This article articulates a framework for normatively assessing influence operations, undertaken by national security institutions. Section I categorizes the vast field of possible types of influence operations according to the communication’s content, its attribution, the rights of the target audience, the communication’s purpose, and its secondary effects. Section II populates these categories with historical examples and section III evaluates these cases with a moral framework. I argue that deceptive or manipulative communications directed at non-liable audiences are presumptively immoral and illegitimate (...) for liberal states, as are deceptive operations aimed at an unjust end, or even operations aimed at a just end where secondary effects are forecast to be disproportionate to the proximate end. (shrink)

People often reason about omissions. One line of research shows that people can distinguish between the semantics of omissive causes and omissive enabling conditions: for instance, not flunking out of college enabled you (but didn’t cause you) to graduate. Another line of work shows that people rely on the normative status of omissive events in inferring their causal role: if the outcome came about because the omission violated some norm, reasoners are more likely to select that omission as a cause. (...) We designed a novel paradigm that tests how norms interact with the semantics of omissive enabling conditions. The paradigm concerns the circuitry of a mechanical device that plays music. Two experiments used the paradigm to stipulate norms and present a distinct set of possibilities to participants. Participants chose which causal verb best described the operations of the machine. The studies revealed that participants’ responses are best predicted by their tendency to consider the semantics of omissive relations. In contrast, norms had little to no effect in participants’ responses. We conclude by marshaling the evidence and considering what role norms may play in people’s understanding of omissions. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relationship between the history and philosophy of science by way of the issue of epistemic normativity. After brief discussion of the relationship between history and philosophy of science in Kuhn’s own thinking, the paper focuses on the implications of the history of science for epistemic normativity. There may be historical evidence for change of scientific methodology, which may seem to support a position of epistemic relativism. However, the fact that the methods of science undergo variation does (...) not entail that epistemic justification varies with the methods employed by scientists. In order to arrive at the relativist conclusion, an epistemological argument is required that justification depends upon operative methods. This raises the question of epistemic normativity. Kuhn himself attempted to deal with this question on a number of occasions, but without success. Following brief discussion of Kuhn on this topic, the paper then turns to the treatment of epistemic normativity in the work of Lakatos, Laudan and Worrall. Lakatos and Laudan proposed that particular episodes from the history of science might be employed to adjudicate between alternative theories of method. Such episodes are selected on the basis of value judgements or pre-analytic intuitions, but such value judgements and intuitions are themselves problematic. Laudan later proposed the normative naturalist view that a rule of method is to be evaluated empirically on the basis of its reliability in conducing to a desired cognitive aim. Against this attempt to naturalize meta-methodology, Worrall argued that the normative force of the appeal to past reliability requires an a priori inductive principle. In my view, the problem of epistemic normativity is solved by combining the particularist focus on specific episodes in the history of science with the naturalistic account of the reliability of method. (shrink)

One of the central aims of Susanne Mantel’s book "Determined by Reasons" (2018) is to reject the idea that normative and motivating reasons can be identical. In her own words, Mantel denies the “Identity Thesis”, according to which “when an agent acts for a normative reason N, there is a motivating reason M of that agent such that M is identical with N” (Mantel 2018, 93). In this comment, I offer a simple argument for the Identity Thesis: (1) When an (...) agent acts for a normative reason N, there is a reason M for which that agent acts such that M is identical with N. (2) A reason for which someone acts is a motivating reason. (3) Therefore, when an agent acts for a normative reason N, there is a motivating reason M of that agent such that M is identical with N. Premise (1) is trivial, and premise (2) is true by a common definition of the term ‘motivating reason’, according to which a motivating reason is just a reason that is acted upon. I call this the operative notion of a motivating reason. Mantel does not address this operative notion, even though it is widely used in the literature, especially among proponents of the Identity Thesis. I argue that Mantel does not succeed in rejecting the Identity Thesis as long as she does not show that the operative notion of a motivating reason is flawed. (shrink)

The dominant route to nondescriptivist views of normative and evaluative language is through the expressivist idea that normative terms have distinctive expressive roles in conveying our attitudes. This paper explores an alternative route based on two ideas. First, a core normative term ‘ought’ is a modal operator; and second, modal operators play a distinctive nonrepresentational role in generating meanings for the statements in which they figure. I argue that this provides for an attractive alternative to expressivist forms of nondescriptivism about (...) normative language. In the final section of the paper, I explore ways it might be extended to evaluative language. (shrink)

Despite recent growth in surveillance capabilities there has been little discussion regarding the ethics of surveillance. Much of the research that has been carried out has tended to lack a coherent structure or fails to address key concerns. I argue that the just war tradition should be used as an ethical framework which is applicable to surveillance, providing the questions which should be asked of any surveillance operation. In this manner, when considering whether to employ surveillance, one should take into (...) account the reason for the surveillance, the authority of the surveillant, whether or not there has been a declaration of intent, whether surveillance is an act of last resort, what is the likelihood of success of the operation and whether surveillance is a proportionate response. Once underway, the methods of surveillance should be proportionate to the occasion and seek to target appropriate people while limiting surveillance of those deemed inappropriate. By drawing on the just war tradition, ethical questions regarding surveillance can draw on a long and considered discourse while gaining a framework which, I argue, raises all the key concerns and misses none. (shrink)

