medical research and in business. Nevertheless, a qualified social benefit requirement should apply in both fields. For a study or a job with significant net physical risk to be ethical, it must have social value beyond the satisfaction of ordinary preferences, including the preference for money. The requirement derives from a non-absolutist version of the doctrine of double effect. If a risky study or a dangerous job has no distinctive social value, and hazard pay is subjects' or workers’ only reason to undergo risks, the very fact that they undergo risk is intended as a means to a financial end. Inviting people to enrol in such a study or to take such a job wrongfully treats people as mere means. By contrast, if a study or a job has social value, people can participate with a primary end other than money, even if they accept compensation. Researchers or employers do not intend but merely foresee risks to subjects or workers. (shrink)

In the De Anima, Aristotle claims that the five senses are infallible about their proper objects. I contend that this claim means that sight is infallible about its proper object in its most specific form, i. e. sight is infallible about red or green and not merely about color in general. This robust claim is justified by Aristotle’s teleological principle that nature does nothing in vain. Additionally, drawing on Aristotle’s comparison of perception and one’s understanding of the essences, I defend (...) a conception of the senses in which the structure of their contents is simple rather than predicative and show how this coheres better with the rest of my interpretation. (shrink)

his chapter discusses some of the basic tenets of a critical realist social ontology. It defines capitalism, which Roy Jacques conspicuously fails to do. Jacques argues that the very point of explanatory critique is to facilitate useful action. For Geoffrey Hodgson, the epsilon scenario could be described as beyond capitalism. A form of employment contract remains, but it is a mere shell of its former capitalist self. In the work process, the degree of control by the employer over the (...) employee is minimal. Hodgson argues that 'impurity' necessarily characterizes all socioeconomic systems. However, any assessment of feasibility depends crucially upon an adequate theoretical analysis of concrete socio-economic systems. The chapter explains the nature of disaggregative analysis, which is predicated upon a realist ontology. Transcendentally the social world is composed of internal and external social relations; disaggregative analysis enables thought experiments about alternative social arrangements. The chapter addresses the nature of division of labour, knowledge and Hayek. (shrink)

Draft version of essay. ABSTRACT: Benjamin Whichcote developed a distinctive account of human nature centered on our moral psychology. He believed that this view of human nature, which forms the foundation of “Cambridge Platonism,” showed that the demands of reason and faith are not merely compatible but dynamically supportive of one another. I develop an interpretation of this oft-neglected and widely misunderstood account of human nature and defend its viability against a key objection.

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that their (...) argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness. (shrink)

A vexing problem in contemporary epistemology—one with origins in Plato’s Meno—concerns the value of knowledge, and in particular, whether and how the value of knowledge exceeds the value of mere true opinion. The recent literature is deeply divided on the matter of how best to address the problem. One point, however, remains unquestioned: that if a solution is to be found, it will be at the personal level, the level at which states of subjects or agents, as such, appear. (...) We take exception to this orthodoxy, or at least to its unquestioned status. We argue that subpersonal states play a significant—arguably, primary—role in much epistemically relevant cognition and thus constitute a domain in which we might reasonably expect to locate the “missing source” of epistemic value, beyond the value attached to mere true belief. (shrink)

Majority cycling and related social choice paradoxes are often thought to threaten the meaningfulness of democracy. But deliberation can prevent majority cycles – not by inducing unanimity, which is unrealistic, but by bringing preferences closer to single-peakedness. We present the first empirical test of this hypothesis, using data from Deliberative Polls. Comparing preferences before and after deliberation, we find increases in proximity to single-peakedness. The increases are greater for lower versus higher salience issues and for individuals who seem to have (...) deliberated more versus less effectively. They are not merely a byproduct of increased substantive agreement. Our results both refine and support the idea that deliberation, by increasing proximity to single-peakedness, provides an escape from the problem of majority cycling. (shrink)

A popular “Reductionist” account of personal identity unifies person stages into persons in virtue of their psychological continuity with one another. One objection to psychological continuity accounts is that there is more to our personal identity than just mere psychological continuity: there is also an active process of self-interpretation and self-creation. This criticism can be used to motivate a rival account of personal identity that appeals to the notion of a narrative. To the extent that they comment upon the (...) issue, proponents of narrative accounts typically reject Reductionist metaphysics that (ontologically) reduce persons to aggregates of person stages. In contrast to this trend, we seek to develop a narrative account of personal identity from within Reductionist metaphysics: we think person stages are unified into persons in virtue of their narrative continuity with one another. We argue that this Reductionist version of the narrative account avoids some serious problems facing non-Reductionist versions of the narrative account. (shrink)

