Clearing algorithms are at the core of modern payment systems, facilitating the settling of multilateral credit messages with (near) minimum transfers of currency. Traditional clearing procedures use batch processing based on MILP - mixed-integer linear programming algorithms. The MILP approach demands intensive computational resources; moreover, it is also vulnerable to operational risks generated by possible defaults during the inter-batch period. This paper presents TORC3 - the Token-Ring Clearing Algorithm for Currency Circulation. In contrast to the MILP approach, TORC3 is a (...) real time heuristic procedure, demanding modest computational resources, and able to completely shield the clearing operation against the participating agents’ risk of default. (shrink)

This paper explores the events surrounding a string of robberies from the homes of young celebrities living in Los Angeles County by a group of teenagers referred to by the media as “The Bling Ring.” It argues that the group demonstrates the intersections of desire and materiality under the conditions of a culture driven by idolization of the celebrity, referring to the works of Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, and French collective Tiqqun. It further examines the events as a moment where (...) subjects were able to escape the life-narratives imposed upon them by the State. Rather than adhering to the norms of regular adolescent life, reproduced and enforced through what Michael Shapiro identifies as “national-time,” members of the Bling Ring endeavored to create their own lives according to what I refer to as “celebrity-time,” revealing processes of becoming in the work of Gilles Deleuze, and plasticity in that of Catherine Malabou. (shrink)

Als Plato de hedendaagse academie zou aanschouwen, zou hij niet alleen stomverbaasd zijn over de massificatie en de byzantijnse bureaucratie, maar gezien het ethische doel van de universiteit zou hij ook reden hebben om bezorgd te zijn.

Whataboutism is een strategie waarbij op een beschuldiging wordt gereageerd met een wedervraag die eveneens een beschuldiging impliceert, waardoor de oorspronkelijke vraag eerder wordt ontweken dan beantwoord. Het is een effectieve methode om de aandacht te verplaatsen naar een andere situatie door een vergelijkbaar, dan wel onvergelijkbaar, contrast te bieden, waardoor de beschuldigde het eigen gedrag probeert te rechtvaardigen en verantwoordelijkheid probeert te ontlopen. Maar niet alle vormen van whataboutism impliceren echter een drogredenering, noch worden ze altijd verkeerd toegepast. Het (...) contrast dat voortkomt uit de vraag ‘what about’ kan dan een cruciale bijdrage leveren aan een situatie die een verdere kritische analyse vereist, en daarmee de geloofwaardigheid van de argumentatie versterken. (shrink)

Whataboutism, eine weit verbreitete Argumentationsstrategie in Debatten über den Israel-Gaza-Krieg, lenkt oft durch Gegenfragen von der eigentlichen Kritik ab. Doch trotz seines schlechten Rufs kann Whataboutism auch positive Auswirkungen haben.

The philosophical interest in the nature, value, and varieties of human understanding has swelled in recent years. This article will provide an overview of new research in the epistemology of understanding, with a particular focus on the following questions: What is understanding and why should we care about it? Is understanding reducible to knowledge? Does it require truth, belief, or justification? Can there be lucky understanding? Does it require ‘grasping’ or some kind of ‘know-how’? This cluster of questions has largely (...) set the research agenda for the study of understanding in epistemology. This article will conclude by discussing some varieties of understanding and highlight directions for future research. (shrink)

What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta‐analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, psychological properties, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in the sciences of the mind as well as in efforts to understand, and ultimately combat, discrimination (...) and inequality. (shrink)

What is human understanding and why should we care about it? I propose a method of philosophical investigation called ‘function-first epistemology’ and use this method to investigate the nature and value of understanding-why. I argue that the concept of understanding-why serves the practical function of identifying good explainers, which is an important role in the general economy of our concepts. This hypothesis sheds light on a variety of issues in the epistemology of understanding including the role of explanation, the relationship (...) between understanding-why and knowledge, and the value of understanding-why. I conclude that understanding-why is valuable and yet knowledge plays more important roles in our epistemic life. (shrink)