Legal norms are an invention. This paper advances a proposal about what kind of invention they are. The proposal is that legal norms derive from rules which specify role functions in a legal system. Legal rules attach to agents in virtue of their status within the system in which the rules operate. The point of legal rules or a legal system is to solve to large scale coordination problems, specifically the problem of organizing social and economic life among (...) a group of people and their successors, though not every legal rule pertains to a coordination problem. The framework for thinking about legal norms that I describe is a framework for thinking about institutions and policies more generally. The idea is to show that legal norms are a species of institutional norm. There are two central ideas. The first is the idea of a role in an institution. The second is the idea of proxy agency. Proxy agency involves one agent or group acting under the authorization of another agent or group (perhaps subsuming it) in a way that makes the actions of the proxy count as actions (under a description) of the individual or group for which it is a proxy. We get the characteristic structure of a legal system by conceiving of an institutional group, itself conceived of as a set of interlocking roles realized in individuals, as having one or more roles for proxy agents who are authorized by the group to make policy for the group. The set of rules governing the basic constitution of the group and spelling out the powers of the policy proxies determine fundamental norms for the group with specific role responsibilities attaching to particular positions in institutional arrangements. The policies determine further norms whose force derives from the fundamental norms. We must then say some further things to distinguish institutions and policies which we wish to designate as legal. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to describe the models and specifics of export-import transactions in the service sector in Ukraine. For this, the essence of the service as an object of export-import operations is characterized, the process of conducting export operations is described, an algorithm for the implementation of export-import operations of services is developed and provided to indicate their features and simplify the implementation procedures for the business of Ukraine. Within the framework of the article, an attempt was (...) made to visualize the models of export and import of services recognized by the World Trade Organization within the framework of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and an algorithm of export-import of services was developed, taking into account the main operations to facilitate the trade process of the national business of Ukraine. Thanks to the author's developments, the process of export-import of services for the domestic manufacturer will become more understandable and transparent, which will provide the opportunity to enter and consolidate international markets, and in the future also increase trade turnover, which, among other things, will contribute to the growth of the country's national economy. The value of the study lies in the author's attempt in one study to outline models of export-import of services, presenting them visually, with a developed algorithm for sellers to simplify the procedure for their registration, taking into account the legal norms of a certain place of their provision. understanding the main models, directly the process of providing and processing operations on export-import services will make it easier for suppliers to work with this product category in world trade. Further research may be aimed at examining the specifics of import-export operations depending on the types of services provided by domestic manufacturers in different countries of the world. -/- Анотація. Метою даного дослідження є опис моделей та специфіки здійснення експортно-імпортних операцій у сфері послуг в Україні. Для цього охарактеризована сутність послуги як об'єкта експортно-імпортних операцій, описано моделі проведення експортно-імпортних операцій, розроблено та наведено алгоритм здійснення експортно-імпортних операцій послуг для зазначення їх особливостей й спрощення процедур здійснення для бізнесу України. У статті зроблено спробу наглядного зображення моделей експорту та імпорту послуг, визнаних Світовою організацію торгівлі у рамках Генеральної угоди з торгівлі послугами, та розроблено алгоритм експорту-імпорту послуг з урахуванням основних операції для полегшення процесу торгівлі національного бізнесу України. Завдяки розробкам автора процес експорту-імпорту послуг для вітчизняного виробника стане більш зрозумілим та прозорим, що надасть можливість виходу на міжнародні ринки та закріплення на них, а в подальшому ще й нарощувати обороти торгівлі, що, у тому числі, буде сприяти росту національної економіки країни. Цінність дослідження полягає у спробі автора в одному дослідженні викласти моделі експорту-імпорту послуг, представивши їх наочно, з розробленим алгоритмом для продавців для спрощення процедури їх оформлення з урахуванням норм законодавства певного місця їх надання. розуміння основних моделей, безпосередньо процесу надання та оформлення операцій з експорту-імпорту послуг полегшить постачальникам роботу з цією категорією продукту у світової торгівлі. Подальші дослідження можуть бути націлені на розгляд особливостей експортно- імпортних операцій в залежності від видів послуг, які надають вітчизняні виробники у різних країнах світу. (shrink)

A prolonged debate about the nature of norms has been conducted in terms of the scope of a modal operator. Here I argue that the features of what I call Normative Focus are more fundamental than scope. We shall see limitations of scope contrasted with better analysis in terms of Normative Focus. Some authors address such limitations by extending what they mean by scope. I show that scope is still not doing the work: what does it is their elicitation (...) of our tacit knowledge of Normative Focus. Finally, I show that scope cannot capture Normative Focus because scope allows us to make only one distinction where we need to make three. So we should leave scope to the philosophers of language and turn instead to the ontology of Normative Focus. (shrink)

One of the pressing challenges we face today—in a post-Westphalian order and post-Bretton Woods world —is how to design the right kind of MAS that can take full advantage of the socio-economic and political progress made so far, while dealing successfully with the new global challenges that are undermining the best legacy of that very progress. This is the topic of the article. In it, I argue that in order to design the right kind of MAS, we need to design (...) the right kind of norms that constitute them; in order to design the right kind of constitutive norms, we need to identify and adopt the right kind of principles of normative design; toleration is one of those principles; unfortunately, its role as a foundation for the design of norms has been undermined by the “paradox of toleration”; however, the paradox can be solved; so toleration can be re-instated as the right kind of foundational principle for the design of the right kind of norms that can constitute the right kind of MAS that can operate across cultures, societies and states, to help us to tackle the new global challenges facing us. (shrink)

In the paper we provide an overview of issues related to the models used in the research on the logic of norms and actions. We present two models of the variability of the world: temporal (acyclic) and atemporal (cyclic). In the first one the past is always clearly defined, and the future is potentially “branched”. The second type of model allows for a return to the situation that took place. Next we describe different approaches towards agency modeling. We present (...) the most important paradigms, including the logic of actions, where actions are interpreted as transitions between the situations and STIT logic, which states only the responsibility of the agent for particular states of affairs. We discuss questions of determinism and indeterminism of actions, identification of basic actions and operations and the issue of identity. The final part of the paper is devoted to deontic categories. In particular, the applicability of the concepts of strong and weak permission and prohibition in different situational contexts, and their relationship to the two concepts of obligation: abstract and derived. (shrink)

A shared narrative in the literature on the evolution of cooperation maintains that social _learning_ evolves early to allow for the transmission of cumulative culture. Social _norms_, whilst present at the outset, only rise to prominence later on, mainly to stabilise cooperation against the threat of defection. In contrast, I argue that once we consider insights from social epistemology, an expansion of this narrative presents itself: An interesting kind of social norm — an epistemic coordination norm — was operative (...) in early and important instances of specialised social learning. I show how there’s a need for such norms in two key social learning strategies and explain how this need is constituted. In assessor-teaching (e.g. Castro et al., 2019b, 2021), epistemic coordination norms allow agents to coordinate around the _content_ of social learning, i.e., what is to be known and how this is to be done. These norms also allow agents to coordinate around the form of cultural learning in what’s sometimes called strategic social learning (Laland, 2004; Hoppitt & Laland, 2013; Heyes, 2018, Chap. 5) and elsewhere. Broadly speaking, this concerns how cultural learning is organised within the social group. The upshot is that the evolution of social learning and social norms are intertwined in important and underappreciated ways from early on. The above matters as it informs our views about the evolution of social norms more generally. Truly _social_ norms emerged to coordinate a plurality of complex behaviours and interactions, amongst them specialised social learning. I substantiate this view by contrasting it with Jonathan Birch’s views on the evolution of norms. What results is a general but cohesive narrative on the early evolution of social norms. (shrink)

In this paper I provide some linguistic evidence to the thesis that responsibility judgments are normative. I present an argument from negation, since the negation of descrip- tive judgments is structurally different from the negation of normative judgments. In particular, the negation of responsibility judgments seem to conform to the pattern of the negation of normative judgments, thus being a prima facie evidence for the normativity of responsibility judgments. I assume — for the argument’s sake — Austin’s distinction be- tween (...) justification and excuse, and I sketch how to accommodate the distinction between internal (justification) and external (excuse) nega- tion of responsibility within a language with a second-order analogous of existential generalization and λ operator. In the end I confront with and refute some objections against this argument. (shrink)

