We offer a model of moral reform and regeneration that involves a wrong-doer making two movements: on the one hand, he identifies with himself as the one who did the act, while he also intentionally moves away from that self (or set of desires and intentions) and moves toward a transformed identity. We see this model at work in the formal practice of contrition and reform in Christian and Buddhist rites. This paper is part of a broader project we are (...) undertaking on the philosophy of forgiveness. (shrink)

This paper introduces constitutivism about practical reason, which is the view that we can justify certain normative claims by showing that agents become committed to these claims simply in virtue of acting. According to this view, action has a certain structural feature – a constitutive aim, principle, or standard – that both constitutes events as actions and generates a standard of assessment for action. We can use this standard of assessment to derive normative claims. In short, the authority of certain (...) normative claims arises from the bare fact that we are agents. This essay explains the constitutivst strategy, surveys the extant attempts to generate constitutivist theories, and considers the problems and prospects for the theory. (shrink)

Mark Schroeder’s Reasons First is admirable in its scope and execution, deftly demonstrating the theoretical promise of extending the reasons-first approach from ethics to epistemology. In what follows we explore how (not) to account for the evidence-that relation within the reasons-first program, we explain how factive content views of evidence can be resilient in the face of Schroeder’s criticisms, and we explain how knowledge from falsehood threatens Schroeder’s view of knowledge. Along the way we sketch a reliabilist account of the (...) reasons-for relation (inspired by Alston) and show how it limits the applicability of Schroeder’s arguments. (shrink)

[Significantly updated in Chapter 6 of Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge] In order for a reason to justify an action or attitude it must be one that is possessed by an agent. Knowledge-centric views of possession ground our possession of reasons, at least partially, either in our knowledge of them or in our being in a position to know them. On virtually all accounts, knowing P is some kind of non-accidental true belief that P. This entails that knowing P (...) is a kind of non-accidental true representation that P. I outline a novel theory of the epistemic requirement on possession in terms of this more general state of non-accidental true representation. It is just as well placed to explain the motivations behind knowledge-centric views of possession, and it is also better placed to explain the extent of the reasons we possess in certain cases of deductive belief-updates and cases involving environmental luck. I conclude with three reflections. First, I indicate how my arguments generate a dilemma for Errol Lord’s view that possessing reasons is just a matter of being in a position to manifest one’s knowledge how to use them. Second, I explain how my view can simultaneously manage cases of environmental luck without falling prey to lottery cases. Finally, I sketch the direction for a further range of counterexamples to knowledge-centric theories of possession. (shrink)

An important question about moral progress is what causes it. One of the most popular proposed mechanisms is moral reasoning: moral progress often happens because lots of people reason their way to improved moral beliefs. Authors who defend moral reasoning as a cause of moral progress have relied on two broad lines of argument: the general and the specific line. The general line presents evidence that moral reasoning is in general a powerful mechanism of moral belief change, while the specific (...) line tries to establish that moral reasoning can explain specific historical examples of moral progress. In this paper, we examine these lines in detail, using Kumar and Campbell’s (2022, A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How It Made Us Human. Oxford University Press) model of rational moral progress to sharpen our focus. For each line, we explain the empirical assumptions it makes; we then argue that the available evidence supports none of these assumptions. We conclude that at this point, we have no idea if moral reasoning causes moral progress. (shrink)

Proponents of public reason views hold that the exercise of political power ought to be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. This article elucidates the common structure shared by all public reason views, first by identifying a set of questions that all such views must answer and, second, by showing that the answers to these questions stand in a particular relationship to each other. In particular, we show that what we call the ‘rationale question’ is fundamental. This fact, and the common (...) structure more generally, are often overlooked or distorted within the literature. As a result, we argue, several prominent argumentative moves made by both critics and defenders of public reason are unsuccessful. Our overall conclusion is that discussions of public reason views would be more fruitful if they made consistent use of the common structure we identify. (shrink)

Public reason views hold that the exercise of political power must be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. A growing number of philosophers argue that this reasonable acceptability principle (RAP) can be justified by appealing to the value of civic friendship. They claim that a valuable form of political community can only be achieved among the citizens of pluralistic societies if they refrain from appealing to controversial ideals and values when justifying the exercise of political power to one another. This paper (...) argues against such accounts. In order to justify RAP, one must explain and defend a conception of reasonableness. Civic friendship is unfit to perform this task, rendering it unable to ground public reason alone. Meanwhile, pluralist views that combine civic friendship with other considerations in order to specify RAP either fail or make civic friendship a spare wheel in the argument for public reason. (shrink)