Zeno’s Arrow and Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way Chapter 2 contain paradoxical, dialectic arguments thought to indicate that there is no valid explanation of motion, hence there is no physical or generic motion. There are, however, diverse interpretations of the latter text, and I argue they apply to Zeno’s Arrow as well. I also find that many of the interpretations are dependent on a mathematical analysis of material motion through space and time. However, with modern philosophy and physics (...) we find that the link from no explanation to no phenomena is invalid and that there is a valid explanation and understanding of physical motion. Hence, those arguments are both invalid and false, which banishes the MMK/2 and The Arrow under this and derivative interpretations to merely the history of philosophy. However, a view that maintains their relevance is that each is used as a koan or sequence of koans designed to assist students in spiritual meditation practice. This view is partly justified by the realization that both Nāgārjuna and Zeno were likely meditation masters in addition to being logicians. The works are, therefore, not works that should be assessed as having valid arguments and true conclusions by the standards of modern analytic philosophy—contrary to some of the literature—but rather are therapeutic and perhaps more appropriately considered as part of an experientially focused philosophy such as existentialism, phenomenology or religion. (shrink)

The idea of homesteading can be extended to the realm of biological entities, to the ownership of information wherein organisms perform artifactual functions as a result of human development. Can the information of biological entities be ethically “homesteaded”: should humans (or businesses) have ownership rights over this information from the basis of mere development and possession, as in Locke’s theory of private property? I offer three non-consequentialist arguments against such homesteading: the information makeup of biological entities is not commonly (...) owned, and thus is not available for homesteading; the value of the individual biological entity extends to the information whereby it is constituted, and includes inalienable rights of an entity over itself and its information; and use of life as an information artifact makes an organism an unending means to an end rather than an end itself. I conclude that the information space of biological entities is not open for homesteading, not liable to private ownership, and should not be available for perpetual exploitation. (shrink)

There is an intuitive difference in how we think about pluralism and attitudinal diversity in epistemological contexts versus political contexts. In an epistemological context, it seems problematically arbitrary to hold a particular belief on some issue, while also thinking it perfectly reasonable to hold a totally different belief on the same issue given the same evidence. By contrast, though, it doesn’t seem problematically arbitrary to have a particular set of political commitments, while at the same time thinking it perfectly reasonable (...) for someone in a similar position have a totally different set of political commitments. This chapter examines three explanatory theses that might be used to make sense of this difference: (1) that practical commitments are desire dependent in a way that beliefs are not; (2) that there are reasons to be resolute in practical commitments, but not in beliefs; and (3) that compromise in the face of practical political disagreement doesn’t mitigate controversy, whereas compromise in the face of disagreement about mere beliefs does mitigate controversy. (shrink)

Why should musical compositions and artistic images be included among the types of expression covered by free speech principles? One way to answer this question is to show how expression in nonverbal media can be functionally similar to other types of verbal expression. But this leaves us with an intuitively unsatisfying explanation of why free speech principles cover nonverbal creative expression that does not functionally emulate literal speech. In this article, as an alternative justification, we develop and defend the idea (...) that musical and pictorial expression‚ much like literal speech, can be media through which people think aloud, as opposed to mere tools for the transmission of thought. We use this proposal to provide a more robust justification for including nonverbal creative expression in the scope of free speech coverage, and we outline some of the practical policy implications that come with adopting this justificatory strategy. (shrink)

If people have stringent moral rights, then the doctrine of double effect is false or unimportant, at least when it comes to making acts permissible or wrong. There are strong and weak versions of the doctrine of double effect. The strong version asserts that an act is morally right if and only if the agent does not intentionally infringe a moral norm and the act brings about a desirable result (perhaps the best state of affairs available to the agent or (...) a promotion of the common good). The weak version asserts that, other things being equal, it is deontically worse to intentionally infringe a norm than to foreseeably do so. A person’s intention or mere foresight might still be relevant to his or her blameworthiness or virtue, but this is a separate issue. (shrink)

Claims about what justice “requires” and the “requirements” of justice are pervasive in political philosophy. However, there is a highly significant ambiguity in such claims that appears to have gone unnoticed. Such claims may pick out either one of two categorically distinct and noncoextensive kinds of requirement that we call 1) requirements-as-necessary-conditions for justice and 2) requirements-as-demands of justice. This is an especially compelling instance of an ambiguity that John Broome has famously observed in the context of claims about other (...) requirements (notably the requirements of rationality and morality). But it appears to have been overlooked by political philosophers in the case of claims about the requirements of justice. The ambiguity is highly significant inasmuch as failing to notice it is liable to distort our normative thinking about politics and make us vulnerable to certain kinds of normatively consequential errors: both mistakenly drawing inferences about what justice demands of us from claims that certain states or societies are not just; and mistakenly drawing inferences about what states or societies are or would be just from claims that justice does not demand of states or societies that they do certain things. Paying greater attention to the distinction between these two different kinds of requirements and the ways in which they come apart is helpful, not merely in avoiding these distortions and errors, but also in resolving, or at least clarifying, a number of other notoriously murky meta-normative debates, especially various important debates about realism and idealism in political philosophy. (shrink)

This is the introduction to a special issue of AAPT Studies in Pedagogy on Teaching Plato. I open by noting that the philosophy of education was of central concern to Plato in a way that you don't often see with philosophers. Only Confucius and John Dewey do as much to make education central to everything else they say. I also note that much subsequent philosophy of education merely rediscovers what Plato already knew. After that, I preview the contents of the (...) volume, emphasizing the ways in which contributors ask us to teach Plato platonically. (shrink)