According to a historically popular view, emotions are normative experiences that ground moral knowledge much as perceptual experiences ground empirical knowledge. Given the analogy it draws between emotion and perception, sentimental perceptualism constitutes a promising, naturalist-friendly alternative to classical rationalist accounts of moral knowledge. In this paper, we consider an important but underappreciated objection to the view, namely that in contrast with perception, emotions depend for their occurrence on prior representational states, with the result that emotions cannot give perceptual-like access (...) to normative properties. We argue that underlying this objection are several specific problems, rooted in the different types of mental states to which emotions may respond, that the sentimental perceptualist must tackle for her view to be successful. We argue, moreover, that the problems can be answered by filling out the theory with several independently motivated yet highly controversial commitments, which we carefully catalogue. The plausibility of sentimental perceptualism, as a result, hinges on further claims sentimental perceptualists should not ignore. (shrink)

In this article I investigate the extent to which Bhikhu Parekh believes that a person's cultural/religious background must be preserved and whether, by implication, religious schooling is justified by his theory. My discussion will explore—by inference and implication—whether Parekh's carefully crafted multiculturalism, enriched and illuminated by numerous practical insights, is socially tenable. I will also consider whether, by extension, it is justifiable, on his line of reasoning, to cultivate cultural and religious understandings among one's own children. Finally, I will contend (...) that Parekh, notwithstanding his cautious, even‐handed approach, commits several important errors, including conflating the culture of the parents with that of the children and insisting that cultural and religious persons ought to be allowed to defend their views in the public square on religious grounds. (shrink)

Een veelgehoorde kritiek op islamitische scholen is dat kinderen er worden geïndoctrineerd en dat dit in strijd is met het doel van onderwijs in een democratische samenleving. Dit artikel onderzoekt de principiële vraag of ouders ervoor zouden kunnen kiezen om hun kind naar een school te sturen waar hij of zij geïndoctrineerd wordt, bijvoorbeeld omdat zij denken dat het kind op een religieuze school minder kans loopt te worden gestigmatiseerd. Daarnaast wordt bekeken of het waarschijnlijk is dat kinderen op islamitische (...) scholen in Nederland daadwerkelijk geïndoctrineerd worden. (shrink)

Het zal geen van de aanwezigen verbazen dat we het volgende allemaal tegenkomen in empirisch onderzoek: verborgen aannames, ongegronde conclusies, vreemde analyse-eenheden, een ontbrekende uitsplitsing van gegevens, een ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’-redenering (een simpele correlatie die leidt tot ongerechtvaardigde gevolgtrekkingen over oorzaak en gevolg), ontbrekende contextuele verklaringen, onjuiste en misleidende vergelijkingen, onthutsend onbetrouwbare steekproeven die leiden tot uiterst dubieuze extrapolaties, en hypotheses die voorspellen of proberen te achterhalen en bevestigen wat de gemiddelde persoon al weet. We beschikken natuurlijk over (...) een overvloed aan gegevens uit pedagogisch en onderwijskundig onderzoek en een haast onbegrensde hoeveelheid grafieken en tabellen met cijfers die pretenderen iets te meten. Deze gegevens komen echter maar al te vaak tot stand op basis van concepten van twijfelachtige waarde. Er ontbreekt vaak een ondersteunend theoretisch kader waarmee bevindingen kunnen worden geïnterpreteerd, verklaard of vertaald naar andere contexten, en waarmee bovendien de betekenis van de resultaten aan niet-specialisten kan worden duidelijk gemaakt. (shrink)

Het idee dat burgerschapsonderwijs noodzakelijkerwijs democratisch is omdat ze door een democratische staat wordt georganiseerd, is een bedenkelijke assumptie. Veronderstellen dat goed burgerschap overigens beperkt kan blijven tot een reeks van ‘meetbare’ kenniscomponenten (bv. kennis van presidenten, koningen), overtuigingen (bv., ‘er zijn mensenrechten’) en ‘competenties’ (bv. ‘kunnen omgaan met meningsverschillen’) is niet enkel een karikatuur maken van de democratie zelf, maar getuigt evenzeer van een democratisch paternalisme.