Recent work by Kahan et al. (2017) on the psychology of motivated numeracy in the context of intracultural disagreement suggests that people are less likely to employ their capabilities when the evidence runs contrary to their political ideology. This research has so far been carried out primarily in the USA regarding the liberal–conservative divide over gun control regulation. In this paper, we present the results of a modified replication that included an active reasoning intervention with Western European participants regarding both (...) the hierarchy–egalitarianism and individualism–collectivism divides over immigration policy (n = 746; considerably less than the preregistration sample size). We reproduce the motivated numeracy effect, though we do not find evidence of increased polarization of high-numeracy participants. (shrink)

Descartes holds that when you perceive something with perfect clarity, you are compelled to assent and cannot doubt. (This is a psychological claim.) Many commentators read him as endorsing Psychologism, according to which this compulsion is a matter of brute psychological force. I show that, in Descartes’s view, perfect clarity provides a reason for assent—indeed a perfect reason, which precludes any reason for doubt. (This is a normative claim.) Furthermore, advancing a view I call Rational Force, he holds that the (...) normative claim explains the psychological one: since your will is naturally responsive to reasons, you are compelled to assent because you have a perfect reason to assent. This coheres with his view that will is essentially active, self-determined, and free. The force that clarity exerts on the will is not the brute push of an efficient cause, but the rational pull of a final cause. (shrink)

The existing philosophical debate about the nature of reasons for belief between pragmatists and evidentialists has been substantially biased in favor of evidentialists. The literature has been focused on gathering and evaluating evidence pertaining to evidentialism and pragmatism, in the form of philosophical arguments for and against these two theses. But this way of proceeding simply presumes the truth of evidentialism, since it assumes that what we should be doing when evaluating pragmatism and evidentialism is collecting relevant evidence in order (...) to determine which of them we should believe. Evidentialism recommends this way of proceeding, but pragmatism does not. Holding the debate on terms more favorable to the pragmatist would require also identifying and assessing the practical reasons in favor of belief in pragmatism and evidentialism. Ultimately, as I will argue in this paper, conducting the debate in a fair way will shed new light on the merits of pragmatism and the flaws of evidentialism. In the first section, I outline some terminological preliminaries and identify how the discussion is biased in favor of evidentialism. In the second section, I identify the practical reasons bearing on belief in pragmatism and evidentialism. I argue that there are structural reasons why almost everyone, almost all of the time, will have more than ample practical reason to be a pragmatist rather than an evidentialist. Then, in the third section, I examine the prospect that pragmatism and evidentialism could be self-defeating theories, and show that the self-defeat of evidentialism is both more likely and worse than the self-defeat of pragmatism. In the fourth section, I discuss how to rationally change or make up one’s mind about pragmatism and evidentialism, and how to determine what to believe under uncertainty about whether pragmatism or evidentialism is correct. Then, I conclude. (shrink)

When we define something as a crime, we generally thereby criminalize the attempt to commit that crime. However, it is a vexing puzzle to specify what must be the case in order for a criminal attempt to have occurred, given that the results element of the crime fails to come about. I argue that the philosophy of action can assist the criminal law in clarifying what kinds of events are properly categorized as criminal attempts. A natural thought is that this (...) project should take the form of specifying what it is in general to attempt or try to perform an action, and then to define criminal attempts as attempts to commit crimes. Focusing on Gideon Yaffe's resourceful work in Attempts (Oxford University Press, 2010) as an example of this strategy, I argue that it results in a view that is overly inclusive: one will count as trying to commit a crime even in the far remote preparatory stages that we in fact have good reason not to criminalize. I offer an alternative proposal to distinguish between mere preparations and genuine attempts that has its basis not in trying, but doing: a criminal attempt is underway once what the agent is doing is a crime. Working out the details of this schema turns out to have important implications for action theory. A recently burgeoning view known as Naive Action Theory holds that all action can be explained by appeal to some further thing that the agent is doing, and that that the same explanatory nexus is at work even when we appeal to what the agent is intending, trying, or preparing to do -- these notions do explanatory work because they too refer to actions that are in progress, albeit in their infancy. If this is right, than the notion of 'doing' will also be too inclusive for the purposes of the criminal law. I argue that we should draw the reverse conclusion: the distinctions between pure intending, trying, preparing, and doing serve an important purpose in the criminal law, and this fact lends support to the view that they are genuine metaphysical and explanatory distinctions. (shrink)