Moral indeterminacy can be problematic: prospectively it can give rise to deliberative anguish, and retrospectively, it can leave us in a limbo as to what attitudes it is appropriate to form with respect to past actions with indeterminate moral status. These problems give us reason to resolve ethical indeterminacy. One mechanism for doing so involves the use of our normative powers to place obligations on ourselves and to waive our claims against others. This mechanism could operate through an explicit agreement, (...) but could also operate through implicit endorsement of a social convention. However, there are important limits on when the mechanism can eliminate moral indeterminacy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that what counts as the proper function of a trait is a matter of the de facto perspective that the biological system, itself, possesses on what counts as proper functioning for that trait. Unlike non-perspectival accounts, internal perspectivalism does not succumb to generality problems. But unlike external perspectivalism, internal perspectivalism can provide a fully naturalistic, mind-independent grounding of proper function and natural norms. The attribution of perspectives to biological systems is intended to be neither (...) metaphorical nor anthropomorphic: I do not mean to imply that such systems thereby must possess agency, cognition, intentions, concepts, or mental or psychological states. Instead, such systems provide the grounding for norms of performance when they internally enforce their own standard of (i.e., their own perspective on) what constitutes proper functioning or malfunctioning. By operating with a fixed, determinate level of generality, such systems provide the basis for an account of proper function that is immune to generality problems. (shrink)

The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only three credible ways to save the (...) charge of infeasibility: by proposing an alternative account of feasibility; by proposing an alternative, more circumscribed interpretation of the subject-matter of feasibility claims; and by proposing a more expansive account of the addressees of the demand for open borders. The first fails to vindicate the claim that infeasibility is a normative argument-stopper. The second does not provide an argument against open borders at all. The third underestimates the power of at least some non-state actors. We conclude by drawing some lessons for the open borders view and the use of feasibility in politics more generally. (shrink)

Cet article s’intéresse aux émotions dans l’internalisation et l’émergence des normes sociales. Nous y montrons comment les normes sociales ont un impact sur les émotions et comment les émotions ont un impact sur les normes sociales. Pour le faire, trois approches complémentaires mais souvent traitées indépendamment les unes des autres dans la littérature scientifique sont discutées. La première a trait à la façon dont les normes sociales (les normes émotionnelles) régulent les émotions. Cette régulation se comprend comme l’internalisation de la (...) normativité sociale dans les membres d’une société : les normes émotionnelles contribuent à la fabrique des dispositions émotionnelles des membres qui s’ajustent aux normes et aux valeurs valant dans leur société. La deuxième approche a trait au rôle des émotions dans le soutien aux normes sociales. Une fois que l’internalisation des normes et des valeurs est opérée et que les membres ont développé une sensibilité affective aux normes et aux valeurs de leur collectif, les émotions peuvent opérer comme des régulateurs des comportements : les émotions font que les membres se conforment aux normes et aux valeurs. Les normes internalisées suscitent des réactions émotionnelles qui contribuent au maintien de l’ordre normatif. La troisième approche affirme que les émotions contribuent à l’émergence des normes sociales et des valeurs dans une société donnée. En ce sens, les émotions peuvent contribuer à la transformation de l’ordre normatif. Il s’agit donc de la fabrique de la société. (shrink)

Most psychological and philosophical theories assume that we know what we feel. This general view is often accompanied by a range of more specific claims, such as the idea that we experience one emotion at a time, and that it is possible to distinguish between emotions based on their cognition, judgment, behaviour, or physiology. One common approach is to discriminate emotions based on their motivations or ultimate goals. Some argue that empathic distress, for instance, has the potential to motivate empathic (...) concerns; personal distress, on the other hand, is self-oriented and motivates egoistic concerns. In this paper, I argue against this and similarly teleological views of emotions and affect. Through a close study of the emotional breakdown of an American drone operator, I make the case that understanding our emotions entails much more ambiguity than dominant theories assume. In our emotional lives, disorientation and confusion are often the norm. (shrink)

We attribute knowledge to institutions on a daily basis, saying things like "the government knew about the threat" or "the university did not act upon the knowledge it had about the harassment". Institutions can also attribute knowledge to themselves, like when Maybank Global Banking claims that it offers its customers "deep expertise and vast knowledge" of the Southeast Asia region, or when the United States Geological Survey states that it understands complex natural science phenomena like the probability of earthquakes occurring (...) along a given fault line. This article aims to discover when we can correctly attribute knowledge to an institution. I find this an interesting question, especially because when something does go wrong, all too often the official line of response from institutions is that they were unaware of the situation: in other words, they did not have enough information at their disposal. I will argue that institutions have fewer excuses for being ignorant than individuals do, and that many admissions of institutional knowledge are too modest. I begin by discussing a real-life example of the latter, before turning my attention to the usually fragmented nature of institutional knowledge. I also discuss the robustness of this knowledge, offering a distinction between two types of institutional knowledge. I then discuss knowledge parameters and why institutions have fewer excuses for not knowing about something than individuals do. I round off the chapter by examining institutional knowledge on climate change. (shrink)

Igal Kvart A Coding Conception in Action-Directed-Pragmatics -/- I present formal Pragmatics for a domain in Pragmatics that I call Action-Directed Pragmatics, which focuses on the Pragmatic riddle of how implicit contents are conveyed and understood, by adopting a coding model, in which the speaker and addressee simulate each other iteratively in a deliberative context (an ‘action-pregnant’ one). The implicit content, conveyed by a speaker and decoded by her addressee, in such cases, consists in the specified steered-to action, plus modulations (...) on the action-polarity (pro or con) and the degree of the so-called Steering Thrust that accompanies such assertions and is conveyed by verbal locutions, intonation, and/or bodily and facial gestures. There are two main tasks to model (in a given setup and conversational context): First, how is the speaker, with a steered-to action in mind (and Steering Thrust), to select an assertion so as to (say) optimize the successful transmission and decoding of its implicit pragmatic content by her and her addressee? Second, how does the addressee, given an assertion by the speaker, decipher the implicit pragmatic content conveyed via it? Both will invoke pertinent information they have about each other and the setup/context in order to best encode and best decode the implicit pragmatic content. (This coding mechanism proposed here is not offered for the ubiquitous ‘frozen’, ‘trivial’ or ‘routinized’ pragmatic messages.) A prelude to this formal Pragmatics is a general formal Pragmatic account of Assertibility in contexts that are multi-normative (which is the common case). I focus here only on Epistemic/Semantic and Instrumental Norms. A linear representation of degrees of Overall Assertibility (i.e., taking into account various operative norms) will be an n-dimensional qualitative vector space with a function that computes them given different degrees of sub-normative Assertibility on each axis. (shrink)

This paper aims to open a dialogue between philosophers working in decision theory and operations researchers and engineers working on decision-making under deep uncertainty. Specifically, we assess the recommendation to follow a norm of robust satisficing when making decisions under deep uncertainty in the context of decision analyses that rely on the tools of Robust Decision-Making developed by Robert Lempert and colleagues at RAND. We discuss two challenges for robust satisficing: whether the norm might derive its plausibility from an implicit (...) appeal to probabilistic representations of uncertainty of the kind that deep uncertainty is supposed to preclude; and whether there is adequate justification for adopting a satisficing norm, as opposed to an optimizing norm that is sensitive to considerations of robustness. We discuss decision-theoretic and voting-theoretic motivations for robust satisficing, and use these motivations to select among candidate formulations of the robust satisficing norm. (shrink)