Internationale vergelijkingen vormen een waardvolle bron van inzicht bij het analyseren van maatschappelijke problemen en het beoordelen van beleidsmatige antwoorden op die problemen. Vergelijkend onderzoek levert vaak interessante of nuttige informatie op doordat er verschillen én overeenkomsten worden geconstrueerd, bijvoorbeeld: hoe ‘leefbaar’ is Toronto vergeleken met Berlijn? Zelfs wanneer de definities verschillen en de gebruikte meeteenheden enigszins onnauwkeurig kunnen zijn – bijvoorbeeld “leefbaar voor wie en ten opzichte van wat?” – zijn vergelijkingen leerrijk en aanleiding voor verdere reflectie. Maar internationale (...) vergelijkingen kunnen op verschillende manieren ook problematisch zijn. (shrink)

This paper asks whether there is a moral virtue of hope, and if so, what it is. The enterprise is motivated by a historical asymmetry, namely that while Christian thinkers have long classed hope as a theological virtue, it has not traditionally been classed as a moral one. But this is puzzling, for hoping well is not confined to the sphere of religion; and consequently we might expect that if the theological virtue is structurally sound, there will be a secular, (...) moral analogue. This paper proposes that there is such an analogue, and that it is closely linked to the everyday notion of “having your priorities straight,” a phenomenon which is naturally understood in terms of the attitude of hope. It turns out that the priorities model provides an abstract way of characterizing a central but underexplored virtue, one which can be developed in secular or theological ways. (shrink)

Whilst media and political rhetoric in Britain is sceptical and often outright damning of the (presumed) morals and behaviours of the White marginalized poor, our aim is to explore the conditions under which successful communities are nevertheless built. Specifically, we examine the features of community and stress its importance both for belonging and bonding around shared norms and practices and for fostering the necessary bridging essential for interacting and cooperating with others. In considering what it means to foster a community (...) that acts as a breakwater against the tides of stigma or disadvantage, we pay special attention to what we will call enabling conditions – essential features that communities either can or should be able to provide or that exist independent of communities and are indispensable for accessing opportunities in the wider society. We detail the dynamics of White poverty and exclusion before turning our attention to possible responses to these challenges. In searching for viable responses to stigma and disadvantage, we compare some different typologies of community presently available to the White poor in Britain and examine whether these are sufficient to satisfy the enabling conditions associated with more robust forms of group membership. (shrink)

Social media use is soaring globally. Existing research of its ethical implications predominantly focuses on the relationships amongst human users online, and their effects. The nature of the software-to-human relationship and its impact on digital well-being, however, has not been sufficiently addressed yet. This paper aims to close the gap. I argue that some intelligent software agents, such as newsfeed curator algorithms in social media, manipulate human users because they do not intend their means of influence to reveal the user’s (...) reasons. I support this claim by defending a novel account of manipulation and by showing that some intelligent software agents are manipulative in this sense. Apart from revealing a priori reason for thinking that some intelligent software agents are manipulative, the paper offers a framework for further empirical investigation of manipulation online. (shrink)

More and more researchers argue that online technologies manipulate human users and, therefore, undermine their autonomy. We call this the MAL view on online technology because it argues from Manipulation to Autonomy-Loss. MAL enjoys public visibility and will shape the academic discussion to come. This view of online technology, however, fails conceptually. MAL presupposes that manipulation equals autonomy loss, and that autonomy is the absence of manipulation. That is mistaken. In short, an individual can be manipulated while being fully personally (...) autonomous. Internet policy researchers should be aware of this point to avoid looking in the wrong place in future research on manipulative and harmful online technology. (shrink)

Fine, Lowe and Hale accept the view that necessity is to be explained by essences: Necessarily p iff, and because, there is some x whose essence ensures that p. Hale, however, believes that this strategy is not universally applicable; he argues that the necessity of essentialist truths cannot itself be explained by once again appealing to essentialist truths. As a consequence, Hale holds that there are basic necessities that cannot be explained. Thus, Hale style essentialism falls short of what Wilsch (...) calls the explanation-challenge (EC) for the metaphysics of necessity. Without endorsing the EC, I argue that Hale’s argument for basic, unexplained necessities fails due to a misunderstanding of the structure of essentialist explanations. Getting clear about the structure of essentialist explanations of necessity leads to a re-evaluation of crucial circularity- and regress-arguments that have been discussed in the debate about essentialism. (shrink)