Andrew Lister’s Public Reason and Political Community is an important new contribution to the debate over political liberalism. In this article, I critically evaluate some of the central arguments of the book in order to assess the current state of public reason liberalism. I pursue two main objections to Lister’s work. First, Lister’s justification for public reason, which appeals to the value of civic friendship, fails to show why public reason liberalism should be preferred to an alternative democratic theory that (...) does not include public reason restrictions. Second, there are several important ambiguities and tensions within Lister’s view that he does not adequately resolve. His approach to them often takes public reason liberalism in directions that many of its advocates will reject. More work thus remains to be done by public reason liberals both to show why public reason restrictions are necessary and to resolve these tensions in a more satisfactory way. (shrink)

In her influential and challenging paper “Skepticism about Practical Reason” Christine Korsgaard sets out to refute an important strand of Humean scepticism as it concerns a Kantian understanding of practical reason.1 Korsgaard distinguishes two components of scepticism about practical reason. The first, which she refers to as content scepticism, argues that reason cannot of itself provide any “substantive guidance to choice and action” (SPR, 311). In its classical formulation, as stated by Hume, it is argued that reason cannot determine our (...) ends. Our ends are determined by our desires and reason is limited to the role of identifying the relevant means to these ends. The second component, which Korsgaard calls motivational scepticism, suggests doubt about the scope of reason as a motive. The claim here, as Korsgaard interprets Hume’s view on this matter, is that “all reasoning that has motivational influence must start from a passion, that being the only possible source of motivation” (SPR, 314).2 Korsgaard’s fundamental objective in “Skepticism about Practical Reason” is to show that motivational scepticism must always be based on content scepticism. In other words, according to Korsgaard, motivational scepticism has no independent force. In this paper I argue that Korsgaard’s attempt to discredit motivational scepticism is unsuccessful. (shrink)

In a previous paper (Compléments pour une théorie des distorsions cognitives, Journal de Thérapie Comportementale et Cognitive, 2007), we introduced some elements aimed at contributing to a general theory of cognitive distortions. Based on the reference class, the duality and the system of taxa, these elements allow to define the general cognitive distortions as well as the specific cognitive distortions. This model is extended here to the description of two other classical cognitive distortions: over-generalization and mislabeling. The definition of the (...) two latter cognitive distortions is based on preliminary distinction between three levels of reasoning: primary, secondary and ternary pathogenic arguments. The latter analysis also leads to define two other cognitive distortions which insert themselves into this framework: ill-grounded inductive projection and confirmation bias. (shrink)

For Rawls, the demands of justice compete with moral and religious obligations that are part of citizens’ comprehensive doctrines. The ways we love are shaped by our comprehensive doctrines; however, love can also stand in opposition to our moral and religious beliefs. I will argue that love – spousal, familial and associational – constitutes its own register of values along with its own set of obligations. For this reason love confronts not only our moral and religious beliefs, it also confronts (...) the demands and requirements of justice. Rawls has worked out a negotiated peace between the obligations of justice and the demands of citizens’ comprehensive doctrines in the form of an overlapping consensus on a free-standing political conception of justice. I will argue that in Rawls’s philosophy, justice has not yet made peace with love. (shrink)

According to political liberalism, laws must be justified to all citizens in order to be legitimate. Most political liberals have taken this to mean that laws must be justified by appeal to a specific class of ‘public reasons’, which all citizens can accept. In this paper I defend an alternative, convergence, model of public justification, according to which laws can be justified to different citizens by different reasons, including reasons grounded in their comprehensive doctrines. I consider three objections to such (...) an account—that it undermines sincerity in public reason, that it underestimates the importance of shared values, and that it is insufficiently deliberative—and argue that convergence justifications are resilient to these objections. They should therefore be included within a theory of political liberalism, as a legitimate form of public justification. This has important implications for the obligations that political liberalism places upon citizens in their public deliberations and reason-giving, and might make the theory more attractive to some of its critics, particularly those sympathetic to religious belief. (shrink)