The concept of organizational commitment is defined as employees's strong belief in accepting organizational goals and values; a strong desire to spend high-level effort taking into account the benefit of the organization and to maintain membership in the organization. Although there are different classifications related to organizational commitment in the literature, affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment sub-dimensions were emphasized. This study includes the implementation of an organizational commitment questionnaire developed by Allen and Meyer (1990) and adapted to Turkish (...) by Wasti (2000) on a total of 53 employees in a participation bank operating in the East Black Sea Region. As a result of the study, no statistically significant relationship was found between the organizational commitment levels of the bank employees and the variables of age, marital status, gender, lenght of work, job title, income level. When the organizational score means of the employees were evaluated, it was seen that the average scores of affective commitment were higher than continuance and normative commitment. -/- . (shrink)

The proliferation of work by autistic writers continues apace, defying a long and multidisciplinary tradition of constructing autistic people as lacking the capacity for narration. To study neurodivergent literature, then, is to witness the refusal of these exclusionary narrative conventions, and to register the ideological presuppositions that underpin pathologization. In this article, I engage with recent insights from Neurodiversity Studies to explore the connections between narrative neuronormativity and other discourses of oppression, especially those that have generated racialized, gendered, and colonial (...) narratives of desubjectification. Focusing on the neuroqueer movement—an emergent practice of disidentification that refuses the interpellations of neuronormativity, ableism, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity—I discuss the concept of allism, arguing that this satirical critique of pathologization harbors a deconstructive force that denaturalizes the dialectic of recognition. Pursuing the discursive context and theoretical implications of this critique, I provide a short genealogy of narrative neuronormativity, connecting the operation of the dialectic in the early novel to the clinical texts of child psychology. To demonstrate the neuroqueer subversion of this tradition, I then read An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon, a text that stages a disidentification with storytelling. Protagonist Aster’s neuroqueer refusal indexes the concomitance of the construction of Blackness as an ontological foil for whiteness and the construction of autism as a standard of disordered sociality that neuronorms can be measured against. My reading of Unkindness suggests that the extant techniques of literary narratorship are political instruments that will, unless repurposed, continue to disseminate these dispossessive dialectics. (shrink)

Where does entitlement to trust come from? When we trust someone to φ, do we need to have reason to trust them to φ or do we start out entitled to trust them to φ by default? Reductivists think that entitlement to trust always “reduces to” or is explained by the reasons that agents have to trust others. In contrast, anti-reductivists think that, in a broad range of circumstances, we just have entitlement to trust. even if we don’t have positive (...) reasons to do so. In this paper, we argue for a version of anti-reductivism. Roughly, we argue that we have default entitlement to trust someone to φ so long as there is an operative norm that requires S to φ. At least in such circumstances (and absent defeaters), we don’t need any positive reasons to trust S to φ. (shrink)

The situationist literature in psychology claims that conduct is not determined by character and reflects the operation of the agent's situation or environment. For instance, due to situational factors, compassionate behavior is much less common than we might have expected from people we believe to be compassionate. This article focuses on whether situationism should revise our beliefs about moral responsibility. It assesses the implications of situationism against the backdrop of a conception of responsibility that is grounded in norms about (...) the fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing that require that agents to be normatively competent and possess situational control. Despite the low incidence of compassionate behavior revealed in situationist studies, situationism threatens neither situational control nor normative competence. Nonetheless situationism may force revision of our views about responsibility in particular contexts, such as wartime wrongdoing. Whereas a good case can be made that the heat of battle can create situational pressures that significantly impair normative competence and thus sometimes provide a full or partial excuse, there is reason to be skeptical of attempts to generalize this excuse to other contexts of wartime wrongdoing. If so, moral responsibility can take situationism on board without capsizing the boat. (shrink)

The Politics of Military Force uses discourse theory to examine the dynamics of discursive change that made participation in military operations possible against the background of German antimilitarist culture. Once considered a strict taboo, so-called out-of-area operations have now become widely considered by German policymakers to be without alternative. The book argues that an understanding of how certain policies are made possible (in this case, military operations abroad and force transformation), one needs to focus on processes of discursive change that (...) result in different policy options appearing rational, appropriate, feasible, or even self-evident. Drawing on Essex School discourse theory, the book develops a theoretical framework to understand how discursive change works, and elaborates on how discursive change makes once unthinkable policy options not only acceptable but even without alternative. Based on a detailed discourse analysis of more than 25 years of German parliamentary debates, The Politics of Military Force provides an explanation for: (1) the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse in German security policy after the end of the Cold War (discursive change), (2) the rearticulation of German antimilitarism in the process (ideational change/norm erosion) and (3) the resulting making-possible of military operations and force transformation (policy change). In doing so, the book also demonstrates the added value of a poststructuralist approach compared to the naive realism and linear conceptions of norm change so prominent in the study of German foreign policy and International Relations more generally. (shrink)

This paper offers a new account of the epistemic significance of disagreement which is grounded in two assumptions; that knowledge is the norm of belief and, that the safety condition is a necessary condition for knowledge. These assumptions motivate a modal definition of epistemic peerhood, which is much easier to operate on than the more traditional definitions of epistemic peerhood. The modal account of the epistemic significance of disagreement yields plausible results regarding cases of disagreement. Furthermore, it is able to (...) tap into the intuitions that have motivated the conformist and the nonconformist positions and it locates a fruitful middle-ground between these two conflicting positions. It will be shown that the conformist is correct in that cases of real peer disagreement force us to suspend our judgment. The reason for this is that in cases of real peer disagreement our beliefs fail to be safe. The nonconformist, on the other hand, is right in that disagreement in itself does not have any epistemic power. It is only by the grace of nature that we gain knowledge. The fact that someone disagrees with you does not mean that you do not have knowledge. (shrink)

Two plausible claims seem to be inconsistent with each other. One is the idea that if one reasonably believes that one ought to fi, then indeed, on pain of acting irrationally, one ought to fi. The other is the view that we are fallible with respect to our beliefs about what we ought to do. Ewing’s Problem is how to react to this apparent inconsistency. I reject two easy ways out. One is Ewing’s own solution to his problem, which is (...) to introduce two different notions of ought. The other is the view that Ewing’s Problem rests on a simple confusion regarding the scope of the ought-operator. Then, I discuss two hard ways out, which I label objectivism and subjectivism, and for which G.E. Moore and Bishop Butler are introduced as historical witnesses. These are hard ways out because both of these views have strong counterintuitive consequences. After explaining why Ewing’s Problem is so difficult, I show that there is conceptual room in-between Moore and Butler, but I remain sceptical whether Ewing’s Problem is solvable within a realist framework of normative facts. (shrink)