If there is something (P) that every possible agent is committed to value, and certain actions or attitudes either enhance or diminish P, then normative claims about a range of intentional actions can be objectively and non-trivially evaluated. I argue that the degree of existence as an agent depends on the consistency of reflexive-relating with other individuals of the agent-kind: the ontological thesis. I then show that in intending to act on a reason, every agent is rationally committed to value (...) ‘above all else’ being an agent, what consists in exercising the capacity to act and having the freedom to discriminate between more or less valuable actions: the transcendental thesis. Since the degree of possession of this personal but non-contingent good depends on relating to other agents in a special way, certain actions and attitudes may be objectively right or wrong for all agents. (shrink)

There is a loud and persistent drum beat of support for schools, for citizenship, for diversity and inclusion, and increasingly for labor market readiness with very little critical attention to the assumptions underlying these agendas, let alone to their many internal contradictions. Accordingly, in this book I examine the philosophical, motivational, and practical challenges of education theory, policy, and practice in the twenty-first century. As I proceed, I do not neglect the historical, comparative international context so essential to better understanding (...) where we are, as well as what is attainable in terms of educational justice. I argue that we must constructively critique some of our most cherished beliefs about education if we are to save the hope of real justice from the rhetoric of imagined justice. (shrink)

Evaluative claims and assumptions are ubiquitous in positive psychology. Some will deny this. But such disavowals are belied by the literature. Some will consider the presence of evaluative claims a problem and hope to root them out. But this is a mistake. If positive psychology is to live up to its raison d’être – to be the scientific study of the psychological components of human flourishing or well-being – it must make evaluative claims. Well-being consists in those things that are (...) good for us, that make life go well. Thus, one cannot investigate this topic without making claims about what is good for people and what they have reason to do. It’s time, therefore, to embrace the fact that positive psychology is value-laden. Doing so would benefit the field by allowing for more rigorous theorizing, and – perhaps counterintuitively – increasing the field’s objectivity. (shrink)

Solidarity is a widespread but under-explored phenomenon. In this paper, I give a philosophical account of solidarity, answering three salient questions: What motivates acts of solidarity? What unifies different acts into tokens of a single type of act, one of solidarity? And what values do acts of solidarity exhibit? The answer to all three, I argue, involves a certain way of relating to others: identifying with them on the basis of shared features, and identifying with the larger group that one (...) and the others both belong to. (shrink)

From the exponential function of Euler’s equation to the geometry of a fundamental form, a calculation of the fine-structure constant and its relationship to the proton-electron mass ratio is given. Equations are found for the fundamental constants of the four forces of nature: electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force and the force of gravitation. Symmetry principles are then associated with traditional physical measures.

The ‘Big 3’ theories of well-being—hedonism, desire-satisfactionism, and objective list theory—attempt to explain why certain things are good for people by appealing to prudentially good-making properties. But they don’t attempt to explain why the properties they advert to make something good for a person. Perfectionism, the view that well-being consists in nature-fulfilment, is often considered a competitor to these views (or else a version of the objective list theory). However, I argue that perfectionism is best understood as explaining why certain (...) properties are prudentially good-making. This version of perfectionism is compatible with each of the Big 3, and, I argue, quite attractive. (shrink)

This paper shows how the availability heuristic can be used to justify inference to the best explanation in such a way that van Fraassen's infamous "best of a bad lot" objection can be adroitly avoided. With this end in mind, a dynamic and contextual version of the erotetic model of explanation sufficient to ground this response is presented and defended.

Suppose that A explains B. Do A and B need to be true? Provided that we have metaphysical explanation in mind, orthodoxy answers “yes:” metaphysical explanation is factive. This article introduces and defends a non-factive notion of metaphysical explanation. I argue that we need a non-factive notion of explanation in order to make sense of explanationist arguments where we motivate a view by claiming that it offers better explanations than its competitors. After presenting and rejecting some initially plausible rivals, I (...) account for non-factive metaphysical explanation by drawing on existing applications of structural equation models to metaphysical grounding. (shrink)

The Growing Block Theory of time says that the metaphysical openness of the future should be understood in terms of there not being any future objects or events. But in a series of works, Ross Cameron, Elizabeth Barnes, and Robbie Williams have developed a competing view that understands metaphysical openness in terms of it being indeterminate whether there exist future objects or events. I argue that the three reasons they give for preferring their account are not compelling. And since the (...) notion of “indeterminate existence” suffers conceptual problems, the Growing Block is the preferable view. (shrink)