The central thesis of this paper is that the scope and structure of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature is modelled, or planned, after that of Hobbes's The Elements of Law and that in this respect there exists an important and unique relationship between these works. This relationship is of some importance for at least two reasons. First, it is indicative of the fundamental similarity between Hobbes's and Hume's project of the study of man. Second, and what is more important, by (...) recognizing this relationship between Hume's and Hobbes's works we can come to appreciate the unity of the project of the Treatise itself. My discussion will proceed in three stages. In section I present the evidence for my central thesis. In the second section I shall consider why Hume does not, as one might expect, acknowledge this important debt to Hobbes in the Introduction to the Treatise or in the Abstract. Finally, in the third section I shall note a few points of some importance to the understanding of Hume's philosophy which this relationship between Hobbes's and Hume's work touches upon. (shrink)

Public shaming plays an important role in upholding valuable social norms. But, under what conditions, if any, is it morally justifiable? Our aim in this paper is systemically to investigate the morality of public shaming, so as to provide an answer to this neglected question. We develop an overarching framework for assessing the justifiability of this practice, which shows that, while shaming can sometimes be morally justifiable, it very often is not. In turn, our framework highlights several reasons to be (...) concerned about the increasingly widespread phenomenon of online public shaming. (shrink)

This paper explores the question: What would conceptual engineering have to be in order to promote social justice? Specifically, it argues that to promote social justice, conceptual engineering must deliver the following: it needs to be possible to deliberately implement a conceptual engineering proposal in large communities; it needs to be possible for a conceptual engineering proposal to bring about change to extant social categories; it needs to be possible to bring a population to adopt a conceptual engineering proposal for (...) the right reasons; and it needs to be possible to do – without producing harmful consequences. I show that, of the three dominant approaches to conceptual engineering in the literature, only one of them seems amenable to the idea that it is possible and legitimate to promote social justice in accordance with –. (shrink)

The Limits of Free Will presents influential articles by Paul Russell concerning free will and moral responsibility. The problems arising in this field of philosophy, which are deeply rooted in the history of the subject, are also intimately related to a wide range of other fields, such as law and criminology, moral psychology, theology, and, more recently, neuroscience. These articles were written and published over a period of three decades, although most have appeared in the past decade. Among the (...) topics covered: the challenge of skepticism; moral sentiment and moral capacity; necessity and the metaphysics of causation; practical reason; free will and art; fatalism and the limits of agency; moral luck, and our metaphysical attitudes of optimism and pessimism. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation of moral responsibility (...) responsibility (as defended by R. Jay Wallace) and how best to respond to it. The third and last reply is concerned with Christopher Bennett's criticism of Russell's views concerning "motivational scepticism" and the possibility of pure practical reasons. (shrink)

[This papers explores a novel case for the normativity of knowledge for belief – something that is compatible with the knowledge/factual awareness distinction I've explored elsewhere.] There are two different kinds of enkratic principles for belief: evidential enkratic principles and normative enkratic principles. It’s frequently taken for granted that there’s not an important difference between them. But evidential enkratic principles are undermined by considerations that gain no traction at all against their normative counterparts. The idea that such an asymmetry exists (...) between evidential and normative enkratic principles is surprising all on its own. It is also something that calls out for explanation. Similarly, the considerations that undermine evidential enkratic principles also undermine certain narrow-scope evidential principles. This too generates explanatory questions. I show how a knowledge-first view of rationality can easily address these explanatory questions. Thus we have one more reason to put knowledge first in [some areas of] epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a brief overview of ideas from Reformed Epistemology, and the relationship between faith, evidence, and belief. I discuss what makes belief in God rationally warranted, and how reformed epistemology strikes a middle ground between fideism and evidentialism. In effect, reformed epistemology avoids the fideist idea that belief in God must be taken on "blind faith," but also avoids some of the epistemic issues present in evidentialism, such as its self-referential incoherence. The reformed epistemologist says belief (...) in God is rational, but not for the reasons demanded by evidentialists. (shrink)

The success of political liberalism depends on there being an overlapping consensus among reasonable citizens—including religious citizens—upon principles of political morality. This paper explores the resources within one major religion—Christianity—that might lead individuals to endorse (or reject) political liberalism, and thus to join (or not join) the overlapping consensus. I show that there are several strands within Christian political ethics that are consonant with political liberalism and might form the basis for Christian citizens’ membership of the overlapping consensus. Nonetheless, tensions (...) remain, and it is not clear that Christians could wholeheartedly endorse the political conception or give unreserved commitment to political liberal ideals. (shrink)