I argue for the Wittgensteinian thesis that mathematical statements are expressions of norms, rather than descriptions of the world. An expression of a norm is a statement like a promise or a New Year's resolution, which says that someone is committed or entitled to a certain line of action. A expression of a norm is not a mere description of a regularity of human behavior, nor is it merely a descriptive statement which happens to entail a norms. The view (...) can be thought of as a sort of logicism for the logical expressivist---a person who believes that the purpose of logical language is to make explicit commitments and entitlements that are implicit in ordinary practice. The thesis that mathematical statements are expression of norms is a kind of logicism, not because it says that mathematics can be reduced to logic, but because it says that mathematical statements play the same role as logical statements. ;I contrast my position with two sets of views, an empiricist view, which says that mathematical knowledge is acquired and justified through experience, and a cluster of nativist and apriorist views, which say that mathematical knowledge is either hardwired into the human brain, or justified a priori, or both. To develop the empiricist view, I look at the work of Kitcher and Mill, arguing that although their ideas can withstand the criticisms brought against empiricism by Frege and others, they cannot reply to a version of the critique brought by Wittgenstein in the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. To develop the nativist and apriorist views, I look at the work of contemporary developmental psychologists, like Gelman and Gallistel and Karen Wynn, as well as the work of philosophers who advocate the existence of a mathematical intuition, such as Kant, Husserl, and Parsons. After clarifying the definitions of "innate" and "a priori," I argue that the mechanisms proposed by the nativists cannot bring knowledge, and the existence of the mechanisms proposed by the apriorists is not supported by the arguments they give. (shrink)

Military doctors and nurses, working neither as pure soldiers nor as merely doctors or nurses, may face a ‘role conflict between the clinical professional duties to a patient and obligations, express or implied, real or perceived, to the interests of a third party such as an employer, an insurer, the state, or in this context, military command’. This conflict is commonly called dual loyalty. This chapter gives an overview of the military and the medical ethic and of the resulting dual (...) loyalty problem for medical personnel working in the military. It considers how dual loyalties relate to being a professional, something medical personnel are the paradigmatic examples of, but also something military personnel claim to be. Against that background, the chapter elaborates on the medical rules of eligibility used in Afghanistan, and on the policies concerning military involvement in local healthcare, to see what the existing rules and policies are, and whose interests they serve. (shrink)

This paper provides an agonistic interpretation of Robert Brandom's social-pragmatic account of normativity. I argue that social practice, on this approach, should be seen not just as cooperative, but also as contestatory. This aspect, which has so far remained implicit, helps to illuminate Brandom's claim that normative statuses are ‘instituted’ by social practices: normative statuses are brought into play in mutual engagement, and are only in play from an engaged social perspective among others. Moreover, in contrast to a positivist or (...) conventionalist understanding of Brandom's work, it shows that the possibility of a critical stance toward existing practices is not only compatible with, but already implicit in this form of pragmatism. This can be made explicit with the notion of farcical practices: practices that are treated merely as if they institute genuine commitments and entitlements. Interpreting a practice as farcical is taking a critical stance toward it, and this possibility is inherent in Brandom's theoretical framework. This opens the way for a fruitful appropriation of Brandom's pragmatism for social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Robert Nozick famously raised the possibility that there is a sense in which both deontology and utilitarianism are true: deontology applies to humans while utilitarianism applies to animals. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in such a hybrid views of ethics. Discussions of this Nozickian Hybrid View, and similar approaches to animal ethics, often assume that such an approach reflects the commonsense view, and best captures common moral intuitions. However, recent psychological work challenges this empirical assumption. We review (...) evidence suggesting that the folk is deontological all the way down—it is just that the moral side constraints that protect animals from harm are much weaker than those that protect humans. In fact, it appears that people even attribute some deontological protections, albeit extremely weak ones, to inanimate objects. We call this view Multi-level Weighted Deontology. While such empirical findings cannot show that the Nozickian Hybrid View is false, or that it is unjustified, they do remove its core intuitive support. That support belongs to Multi-level Weighted Deontology, a view that is also in line with the view that Nozick himself seemed to favour. To complicate things, however, we also review evidence that our intuitions about the moral status of humans are, at least in significant part, shaped by factors relating to mere species membership that seem morally irrelevant. We end by considering the potential debunking upshot of such findings about the sources of common moral intuitions about the moral status of animals. (shrink)

Robert Brandom’s expressivism argues that not all semantic content may be made fully explicit. This view connects in interesting ways with recent movements in philosophy of mathematics and logic (e.g. Brown, Shin, Giaquinto) to take diagrams seriously - as more than a mere “heuristic aid” to proof, but either proofs themselves, or irreducible components of such. However what exactly is a diagram in logic? Does this constitute a semiotic natural kind? The paper will argue that such a natural kind (...) does exist in Charles Peirce’s conception of iconic signs, but that fully understood, logical diagrams involve a structured array of normative reasoning practices, as well as just a “picture on a page”. (shrink)