An analogue of Arrow’s theorem has been thought to limit the possibilities for multi-criterial theory choice. Here, an example drawn from Toy Science, a model of theories and choice criteria, suggests that it does not. Arrow’s assumption that domains are unrestricted is inappropriate in connection with theory choice in Toy Science. There are, however, variants of Arrow’s theorem that do not require an unrestricted domain. They require instead that domains are, in a technical sense, ‘rich’. Since there are rich domains (...) in Toy Science, such theorems do constrain theory choice to some extent—certainly in the model and perhaps also in real science. (shrink)

In his article “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality,” Joshua Greene argues that the empirical findings of cognitive neuroscience have implications for ethics. Specifically, he contends that we ought to trust our manual, conscious reasoning system more than our automatic, emotional system when confronting unfamiliar problems; and because cognitive neuroscience has shown that consequentialist judgments are generated by the manual system and deontological judgments are generated by the automatic system, we ought to trust the former more than the latter when facing unfamiliar moral (...) problems. In the present article, I analyze one of the premises of Greene’s argument. In particular, I ask what exactly an unfamiliar problem is and whether moral problems can be classified as unfamiliar. After exploring several different possible interpretations of familiarity and unfamiliarity, I conclude that the concepts are too problematic to be philosophically compelling, and thus should be abandoned. (shrink)

Most epistemologists maintain that we are rationally required to believe what our evidence supports. Generally speaking, any factor that makes it more probable that a given state of affairs obtains (or does not obtain) is evidence (for that state of affairs). In line with this view, many metaethicists believe that we are rationally required to believe what’s morally right and wrong based on what our moral evidence (e.g. our moral intuitions, along with descriptive information about the world) supports. However, sometimes (...) we get information about our evidence, such as a theory that explains that all moral intuitions are ultimately caused by evolutionary forces. Such genealogical claims like this take form as a puzzle about how to rationally respond to higher-order evidence in moral epistemology. How should we change our moral views in response to genealogical claims about the evolutionary origin of our moral beliefs or about widespread moral disagreement? This introductory chapter first explains the issue about how to change our moral views based on an easily accessible example. Then it shows how recent debates about the puzzle of higher-order evidence bears on recent debates in moral epistemology, notably the debates about evolutionary debunking arguments in metaethics, the epistemic significance of moral peer disagreement, moral testimony, and collective moral knowledge before it introduces the chapters of this book. (shrink)

This chapter first introduces naturalistic approaches to ethics more generally and distinguishes methodological ethical naturalism (the focus of this chapter), from metaphysical ethical naturalism. The second part then discusses evolutionary ethics as a specific variant of methodological ethical naturalism. After introducing the concepts of evolutionary theory that are relevant for evolutionary ethics, I will sketch the history of evolutionary ethics, which offers an interesting lesson about why it became a controversial topic, and then focus on four central questions about ethics (...) that can be approached from within the framework of evolutionary ethics: 1. What should we do? 2. Why are we moral? 3. Are there moral facts? 4. Can we have justified moral beliefs and moral knowledge? (shrink)

This paper argues that to account for group speech acts, we should adopt a representationalist account of mode / force. Individual and collective subjects do not only represent what they e.g. assert or order. By asserting or ordering they also indicate their theoretical or practical positions towards what they assert or order. The ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received dichotomy of force and propositional content. On the contrary, only the representationalist account allows a satisfactory response to it. It also allows (...) us to give a more satisfactory analysis of the speech act of inviting a joint commitment and to answer two important questions Bernhard Schmid has raised about group speech acts, namely whether there are 1st person plural forms of Moore’s paradox and of 1st person authority. (shrink)

Awareness and concern about climate change are widespread. But rates of pro-environmental behaviour are low. This is partly due to the way in which pro-environmental behaviour is framed—as a sacrifice or burden that individuals bear for the planet and future generations. This framing elicits well-known cognitive biases, discouraging what we should be encouraging. We should abandon the self-sacrifice framing, and instead frame pro-environmental behaviour as intrinsically desirable. There is a large body of evidence that, around the world, people who are (...) living more environmentally lifestyles are happier than those not doing so. This is the message we should be spreading. (shrink)