As robots and Artificial Intelligences become more enmeshed in rich social contexts, it seems inevitable that we will have to make them into moral machines equipped with moral skills. Apart from the technical difficulties of how we could achieve this goal, we can also ask the ethical question of whether we should seek to create such Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs). Recently, several papers have argued that we have strong reasons not to develop AMAs. In response, we develop a comprehensive analysis (...) of the relevant arguments for and against creating AMAs, and we argue that all things considered we have strong reasons to continue to responsibly develop AMAs. The key contributions of this paper are threefold. First, to provide the first comprehensive response to the important arguments made against AMAs by Wynsberghe and Robbins (in “Critiquing the Reasons for Making Artificial Moral Agents”, Science and Engineering Ethics 25, 2019) and to introduce several novel lines of argument in the process. Second, to collate and thematise for the first time the key arguments for and against AMAs in a single paper. Third, to recast the debate away from blanket arguments for or against AMAs in general, to a more nuanced discussion about the use of what sort of AMAs, in what sort of contexts, and for what sort of purposes is morally appropriate. (shrink)

[Significantly updated in Chapter 7 of Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge] Many have found it plausible that knowledge is a constitutively normative state, i.e. a state that is grounded in the possession of reasons. Many have also found it plausible that certain cases of proprioceptive knowledge, memorial knowledge, and self-evident knowledge are cases of knowledge that are not grounded in the possession of reasons. I refer to these as cases of basic knowledge. The existence of basic knowledge forms a (...) primary objection to the idea that knowledge is a constitutively normative state. In what follows I offer a way through the apparent dilemma of having to choose between either basic knowledge or the normativity of knowledge. The solution involves homing in on a state of awareness (≈non-accidental true representation) that is distinct from knowledge and which in turn grounds the normativity of knowledge in a way that is fully consistent with the existence of basic knowledge. An upshot of this is that externalist theories of knowledge turn out to be fully compatible with the thesis that knowledgeable beliefs are always beliefs that are justified by the reasons one possesses. (shrink)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Edinger completed the first comparative survey of the microscopic anatomy of vertebrate brains. He is regarded as the founder of the field of comparative neuroanatomy. Modern commentators have misunderstood him to have espoused an anti-Darwinian linear view of brain evolution, harkening to the metaphysics of the scala naturae. This understanding arises, in part, from an increasingly contested view of nineteenth-century morphology in Germany. Edinger did espouse a progressionist, though not strictly linear, view (...) of forebrain evolution, but his work also provided carefully documented evidence that brain stem structures vary in complexity independently from one another and across species in a manner that is not compatible with linear progress. This led Edinger to reject progressionism for all brain structures other than the forebrain roof, based on reasoning not too dissimilar from those his successors used to dismiss it for the forebrain roof. (shrink)

Plato's _Republic_ divided subsequent study of justice in two, as a virtue of people and of institutions. Here, the start of a reunification is attempted. Justice is first understood personally as the virtuous mean between arrogance and servility, where just people properly respect themselves and others. Because justice requires that like cases be treated alike and self-respect is a special instance of respect generally, justice requires a single standard for self and others. In understanding justice in terms of respect, structural (...) analogies become apparent between “recognition” and “appraisal” respect, on the one hand, and Rawls' two principles of justice on the other. The present view is then compared to “social egalitarian” theories of justice and the essay concludes with a discussion of how mercy is related to justice and an explanation of why just people always look for reasons to mitigate blame and punishment but never to aggravate them. (shrink)

People more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm- conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal-selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette-based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments—i.e., judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm- violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some future outcome. We show that the abnormal-selection effects (...) are not primarily explained by the perception of agency (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in relation to recent efforts to model causal judgment. (shrink)

We discuss Kant’s conception of beneficence against the background of the overdemandingness debate. We argue that Kant’s conception of beneficence constitutes a sweet spot between overdemandingess and undemandingess. To this end we defend four key claims that together constitute a novel interpretation of Kant’s account of beneficence: 1) for the same reason that we are obligated to be beneficent to others we are permitted to be beneficent to ourselves; 2) we can prioritise our own ends; 3) it is more virtuous (...) to do more rather than less when it comes to helping others; and 4) indifference to others is vicious. Finally, we explain how this represents a system of duties that gives our personal ends a moral standing without unacceptably moralising them. (shrink)