Some recent discussions of mechanistic explanation have focused on control operations. But control is often associated with teleological or normative-sounding concepts like goals and set-points, prompting the question: Does an explanation that refers to parts or mechanisms “controlling” each other thereby fail to be mechanistic? In this paper I introduce and explain a distinction between what I call open-ended and closed-ended control operations. I then argue that explanations that enlist control operations to do explanatory work can count as mechanistic only (...) if such control operations are closed-ended, not open-ended. (shrink)

Reciprocal Ethics is a novel ethical framework rooted in praxeology, the study of purposeful action. It represents an entirely new paradigm in moral philosophy, placing interaction at the core of universal ethics. Traditional ethical theories often divorce thought from action. Reciprocal Ethics contends that they are two aspects of the same phenomenon in the human experience, removing the traditional boundary between theoretical and practical ethics. The system categorizes all social interaction as either “self-directed” or “other-directed”, and by introducing the concept (...) of "normative signaling" it also exerts legitimate prescriptive power. The theory is a self-consistent, purely descriptive approach to ethics, that suggests that one's actions serve as semiotic signs that signal one's ethical stance in social interaction. Hence actions do not only define individual moral profiles, but also the moral ecosystem within which one actually operates. The theory operates in real time, adapting to the complexity of reality by taking into account uncertainty, incomplete data and social asymmetries. Reconciling elements of consequentialism and deontological theories, Reciprocal Ethics delivers a streamlined, yet comprehensive ethical system for social interaction, offering tangible insights for navigating complex moral dilemmas. By synthesizing descriptive metaethics and normative moral philosophy into one comprehensive formal theory, a bold assertion arises: Reciprocal Ethics becomes the Formal Science of Ethics. (shrink)

The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen’s view of solidarity and of its role in healthcare ethics. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent ter Meulen expects normative concepts to be rooted in existing social practices: his criticism of liberal theories of justice seems to imply a different view on this issue than his implicit assumption that normative concepts are independent from social and historical trends. Second, it is not clear at which level (...) his notion of solidarity is meant to be applied: does it provide principles for individuals or for institutions? Nor is it clear at what level of generality it should work: is it meant for healthcare institutions or for states, for citizens or for healthcare practitioners? Third, it is not at all clear how the communitarian and the universalist aspirations in his conception of solidarity can be reconciled. In light of such difficulties it is argued that within philosophical discourse solidarity can be a useful notion only if it can be clearly distinguished from existing and commonly used ethical concepts. Three examples of such narrow and specific uses of solidarity are presented. Finally, a sceptical view of confining the work of applied philosophers to articulating normative concepts is put forward and an alternative view of blending empirical and philosophical analysis is proposed. This vision of field philosophy requires serious attention and careful understanding of the circumstances and constraints within which normative recommendations operate. It is suggested that such a modest and empirically grounded understanding of normative work is a better way of honouring the belief that philosophy is rooted in social institutions and in complex webs of relations. (shrink)

Resources for Feminist Research, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 44-45, 1985 In this brief article, written in 1984 and published the following year, Lucinda Vandervort sets out a comprehensive agenda for enforcement of sexual assault laws in Canada. Those familiar with her subsequent writing are aware that the legal implications of the distinction between the “social” and “legal” definitions of sexual assault, identified here as crucial for interpretation and implementation of the law of sexual assault, are analyzed at length in (...) “Mistake of Law and Sexual Assault: Consent and Mens Rea” (1986), published at (1987-88) 2(2) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 233 309. In that article the author argued that most mistakes about consent are not mistakes about a “fact” that may sometimes negative mens rea, but are actually mistakes about the law that afford accused no excuse under either Canadian common law or statutory criminal law. She argued further that consent must be interpreted as “voluntary agreement” and must be affirmatively and unequivocally communicated in order to operate as an effective waiver of a person’s legal right to be free from interference with his or her bodily integrity. That article was a central reference point in the consultations leading to the 1992 amendments to the sexual assault provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code and in some key decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada in sexual assault cases in the 1990’s. As a result of a gradual transformation of theoretical analysis of the law of mens rea and consent in Canada, culpable awareness is now understood by many jurists and criminal law theorists quite differently than it was twenty-five years ago. As Vandervort acknowledged in her 1984 Agenda for Action, however, clarity in legal theory and legal doctrine is no guarantee of how sexual assault laws will operate in practice. Theory and practice, doctrine and its implementation, often diverge. This phenomenon is still seen in some decisions taken at the trial, pre-trial, and pre-charge stages in sexual assault cases. Police, prosecutors, and many trial judges, like accused, may often be influenced by traditional attitudes about sexual consent and mistaken about the law of consent. Accordingly, in her recent work Vandervort re-visits and re-examines the exercise of discretion by police, prosecutors, and the judiciary. An example is her 2009 article “Legal Subversion of the Criminal Justice Process? Judicial, Prosecutorial and Police Discretion in R. v. Edmondson, Kindrat and Brown” in Sexual Assault Law, Practice & Activism in a Post-Jane Doe Era, edited by Elizabeth Sheehy (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2012). In this and some of her other recent work, the distinctions between social and legal norms and questions of fact and law, previously analyzed with the objective of clarifying the law, are used to control the effects of social ignorance and partiality in the handling of sexual assault complaints by decision-makers in the criminal justice system at trial and pre-trial. Lucinda Vandervort’s published and unpublished legal and philosophical writings on sexual assault and sexual assault law illustrate the development of a socio-legal scholar’s “Agenda for Action” into a principled, pragmatic, open-ended exercise in “institutional design.” Across two centuries, from the revolutionary era of the 18th century to the present, other radical egalitarians would recognize both the impetus for the project and many features of the political and cultural resistance to it. (shrink)

Under which conditions are we epistemically justied to believe that what other people tell us is true? Traditionally, the answer has either been reductionist or anti-reductionist: Either our justication reduces to non-testimonial reasons, or we have a presumptive, though defeasible, right to believe what we are told. However, different cases pull in different directions. Intuitively, someone asking for the time is subject to different epistemic standards than a surgeon consulting a colleague before a dangerous operation. Following this line of thought, (...) this paper develops an account of testimonial justication that captures our reductionist as well as our anti-reductionist intuitions. It is argued that the speaker’s commitment to an epistemic norm, as well as the hearer’s understanding of that norm, gives the hearer a presumptive right to believe what she is told. However, this justication doesn’t apply to situations with high practical risks. Here, the hearer needs reductive reasons to believe that her interlocutor is especially qualied to give her the desired information. (shrink)