Problematic perceptions about race damage our society. These attitudes can seem impossible to overcome, but philosophers Dr Jennifer Mensch, at Western Sydney University in Australia, and Dr Michael Olson, at Marquette University in the US, beg to differ. They are compiling a collection of 18th-century philosophical and scientific texts that helped shape the way people saw race across the Western world, and were used to justify colonisation. They believe that by exposing these historical roots of racism, opportunities to improve (...) societal attitudes to race will become easier to identify. -/- This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEM), and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers and scientists have done much to expand our understanding of the structure and neural mechanisms of joint action. But the phenomenology of joint action has only recently become a live topic for research. One method of clarifying what is unique about the phenomenology of joint action is by considering the alternative perspective of agents subsumed in group action. By group action we mean instances of individual agents acting while embedded within a group agent, instead of with individual coordination. (...) Paradigm examples are educational bureaucracies, corporations, and nation states. There is a phenomenological difference between agents whose actions are subsumed within a group action (“the university did X”) as compared to agents who act jointly (“we did x”). Attending to this difference clarifies what is phenomenologically distinctive about joint action. Appealing to an Aristotelian account of agency and to the metaphysical concept of weak emergence, we argue that what makes paradigmatic group action distinctive is the relative inaccessibility, un-revisability, and evaluative simplicity of the group agent’s goal(s) from the perspective of individual agents. This suggests that a distinctive feature of joint agency is the maintenance of a greater sense of individual agency. Put simply, joint agency is often experienced as an enhancement of the individuals’ agency precisely because our paradigmatic agential powers are extended intersubjectively as we act together. In contrast, group agency often involves a loss of the sense of agency, precisely because it is the emergent group agent that maintains the agential powers. (shrink)

The debate about scientific realism is concerned with the relation between our scientific theories and the world. Scientific realists argue that our best theories or components of those theories correspond to the world. Anti-realists deny such a correspondence. Traditionally, this central issue in the philosophy of science has been approached by focusing on the theories themselves (e.g., by looking at theory change or the underlying experimental context). I propose a relatively unexplored way to approach this old debate. In addition to (...) focusing on the theory, we should focus on the theorizer. More precisely, in order to determine on which component of a theory we should hinge a realist commitment, we should analyze the cognitive processes underlying scientific theorizing. In this paper I do just that. Drawing from recent developments in the cognitive sciences and evolutionary epistemology, I formulate some tentative conclusions. The aim of this paper is not so much to defend a particular position in the debate on scientific realism but to showcase the value of taking a cognitive perspective in the debate. (shrink)

We review existing strategies for bringing modal intuitions to bear against materialist theories of consciousness, and then propose a new strategy. Unlike existing strategies, which assume that imagination (suitably constrained) is a good guide to modal truth, the strategy proposed here makes no assumptions about the probative value of imagination. However, unlike traditional modal arguments, the argument developed here delivers only the conclusion that we should not believe that materialism is true, not that we should believe that it is false.

This chapter explores an unappreciated psychological dimension of intellectual humility. In particular, I argue there is a plausible connection between intellectual humility and epistemic egocentrism. Epistemic egocentrism is a well-known cognitive bias – often called ‘the curse of knowledge’ – whereby an agent attributes his or her own mental states to other people. I hypothesize that an individual who exhibits this bias is more likely to possess a variety of traits that are characteristic of intellectual humility. This is surprising because (...) intellectual humility is often regarded as an antidote to cognitive biases, whereas I claim that a particular cognitive bias (namely, the curse of knowledge) may help foster an intellectual virtue. (shrink)

Individuals are owed equal respect. But on the basis of what property of individuals are they owed such respect? A popular Kantian answer —rational agency — appears less plausible in light of the growing psychological evidence that human choice is subject to a wide array of biases (framing, laziness, etc.); human beings are neither equal in rational agency nor especially robust rational agents. Defenders of this Kantian answer thus need a non-ideal theory of equal respect for rational agency, one that (...) takes seriously our characteristic deficiencies of practical rationality without junking the notion that rational agency entitles us to equal respect. This article defends an understanding of respect for rational agency wherein the object of such respect is individuals’ aspiration to rationally govern their lives. This understanding of respect for rational agency retains the core notion of respect as a kind of deference, directs respect at persons, has suitably egalitarian implications, and does not require us to deny the aforementioned psychological evidence regarding the infirmities of human rationality. (shrink)