For years, the European world saw millions of swans, and all of them without exception were white. If inductive reasoning is valid, one may conclude that all swans are white. However, this would be incorrect: in 1667 Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh observed black swans in Australia, falsifying the hypothesis that all swans are white. While often used as a cautionary tale for the use of induction, such as with Popper’s falsification principle, I want to explore a slightly different idea: (...) does the existence of fabricated or otherwise failed accounts of Black swans give me a reason to ignore future arguments or doubt their existence? I argue that while faulty or fabricated reports do not give us a logical reason to reject a claim, they can give us a practical one for refusing to consider future arguments. This practical vs logical distinction gives an inductive reason for believing that future arguments will be invalid, but keeps one from being able to necessarily deny the claim in question without further argumentation. (shrink)

Evaluator-relative consequentialists frequently endorse the traditional doing-allowing distinction. Yet their endorsement of this traditional distinction only serves to clear the way for their argument against a more fundamental doing-allowing distinction, an argument that one never ought to do something when this will allow something worse to happen. Unlike the case against its more traditional counterpart, the case against this deeper doing-allowing distinction can draw for support upon widely held “state of affairs centered” accounts of attitudes, actions, reasons and value, accounts (...) upon which desires are (all) attitudes towards states of affairs, practical reasons are all reasons to promote states of affairs, and to act is to make something happen -- to promote, produce, or bring about some states of affairs. Moreover, to reject this deeper distinction is to accept the centerpiece of consequentialism – that the evaluation of actions is determined through appeal to the evaluation of states of affairs. Only once the nature of the deep doing-allowing distinction, and these grounds for its rejection, come into view, does it also become clear both what an adequate response to such arguments for its rejection will look like, and that many elements of such a response have already been proposed. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers are often said to be indifferent or even hostile to the history of philosophy – that is, not to the idea of history of philosophy as such, but regarded as a species of the genus philosophy rather than the genus history. Here it is argued that such an attitude is actually inconsistent with approaches within the philosophies of mind that are typical within analytic philosophy. It is suggested that the common “argument rather than pedigree” claim – that is, (...) that claim that philosophical ideas should be evaluated only in the context of the reasons for or against them, and not in terms of historical conditions that brought them about – presupposes an early modern “egological” conception of the mind as normatively autonomous, and that such a view is in contradiction with the deeply held naturalistic predispositions of most contemporary philosophers of mind. Using the example of Wilfrid Sellars, who attempted to combine “naturalist” and “normative” considerations in his philosophy of mind, it is argued that only by treating the mind as having an artifactual dimension can these opposing considerations be accommodated. And, if the mind is at least partly understood as artifactual, then, to that extent, like all artifacts, it is to be understood via a narrative about the particular human activities in which those artifacts are produced and in which they function. (shrink)

In "Morals by Agreement", David Gauthier attempts to derive property rights from a moral principle called the Lockean proviso. The derivation fails, and the true implications of the moral principles which Gauthier invokes are quite different. These principles imply that persons have extensive liberties to use physical materials, but relatively few rights against interference by others in this use. Robert Nozick argues for an extensive system of property rights in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia"; his argument fails for similar reasons.

Some ‘naturalist’ accounts of disease employ a biostatistical account of dysfunction, whilst others use a ‘selected effect’ account. Several recent authors have argued that the biostatistical account offers the best hope for a naturalist account of disease. We show that the selected effect account survives the criticisms levelled by these authors relatively unscathed, and has significant advantages over the BST. Moreover, unlike the BST, it has a strong theoretical rationale and can provide substantive reasons to decide difficult cases. This is (...) illustrated by showing how life-history theory clarifies the status of so-called diseases of old age. The selected effect account of function deserves a more prominent place in the philosophy of medicine than it currently occupies. _1_ Introduction _2_ Biostatistical and Selected Effect Accounts of Function _3_ Objections to the Selected Effect Account _3.1_ Boorse _3.2_ Kingma _3.3_ Hausman _3.4_ Murphy and Woolfolk _4_ Problems for the Biostatistical Account _4.1_ Schwartz _5_ Analysis versus Explication _6_ Explicating Dysfunction: Life History Theory and Senescence _7_ Conclusion. (shrink)