What is the content of a mental state? This question poses the problem of intentionality: to explain how mental states can be about other things, where being about them is understood as representing them. A framework that integrates predictive coding and signaling systems theories of cognitive processing offers a new perspective on intentionality. On this view, at least some mental states are evaluations, which differ in function, operation, and normativity from representations. A complete naturalistic theory of intentionality must account for (...) both types of intentional state. (shrink)

The goal of our article is to review the widespread anthropological figure, according to which we can achieve a better understanding of humans by contrasting them with animals. This originally Herderian approach was elaborated by Arnold Gehlen, who characterized humans as “deficient beings” who become complete through culture. According to Gehlen, humans, who are insufficiently equipped by instincts, indirectly stabilize their existence by creating institutions, i.e., complexes of habitual actions. On the other hand, Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that corporeal relationship to (...) the world is already indirect because it is based on preestablished and readjusted “standards” or “norms” of interaction with the environment. Merleau-Ponty then calls these norms “institutions” and views culture as readjustment of institutions which operate already on the level of corporeal existence. The anthropological figure of confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. The Herderian approach can be meaningfully retained only if interpreted as an invitation to confront the norms of indirect interaction with the world in animals and in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

An essay on the operation of the powers of control during the pandemic lockdown. Thus, the meaning of contemporary noise, the anthropause, the connection as a norm, the appearance of a new chain between biopolitical regulations, norms and subjective modulations are analyzed. The untimely force of the event is proposed as a way of resisting control. -/- Un ensayo sobre el funcionamiento de los poderes de control durante el encierro pandémico. Se analizan, así, el sentido del ruido contemporáneo, la (...) antropausa, la conexión como norma, la aparición de un nuevo encadenamiento entre regulaciones biopolíticas, normas y modulaciones subjetivas. Se propone la fuerza intempestiva del acontecimiento como forma de resistir al control. (shrink)

Since its origins in the mid-Twentieth Century, Cognitive Science has almost exclusively operated within the philosophical frames provided by Cartesian Representationalism. In recent years, alternative, phenomenological and pragmatist, frames have served as a resource for the emergence of non-representational approaches to mind and cognition. These have been gathered under the label ‘4E cognition’, indicating their Embodied, Extended, Enacted and Embedded nature. This chapter examines one version of 4E cognition, which builds upon Ecological Psychology, and argues that it fails to pass (...) the Evaluation Test: it cannot account for the central role of normativity and evaluation in our responsiveness to loci of significance in the lifeworld, while failing to provide an argument for the exclusion of evaluative and normative aspects. (shrink)

Disciplinary issues -- Field studies -- Appendix: Theory of law : legal ethnography, or, the theoretical fruits of the inquiries into folkways. /// Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1995 to 2008 /// DISCIPLINARY ISSUES -- LAW AS CULTURE? [2002] 9–14 // TRENDS IN COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES [2002] 15–17 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES: ATTEMPTS AT CONCEPTUALISATION [1997] 19–28: 1. Legal Culture in a Cultural-anthropological Approach 19 / 2. Legal Culture in a Sociological Approach 21 / 3. Timely Issues of (...) Central and Eastern Europe 24 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES? [2001] 29–48: 1. Legal Comparativism Challenged 29 / 2. Comparative Legal Cultures versus Comparative Law 34 / 3. Contrasting Fields 40 [a) The Historical Understanding of Socialist Law 42 / b) Convergence of Civil Law and Common Law 44] 4. Concluding Remarks 46 // THEATRUM LEGALE MUNDI: ON LEGAL SYSTEMS CLASSIFIED [2005] 49–75: 1. Preliminaries 49 / 2. Proposals 50 / 3. Impossible Taxonomy, or the Moment of Practicality in Legal Mapping 69 / 4. Diversity as a Fundamental Quality of Human Existence 74 // LEGAL TRADITIONS? IN SEARCH FOR FAMILIES AND CULTURES IN LAW [2004] 77–97: 1. Comparative Law and the Comparative Study of Legal Traditions 78 / 2. ‘System’, ‘Family’, ‘Culture’, and ‘Tradition’ in the Classification of Law 80 / 3. Different Traditions, Differing Ways of Thinking 85 / 4. Different Expectations, Differings Institutionalisations in Law 88 / 5. Different “Rationalities”, Differing “Logics” 92 / 6. Mentality in Foundation of the Law 94 / 7. Defining a Subject for Theoretical Research in Law 96 // SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD IN THE EUROPEAN IDENTITY OF LAW? [1995] 99–102 --- FIELD STUDIES -- MEETING POINTS BETWEEN THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH–AMERICAN COMMON LAW AND CONTINENTAL-FRENCH CIVIL LAW: DEVELOPMENTS AND EXPERIENCE OF POSTMODERNITY IN CANADA [2002] 105–130: I. Canadian Law in General 105 / II. Canadian Legal Developments in Particular [1. The Transformation of the Role of Precedents 112 / 2. The Transformation of Law-application into a Collective, Multicultural and Multifactorial Search for a Solution 116 / 3. Practical Trends of Dissolving the Law’s Positivity 120 / 4. New Prerogatives Acquired by Courts 125 {a) Unfolding the Statutory Provisons in Principles 126 / b) Constitutionalisation of Issues 127 / c) The Supreme Court as the Nation’s Supreme Moral Authority 129}] // MAN ELEVATING HIMSELF? DILEMMAS OF RATIONALITY IN OUR AGE [2000] 131–163: I. Reason and its Adventures 1. Progress and Advance Questioned 131 / 2. The Human Search for Safety Objectified 133 / 3. Knowledge Separated from Wisdom 135 / 4. Pure Intellectuality thereby Born 137 / II. The Will-Element Formalised in Law 5. Mere Voluntas in the Foundation of Legal Positivism 141 / 6. Formalism with Operations Fragmented 145 / III. The State of America Exemplified 7. “Slouching into Gomorrah” 147 / IV. Consequences 8. Utopianism-cum-Voluntarism 154 / 9. With Logic in Posterior Control of Human Formulations Only 159 / V. Perspectives 10. And a Final Resolution Dreamed about 161 // RULE OF LAW? MANIA OF LAW? ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND ANARCHY IN AMERICA [2002] 165–180: {Transformation of American Law and Legal Mentality 165 / With Repercussions on the Underlying Ethos 168 / Legislation through Processualisation 170 / With Hyperrationalism Added 172 / Example: Finding Lost Property 172 / Practicalness Veiled by Verbal Magic 173 / Ending in Jurispathy 175 / Transubstantiating the Self-interest of the Legal Profession 178 / Post-modernity, Substituting for Primitiveness 178} // TRANSFERS OF LAW: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS [2003] 181–207: 1. Terms 182 / 2. Technicality 190 / 3. Contrasts in Transfers of Law 200 {Contrasts 200 / Criticisms 202 / Alternatives205} 4. Conclusions 206 // THE DANGERS FOR THE SELF OF BEING SELF-CENTRED: ON STANDARDS AND VALUES [2002] 209–212 --- APPENDIX -- THEORY OF LAW – LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY, OR THE THEORETICAL FRUITS OF THE INQUIRIES INTO FOLKWAYS [2008] 213–234 1. Encounters 213 / 2. Disciplines 218 / 3. The Lawyerly Interest 223 / 4. Law and/or Laws 226 / 5. Conclusion 233 --- Index of Subjects 235 / Index of Normative Materials 242 / Index 244 . (shrink)