I argue that in purely professional games of pure chance, such as slot machines, roulette, baccarat or pachinko, any instance of cheating that successfully deceives the judge can be ‘part of the game’. I examine, and reject, various proposals for the ‘ethos’ that determines how we ought to interpret the formal rules of games of pure chance, such as being a test of skill, a matter of entertainment, a display of aesthetic beauty, an opportunity for hedonistic pleasure, and a fraternal (...) activity. Ultimately, I argue that ‘winning the benefit’ is the only ethos that can apply in purely professional games of pure chance, and that if we interpret the formal rules according to this ethos, cheating that is undertaken with respect for the judge’s authority, but that attempts to cause the judge of the game to ‘voluntarily’ relinquish the benefit of the game by deceiving them into thinking that the formal rules of the game have been followed, is impermissible but acceptable cheating, and is therefore within, rather than outside, the game. Here, I define ‘games of pure chance’ as games in which chance is the only determinant of winning. (shrink)

Choices of jobs and careers are among the ethically significant choices individuals make. This article argues against the 'maximalist' view that we are ethically required to choose those jobs and careers (among those that are not intrinsically wrong) that are best overall in terms of benfitting others or addressing injustice. Because such choices are often identity-based, the maximalist view is overly demanding, in the way that requiring individuals to marry on the basis of a maximalist demand is too demanding. Job (...) and career choices are instead subject to a stringent, but less demanding, fair share standard, according to which they must enable individuals to do their fair individual share to benefit others or address injustice. (shrink)

Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are aligned, not competition problems in which (...) individual interests compete with group interests. In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems emerge from “within-group” dynamics, while solutions to competition problems result largely from “between-group” dynamics. (shrink)

Here I pursue two main aims: (1) to articulate and defend a Kantian conception of duties to self, and (2) to explore the ramifications of such duties for the moral justification of paternalism. I conclude that there is a distinctive reason to resent paternalistic intercessions aimed at assisting others in fulfilling their duties to self (or the self-regarding virtues necessary thereunto), based on the fact that the goods realized via their fulfillment are historical, i.e., their value depends on an individual's (...) casual contribution to their fulfillment. (shrink)

We argue that, insofar as one accepts either supersubstantivalism or strong composition as identity for the usual reasons, one has (defeasible) reasons to accept the other as well. Thus, all else being equal, one ought to find the package that combines both views—the Identity Package—more attractive than any rival package that includes one, but not the other, of either supersubstantivalism or composition as identity.

That Kant’s moral thought is invoked by both advocates and opponents of a right to assisted dying attests to both the allure and and the elusiveness of Kant’s moral thought. In particular, the theses that individuals have a right to a ‘death with dignity’ and that assisting someone to die contravenes her dignity appear to gesture at one of Kant’s signature moral notions, dignity. The purposes of this article are to outline Kant’s understanding of dignity and its implications for the (...) ethics of assisted dying. According to Kant, that which has dignity must be treated as an end in itself and may not permissibly be exchanged for that which merely has price. Kant’s reasoning thus seems to preclude acts of self-killing, including voluntary assisted dying, that rest on individual self-interest, since a person’s interests merely have price. However, a recognizably Kantian view of dignity can permit assisted dying under two sets of circumstances: First, it can be permissible for agents who anticipate a degradation of their rational agency due to conditions such as dementia to direct others to end their lives once sufficiently demented. In so doing, such agents in effect exercise a right to impose obligations on others regarding how their bodies, which will at some future point no longer be the vessels of their rational agency, are to be disposed of. Second, Kant errs in supposing that our dignity can stem solely from our moral personality, i.e., from our capacity to abide by universalizable moral principles. Rather, complete dignity also requires the capacity for setting discretionary ends and the means to those ends, i.e., the dignity of humanity. Individuals with prolonged and intense depression, in severe pain, or with serious disability may lack humanity while retaining their moral personality. In such cases, I propose that their opting to end their lives, with or without the assistance of others, does not amount to exchanging their dignified selves for something which merely has price and is therefore not objectionable on Kantian grounds. (shrink)