For well over a century the dominant narrative covering the major thinkers and themes of early modern British philosophy has been that of “British Empiricism”, within which the great triumvirate of Locke-Berkeley-Hume are taken to be the dominant figures. Although it is now common to question this schema as a way of analyzing and understanding the period in question, it continues to command considerable authority and acceptance. (One likely reason for this is that no credible or plausible alternatives structures or (...) schemas of analysis have suggested themselves.) Be this as it may, the analysis of the rival systems of Clarke, Berkeley and Hume makes clear that this narrative, however deeply entrenched it may be, is wholly misleading and both distorts and obscures key themes and figures in the period in question. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to describe a conceptual framework for cognitive distortions, which notably allows to specify more accurately their intrinsic relationships. This conceptual framework aims at inserting itself within the apparatus of cognitive therapy and of critical thinking. The present analysis is based on the following fundamental concepts: the reference class, the duality and the system of taxa. With the help of these three notions, each cognitive distortion can be defined. A distinction is also made between, on (...) the one hand, general cognitive distortions and on the other hand, specific cognitive distortions. The present model allows then to define within the same conceptual framework the general cognitive distortions such as dichotomous reasoning, disqualifying a given pole, minimisation and maximisation. It also allows to describe as specific cognitive distortions: disqualifying the positive, selective abstraction and catastrophism. Furthermore, the present model predicts the existence of two other general cognitive distortions: the omission of the neutral and requalifying in the other pole. (shrink)

Why do people persist in commitments that threaten their happiness, security, and comfort? Why do some of our most central, identity-defining commitments resist the effects of reasoning and critical reflection? Drawing on real-life examples, empirical psychology, and philosophical reflection, this book argues that these commitments involve an ethical stance called devotion, which plays a pervasive—but often hidden—role in human life. Devotion typically involves sacralizing certain values, goals, or relationships. To sacralize a value is to treat it as inviolable (trade-offs with (...) ordinary values are forbidden), incontestable (even contemplating such trade-offs is prohibited), and dialectically invulnerable (no rational considerations can disrupt the agent’s commitment to the value). Philosophy of Devotion offers a detailed philosophical account and defense of these features. Devotion and the sacralization of values can be reasonable; indeed, a life involving meaningful, sustained commitment depends on these stances. Without devotion, we risk an existential condition called normative dissipation, in which all of our commitments become etiolated. Yet devotion can easily go wrong, deforming into the individual and group fanaticism that have become pervasive features of modern social life. The book provides an alternative to fanaticism, investigating the way in which we can express non-pathological forms of devotion. We can be devoted through affirmation and through what is termed the deepening move, which treats the agent’s central commitments as systematically inchoate. Each stance enables a wholehearted form of devotion that nevertheless preserves flexibility and openness, avoiding the dangers of fanaticism on the one hand and normative dissipation on the other. -/- (The attached file contains the introductory chapter.). (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)

Descartes has a Clarity First epistemology: (i) Clarity is a primitive (indefinable) phenomenal quality: the appearance of truth. (ii) Clarity is prior to other qualities: obscurity, confusion, distinctness – are defined in terms of clarity; epistemic goods – reason to assent, rational inclination to assent, reliability, and knowledge – are explained by clarity. (This is the first of two companion entries; the sequel is called, "Descartes's Method for Achieving Knowledge.").

This is an outline of the basic reasoning in the fragmentalist interpretation of presentism and quantum mechanics.

Throughout much of the first half of the twentieth century, the free-will debate was largely concerned with the question of what kind of freedom was required for moral responsibility and whether the kind of freedom required was compatible with the thesis of determinism. This issue was itself addressed primarily with reference to the question of how freedom is related to alternative possibilities and what the relevant analysis of “could have done otherwise” comes to. The discussion of these topics made little (...) advance on the basic strategies and positions already developed and defended on either side of the compatibilist/incompatibilist divide in the preceding two centuries. When P. F. Strawson’s published his seminal article “Freedom and Resentment” in 1962 the dynamics of this debate were fundamentally altered. This is true both in respect of Strawson’s general methodology, which demands a more empirically informed approach, and in terms of his core conceptual framework, which identifies a different set of considerations and issues at the heart of this debate. In particular, whereas the traditional or classical debate focused on the problem of (moral) freedom, Strawson directed his attention to the role of moral sentiments or “reactive attitudes” as the key to understanding and resolving the core problems lying at the heart of this debate. This essay is devoted to a critical assessment of Strawson’s project and an analysis of the current debate concerning its prospects. (shrink)