Cognitive integration is a defining yet overlooked feature of our intellect that may nevertheless have substantial effects on the process of knowledge-acquisition. To bring those effects to the fore, I explore the topic of cognitive integration both from the perspective of virtue reliabilism within externalist epistemology and the perspective of extended cognition within externalist philosophy of mind and cognitive science. On the basis of this interdisciplinary focus, I argue that cognitive integration can provide a minimalist yet adequate epistemic norm of (...) subjective justification: so long as the agent’s belief-forming process has been integrated in his cognitive character, the agent can be justified in holding the resulting beliefs merely by lacking any doubts there was something wrong in the way he arrived at them. Moreover, since both externalist philosophy of mind and externalist epistemology treat the process of cognitive integration in the same way, we can claim that epistemic cognitive characters may extend beyond our organismic cognitive capacities to the artifacts we employ or even to other agents we interact with. This move is not only necessary for accounting for advanced cases of knowledge that is the product of the operation of epistemic artifacts or the interactive activity of research teams, but it can further lead to interesting ramifications both for social epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Material traces of the past are notoriously inscrutable; they rarely speak with one voice, and what they say is never unmediated. They stand as evidence only given a rich scaffolding of interpretation which is, itself, always open to challenge and revision. And yet archaeological evidence has dramatically expanded what we know of the cultural past, sometimes demonstrating a striking capacity to disrupt settled assumptions. The questions we address in Evidential Reasoning are: How are these successes realized? What gives us confidence (...) in the credibility and robustness, the trustworthiness, of the evidential claims based on archaeological data? And, what constitute best practices in building evidential claims, critically scrutinizing them and putting them to work in archaeological contexts? Rather than retreat to abstractions about how how science operates in the ideal, we approach this question by interrogating a number of close-to-the-ground case studies with the aim of teasing out the wisdom embodied in archaeological practice. The cases we consider – of fieldwork, strategies for working with old evidence, and the role of external resources – illuminate the role of various types of inferential scaffolding and bring into focus practice-grounded epistemic norms that we believe serve archaeologists better than the all-or-nothing ideals of truth and objectivity that dominate programmatic debate. (shrink)

Many of us feel internally conflicted in the face of certain normative claims that make infeasible demands: say, normative claims that demand that agents do what, given deeply entrenched objectionable character traits, they cannot bring themselves to do. On the one hand, such claims may seem false on account of demanding the infeasible, and insisting otherwise may seem to amount to objectionable unworldliness – to chasing “pies in the sky.” On the other hand, such claims may seem true in spite (...) of making infeasible demands, and insisting otherwise may seem to amount to treating the agents in question with undue lenience – to mistakenly letting them “off the hook.” What is going on? One possibility is that we are making a mistake. I explore the alternative hypothesis that our ambivalent reactions, far from involving any mistake, are entirely consistent and appropriate. Rather than some single privileged ought such that the idea that “ought” implies “feasible” is either true or false, there are simply different oughts that are supposed to be capable of operating in the service of, and playing distinct roles associated with, what I shall call different core normative practices. In particular, there is a) some salient core practice-serving ought for which it’s true that “ought” implies “feasible” and b) some other salient core practice-serving ought for which it’s false that “ought” implies “feasible.” I sketch a framework for understanding different core practice-serving oughts in general and then use this framework to consider which particular core practice-serving oughts might be capable of vindicating our ambivalence. I begin by considering and rejecting a prevalent and prima facie promising account according to which the relevant oughts are the prescriptive ought and the evaluative ought. I then propose a different account that holds that the oughts we need are instead the deliberative ought and the hypological ought. (shrink)

Calls to hold artificial intelligence to account are intensifying. Activists and researchers alike warn of an “accountability gap” or even a “crisis of accountability” in AI. Meanwhile, several prominent scholars maintain that accountability holds the key to governing AI. But usage of the term varies widely in discussions of AI ethics and governance. This chapter begins by disambiguating some different senses and dimensions of accountability, distinguishing it from neighboring concepts, and identifying sources of confusion. It proceeds to explore the idea (...) that AI operates within an accountability gap arising from technical features of AI as well as the social context in which it is deployed. The chapter also evaluates various proposals for closing this gap. I conclude that the role of accountability in AI ethics and governance is vital but also more limited than some suggest. Accountability’s primary job description is to verify compliance with substantive normative principles—once those principles are settled. Theories of accountability cannot ultimately tell us what substantive standards to account for, especially when norms are contested or still emerging. Nonetheless, formal mechanisms of accountability provide a way of diagnosing and discouraging egregious wrongdoing even in the absence of normative agreement. Providing accounts can also be an important first step toward the development of more comprehensive regulatory standards for AI. (shrink)

The leading models of disability struggle to fully encompass all aspects of “disability.” This difficulty arises, the author argues, because the models fundamentally misunderstand the nature of disability. Current theoretical approaches to disability can be understood as “nounal,” in that they understand disability as a thing that is caused or embodied. In contrast, this paper presents an adverbial perspective on disability, which shows that disability is experienced as a personally irremediable impediment to daily-living tasks or goals-like-ours. The picture theory of (...) disability technically constitutes a species of relational approach because its analysis references the interplay between an individual and their environment; it differs from other relational accounts, however, by interpreting disability as a certain kind of negative experience—rather than a function of that relationship. This purely descriptive theory makes no normative claims about disability and operates as both a mechanism for the evaluation of the experience of disability and a heuristic device for the proper interpretation of disability. When disability is reframed in this way, the theory offers a particularist perspective which shows if, when, where, and how disability is experienced. (shrink)

My chapter deals with an important part of how Wolff pursued the normative ambitions of his ethics in giving practical guidance with regard to specific moral issues. I first consider how Wolff’s ethics tackles the duties to others, which traditionally represent a difficult issue for moral perfectionism. In this regard, I argue that Wolff’s strategy combines two aspects: (a) he includes in perfection non-active aspects and (b) operates with an agent-neutral notion of perfection, in spite of important passages that might (...) suggest differently. I then focus on Wolff’s treatment of the duties concerning veracity and lying, and show how it follows that general strategy. Combining its two aspects, Wolff examines specific moral issues by adopting a non-welfarist notion of benefit and harm as the standard that can give guidance about practical cases. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new model of graded modal judgment. It begins by problematizing the phenomenon: given plausible constraints on the logic of epistemic modality, it is impossible to model graded attitudes toward modal claims as judgments of probability targeting epistemically modal propositions. This paper considers two alternative models, on which modal operators are non-proposition-forming: (1) Moss (2015), in which graded attitudes toward modal claims are represented as judgments of probability targeting a “proxy” proposition, belief in which would underwrite belief (...) in the modal claim. (2) A model on which graded attitudes toward modal claims are represented as judgments of credence taking as their objects (non-propositional) modal representations (rather than proxy propositions). The second model, like Moss’ model, is shown to be semantically and mathematically tractable. The second model, however, can be straightforwardly integrated into a plausible model of the role of graded attitudes toward modal claims in cognition and normative epistemology. (shrink)