This dissertation fits within the literature on subordinating speech and aims to demonstrate that how language subordinates is more complex than has been described by most philosophers. I argue that the harms that subordinating speech inflicts on its targets (chapter one), the type of authority that is exercised by subordinating speakers (chapters two and three), and the expansive variety of subordinating speech acts themselves (chapter three) are all under-developed subjects in need of further refinement—and, in some cases, large paradigm shifts. (...) I also examine cases that have yet to be adequately addressed by philosophers working on this topic, like the explosion of abusive speech online (chapter four) or the distinctive speech acts of protest groups (chapter five). I argue that by considering these alongside the ‘paradigm’ cases of subordinating speech that inform most models, we are better able to capture the lived realities of this phenomena, as described by members of groups targeted by such speech. I develop a novel account of speaker authority to explain the variety of pragmatic effects subordinating speech generates. Instead of seeing this authority as reducible to either a formal position or a merely local, linguistic phenomenon, I argue for a conception of speaker authority that is a richly contextual social fact, distributed unevenly among members of different social groups. I also develop an account of collective authority that explains how a group of speakers can join together to subordinate in a way that no individual speaker is capable of doing. This account, I argue, is better able to explain the social reality of subordinating speech than individualist models. Overall, I show how a more fine-grained account of subordinating speaker authority gives us a more accurate picture of the different subordinating speech acts available to different speakers, along with how these may harm their targets. (shrink)

This chapter introduces and discusses the concepts of necessary and sufficient conditions.

This paper investigates Kant’s account of “real essence” and of a thing’s “nature”. Notwithstanding their wide negligence in the literature, these concepts belong to the central ones of Kant’s metaphysics. I argue that, on the one hand, Kant is in continuity with the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition of essence. But, on the other hand, he also follows Locke in distinguishing between “logical” and “real” essence. Contrary to recent attempts of aligning real essence with contemporary approaches to essence, I will defend the thesis (...) that Kant equates real essence and (formal) nature, and that real essence has a causal, but no constitutive role. I shall also respond to potential objections and discuss some developments of Kant’s views. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz argumentiere ich, dass die Standardauffassung von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen inadäquat ist, ein Artefakt der gegenwärtig herrschenden theorielastigen Auffassung von Intentionalität, Sprache und Rationalität, und skizziere eine alternative Auffassung. Im folgenden Abschnitt belege ich erst einmal die These der Theorielastigkeit anhand einiger Beispiele vor allem aus der gegenwärtigen analytischen Philosophie. Der dritte Abschnitt erklärt, wie diese Theorielastigkeit im Standardverständnis von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen verkörpert ist. Im vierten Abschnitt argumentiere ich, dass dieses Standardverständnis der Proposition zwei unvereinbare (...) Rollen zuweist. Sie kann nicht sowohl einen Sachverhalt repräsentieren, der Gegenstand praktischer genauso wie theoretischer Stellungnahmen sein kann, als auch wie eine theoretische Stellungnahme Wahrheitswertträger sein. In den folgenden Abschnitten versuche ich eine partielle Diagnose, wie es zu dieser Auffassung kommen kann: gewisse Formen der Neutralisierung von Stellungnahmen durch das bloße „in den Raum stellen“ (fünfter Abschnitt), durch fiktionale Kontexte (sechster Abschnitt) und den Kontext logischer Verknüpfungen (der so genannte „Frege-Punkt“; siebter Abschnitt) werden verwechselt mit der Neutralität zwischen dem Praktischen und Theoretischen, zwischen Wollen und Wahrheit, die die Standardauffassung erfordern würde. Der achte Abschnitt skizziert in groben Umrissen ein alternatives Bild. Demnach wird eine Repräsentation eines Sachverhalts erst durch die dazu kommende theoretische oder praktische Position zu einer Stellungnahme und damit zum Träger eines Erfüllungswerts. Die Bereiche des Praktischen und des Theoretischen sind parallel strukturiert und unterschieden sich im Wesentlichen nur durch die Verschiedenheit der Passrichtungen. Grundlegende rationale Operationen wie Deduktion, Abduktion und Induktion können auf praktischen Stellungnahmen genauso ausgeführt werden wie auf theoretischen. Im neunten Abschnitt verorte ich die tieferen Wurzeln der Theorielastigkeit in dem Verlangen, das Praktische an die dem Theoretischen eigene Form der Objektivität zu assimilieren. Dieses Verlangen muss aber fruchtlos bleiben, und die dem Praktischen eigene Form der Objektivität wird so verfehlt. Der letzte Abschnitt deutet an, wie sich Werturteile in dem skizzierten Rahmen deuten lassen. (shrink)