Many philosophers and jurists believe that individuals should sometimes be granted religiouslygrounded exemptions from laws or rules. To determine whether an exemption is merited in a particular case, the religious claim must be weighed against the countervailing values that favour the uniform application of the law or rule. This paper develops and applies a framework for assessing the weight of religious claims to exemption, across two dimensions. First, the importance of the burdened religious practice, which is determined by its level (...) of obligatoriness and centrality, according to the beliefs of the individual claimant. Second, the extent of the burden on the practice, which depends on the cost the individual bears if she both undertakes the religious practice and obeys the law or rule, where costs are assessed using an impartial account of individual interests. Exemptions should be granted when claims are weighty on either of these dimensions and the countervailing value is relatively weak. The final section of the paper responds to an important objection to this approach, which concerns administrability. (shrink)

Dilation occurs when an interval probability estimate of some event E is properly included in the interval probability estimate of E conditional on every event F of some partition, which means that one’s initial estimate of E becomes less precise no matter how an experiment turns out. Critics maintain that dilation is a pathological feature of imprecise probability models, while others have thought the problem is with Bayesian updating. However, two points are often overlooked: (1) knowing that E is stochastically (...) independent of F (for all F in a partition of the underlying state space) is sufficient to avoid dilation, but (2) stochastic independence is not the only independence concept at play within imprecise probability models. In this paper we give a simple characterization of dilation formulated in terms of deviation from stochastic independence, propose a measure of dilation, and distinguish between proper and improper dilation. Through this we revisit the most sensational examples of dilation, which play up independence between dilator and dilatee, and find the sensationalism undermined by either fallacious reasoning with imprecise probabilities or improperly constructed imprecise probability models. (shrink)

We might describe the philosophical issue of human freedom and moral responsibility as an existential metaphysical problem. Problems of this kind are not just a matter of theoretical interest and curiosity: They address issues that we care about and that affect us. They are, more specifically, relevant to the significance and value that we attach to our lives and the way that we lead them. According to the orthodox view, there is a tidy connection between skepticism and pessimism. Skepticism threatens (...) a wide range of interests and concerns that themselves rest on the foundation of our self-conception as responsible moral agents. From this perspective, whereas skepticism licenses a degree of pessimism about our human predicament, the defeat of skepticism serves to vindicate optimism. In recent years this orthodox view of the relationship between skepticism and pessimism has been challenged. It has been argued, for example, that skepticism may be defended in much more optimistic terms. While we have reason to accept skepticism, we have no reason to draw any bleak or depressing consequences from this. Another way of severing the orthodox connection between skepticism and pessimism is to reject skepticism but deny that this will serve to secure or salvage any unqualified form of optimism. This chapter reviews and contrasts these various positions and approaches, beginning with an account of P. F. Strawson’s particularly influential statement of the relationship between the skeptical challenge and pessimism. (shrink)

This paper critically interrogates the anti-fat beliefs that are employed in environmental bioethics, particularly in response to climate change. Fat bodies have been associated with climate change because they are presumed to consume more resources and produce more greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we argue that such interpretations employ mistaken assumptions to justify placing disproportionate blame on already oppressed individuals, reinforcing weight stigma, which increases the vulnerability of fat people to a range of harms and disproportionately affects communities of (...) color. For these reasons, conceiving fat bodies as harmful to the environment is both misguided and unjust. (shrink)

Debates between political liberals and liberal perfectionists have been reinvigorated by Jonathan Quong’s Liberalism Without Perfection. In this paper I argue that certain forms of perfectionism can rebut or evade Quong’s three central objections – that perfectionism is manipulative, paternalistic, and illegitimate. I then argue that perfectionists can defend an ‘internal conception’ of perfectionism, parallel in structure to Quong’s ’internal conception’ of political liberalism, but with a different conception of the justificatory constituency. None of Quong’s arguments show that his view (...) should be preferred to this perfectionist internal conception. It can thus equally claim to achieve ‘justification to all reasonable citizens’. (shrink)