Various philosophers have wanted to move from a (P.F.) “Strawsonian” understanding of the “practices of moral responsibility” to a non-skeptical result. I focus on a strategy moving from a “response-dependent” theory of responsibility. I aim to show that a key analogy associated with this strategy fails to support a compatibilist result. It seems clear that nothing could show that nothing we have been laughing at has really been funny. If “the funny” is similar to “the blameworthy”, then perhaps it would (...) follow that nothing could show that no one we have ever blamed has really been blameworthy. The comparison is interesting, but inconclusive: even if we grant that these properties are normatively similar, the latter has substantive empirical presuppositions, whereas the former does not. One important upshot: even if the standards operative in our practices cannot be mistaken, it could nevertheless be that no one has ever met these standards Ruling out this possibility seemingly requires re-engaging in all of the so-called "metaphysical" debates Strawsonians are keen to avoid. (shrink)

Regulation is nothing without enforcement. This particularly holds for the dynamic field of emerging technologies. Hence, this article has two ambitions. First, it explains how the EU´s new Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) will be implemented and enforced by various institutional bodies, thus clarifying the governance framework of the AIA. Second, it proposes a normative model of governance, providing recommendations to ensure uniform and coordinated execution of the AIA and the fulfilment of the legislation. Taken together, the article explores how the (...) AIA may be implemented by national and EU institutional bodies, encompassing longstanding bodies, such as the European Commission, and those newly established under the AIA, such as the AI Office. It investigates their roles across supranational and national levels, emphasizing how EU regulations influence institutional structures and operations. These regulations may not only directly dictate the structural design of institutions but also indirectly request administrative capacities needed to enforce the AIA. (shrink)

Often ‘nationalism’ and ‘having a state proper to the nation’ are considered as inseparable. Relatedly, when these thoughts are applied to the reality of sub-state nations, such as Flanders, Catalonia Basque Country and Québec, sub-state nationalism (SSN) and separatism seem to be conceptually entangled in their aim for an independent state. This chapter considers sub-state nationalism and sub-state separatism as conceptually distinct, and aims at examining the relationship between sub-state separatist political parties and immigration policies. This requires, on the one (...) hand focusing on the integration policies, given that often immigration policies with regard to admission and removal lies beyond the competence of sub-state nations. On the other hand, it focuses on the two major Flemish pro-independence parties, namely the Nieuwe Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), and Vlaams Belang (VB). While sub-state separatist movements appear to be particularly opposed to increasing immigration, they operate under a particular ‘legitimacy dilemma’ with its paradoxical tendencies to both exclude and include immigrants. The chapter will show contextually that even the relatively more inclusive political party positions, such as the ones taken by the N-VA, are not sufficiently inclusive, when the normative distinction between ‘cultural assimilation’ and ‘cultural integration’ is taken seriously. Theoretically, it will engage with a renowned articulation of the legitimacy dilemma offered by Will Kymlicka, to argue that it is not sufficient to account for the normative necessity to respect the ‘autonomy of immigrants’. As I will demonstrate, this has to do with the inability of the dilemma to distinguish sufficiently ‘cultural assimilation’ from ‘cultural integration’. In other words, on the one hand the chapter contributes to the apparent absence of strong defenses for ‘moral autonomy of immigrants, by describing what such an autonomy might imply for designing of integration policies. On the other hand, it critically assesses Flemish pro-independence parties’ concrete policies with respect to integration. By offering a contextual political theory on these issues, it offers an example of how a moral principle might be implemented, and serve as a critical focal point to evaluate public policies. (shrink)

In my Racialization: A Defense of the Concept, I argue that ‘race’ fails as an analytic category and that we should think in terms of ‘racialization’ and ‘racialized groups’ instead (Hochman 2019c). I define these concepts and defend them against a range of criticisms. In Rethinking Racialization: The Analytical Limits of Racialization, Deniz Uyan critiques my “theory of racialization” (Uyan 2021). However, I do not defend a theory of racialization; I defend the concept of racialization. I argue that racialization is (...) a useful idea, but I do not advance a theory to explain or predict the phenomena it describes. While Uyan’s critique therefore misses its mark, it raises important questions about the explanatory scope of the racialization concept. Ironically, I may be even more skeptical of the prospects of any general theory of racialization than Uyan. I argue that while we ought to develop theories to explain particular instances of racialization, we should not develop a general theory of racialization, because it is simply too varied in the agents that drive it, their intents, the mechanisms through which it operates, and the outcomes it produces. While hope for any general theory of racialisation should be abandoned, I argue that the racialisation concept is still extremely useful. It offers a necessary alternative to race realist concepts, allowing us to point to the wide-ranging effects of belief in race without falsely implying that race itself is real. Uyan does not focus on my arguments against racial realism. However, the theoretical failures and normative risks of racial realism motivate my defense of the racialization concept. In this paper, I reiterate my arguments against racial realism and offer further defense of the concepts of ‘racialization’ and ‘racialized group’. (shrink)

An increasing number of scholars at the intersection of feminist philosophy and critical disability studies have turned to Merleau-Ponty to develop phenomenologies of disability or of what, following Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, I call "non-normate" embodiment. These studies buck the historical trend of philosophers employing disability as an example of deficiency or harm, a mere litmus test for normative theories, or an umbrella term for aphenotypical bodily variation. While a Merleau-Pontian-inspired phenomenology is a promising starting point for thinking about embodied experiences of (...) all sorts, I here draw a cautionary tale about how ableist assumptions can easily undermine accounts of non-normate experience. I first argue that the omission or misguided treatment of disability within the history of philosophy in general and the phenomenological tradition in particular is due to the inheritance of what I call “the ableist conflation” of disability with pain, suffering, and disadvantage. I then show that Merleau-Ponty’s famous reading of the blind man’s cane is problematic insofar as it omits the social dimensions of disabled experiences, misconstrues the radicality of blindness as a world-creating disability, and operates via an able-bodied simulation that confuses object annexation or extension with incorporation. In closing, I contend that if phenomenology is to overcome the errors of traditional philosophy, as Merleau-Ponty once hoped, it must heed the insights of “crip” or non-normate phenomenology, which takes the lived experience of disability as its point of departure. [French translation forthcoming in Pour une phénoménologie critique, ed. Donald A. Landes, Quebec City, Les Presses de l'Université Laval/Paris, J.Vrin]. (shrink)