Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education presents what the late Lawrence Kohlberg regarded as the definitive statement of his educational theory. Addressing the sociology and social psychology of schooling, the authors propose that school culture become the center of moral education and research. They discuss how schools can develop as just and cohesive communities by involving students in democracy, and they focus on the moral decisions teachers and students face as they democratically resolve problems. As the authors put it: "...we (...) propose an educational renewal of our democratic society.... We have attempted to establish schools that do more than just teach about democratic citizenship, that are themselves democratic societies.". (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper I defend a form of epistocracy I call limited epistocracy – rule by institutions housing expertise in non-political areas that become politically relevant. This kind of limited epistocracy, I argue, isn't a far-off fiction. With increasing frequency, governments are outsourcing political power to expert institutions to solve urgent, multidimensional problems because they outperform ordinary democratic decision-making. I consider the objection that limited epistocracy, while more effective than its competitors, lacks a fundamental intrinsic value that its competitors have; (...) namely, political inclusion. After explaining this challenge, I suggest that limited epistocracies can be made compatible with robust political inclusion if specialized institutions are confined to issuing directives that give citizens multiple actionable options. I explain how this safeguards citizens’ inclusion through rational deliberation, choice, and contestation. (shrink)

As analysis of Kant’s account of virtue in the Lectures on Ethics shows that Kant thinks of virtue as a form of moral self-mastery or self-command that represents a model of self-governance he compares to an autocracy. In light of the fact that the very concept of virtue presupposes struggle and conflict, Kant insists that virtue is distinct from holiness and that any ideal of moral perfection that overlooks the fact that morality is always difficult for us fails to provide (...) an appropriate model of human virtue. No matter how morally good we are or become, virtue remains a disposition to do one’s duty from duty, out of necessitation by practical reason. Yet, even though finite rational beings require a power of self-constraint in accordance with the commands of duty to comply with the law (which we obey reluctantly), the virtuous agent displays a unified soul that is at peace. This picture of virtue uncovered from the Lectures on Ethics thus reveals the way in which Kant’s conception of virtue accords with his foundational commitments in his moral theory, while at the same time representing a more complex theory of moral character and a life lived in accordance with practical reason. (shrink)

Slippery slope arguments are frequently dismissed as fallacious or weak arguments but are nevertheless commonly used in political and bioethical debates. This paper gives an overview of different variants of the argument commonly found in the literature and addresses their argumentative strength and the interrelations between them. The most common variant, the empirical slippery slope argument, predicts that if we do A, at some point the highly undesirable B will follow. I discuss both the question which factors affect likelihood of (...) slippage and the relation between the strength of the prediction and the justificatory power of the argument. (shrink)

In a recent article, Christopher Ormell argues against the traditional mathematical view that the real numbers form an uncountably infinite set. He rejects the conclusion of Cantor’s diagonal argument for the higher, non-denumerable infinity of the real numbers. He does so on the basis that the classical conception of a real number is mys- terious, ineffable, and epistemically suspect. Instead, he urges that mathematics should admit only ‘well-defined’ real numbers as proper objects of study. In practice, this means excluding as (...) inadmissible all those real numbers whose decimal expansions cannot be calculated in as much detail as one would like by some rule. We argue against Ormell that the classical realist account of the continuum has explanatory power in mathematics and should be accepted, much in the same way that "dark matter" is posited by physicists to explain observations in cosmology. In effect, the indefinable real numbers are like the "dark matter" of real analysis. (shrink)

According to Quine’s indispensability argument, we ought to believe in just those mathematical entities that we quantify over in our best scientific theories. Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment is part of the standard indispensability argument. However, we suggest that a new indispensability argument can be run using Armstrong’s criterion of ontological commitment rather than Quine’s. According to Armstrong’s criterion, ‘to be is to be a truthmaker (or part of one)’. We supplement this criterion with our own brand of metaphysics, 'Aristotelian (...) (...) realism', in order to identify the truthmakers of mathematics. We consider in particular as a case study the indispensability to physics of real analysis (the theory of the real numbers). We conclude that it is possible to run an indispensability argument without Quinean baggage. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on two underlying presumptions that impinge on the effort of UNESCO to engender universal agreement on a set of bioethical norms: the conception of universality that pervades much of the document, and its disregard of structural inequalities that significantly impact health. Drawing on other UN system documents and recent feminist bioethics scholarship, we argue that the formulation of universal principles should not rely solely on shared ethical values, as the draft document affirms, but also on differences (...) in ethical values that obtain across cultures. UNESCO's earlier work on gender mainstreaming illustrates the necessity of thinking from multiple perspectives in generating universal norms. The declaration asserts the ‘fundamental equality of all human beings in dignity and rights’1 and insists that ‘the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition’2 yet it does not explicitly recognize disparities of power and wealth that deny equal dignity and rights to many. Without attention to structural (as opposed to merely accidental) inequities, UNESCO's invocation of rights is so abstract as to be incompatible with its avowed intention. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical look at Sartorio’s book Causation and Free Will (2016). Sartorio offers a rich defence of an actual-sequence view of freedom, which pays close attention to issues in the philosophy of causation and how they relate to freedom. I argue that although this focus on causation is illuminating, Sartorio’s project nevertheless runs into some serious difficulties. Perhaps most worrying amongst them is whether the agent-based reason-sensitivity account, offered by Sartorio, is consistent with Frankfurt-style cases (...) – the very cases which are provided as the sole reason to endorse an actual-sequence view of freedom. I suggest that given that powers and causation are so intimately bound together, the debate is skewed somewhat by thinking of these as rivals. (shrink)

Cheating is a growing academic and ethical concern in higher education. This article examines the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) generative chatbots for use in education and provides a review of research literature and relevant scholarship concerning the cheating-related issues involved and their implications for pedagogy. The technological “arms race” that involves cheating-detection system developers versus technology savvy students is attracting increased attention to cheating. AI has added new dimensions to academic cheating challenges as students (as well as faculty and (...) staff) can easily access powerful systems for generating content that can be presented in assignments, exams, or published papers as their own. AI methodology is also providing some emerging anti-cheating approaches, including facial recognition and water- marking. This article provides an overview of human/AI collaboration approaches and frames some educational misuses of such AI generative systems as ChatGPT and Bard as forms of “misattributed co-authorship.” As with other kinds of collaborations, the work that students produce with AI assistance can be presented in transparent and straightforward modes or (unfortunately) in opaquer and ethically-problematic ways. However, rather than just for catching or entrapping students, the emerging varieties of technological cheating-detection strategies can be used to assist students in learning how to document and attribute properly their AI-empowered as well as human-human collaborations. Construing misuses of AI generative systems as misattributed co-authorship can recognize the growing capabilities of these tools and how stressing responsible and mindful usage by students can help prepare them for a highly collaborative, AI-saturated future. (shrink)

Biomedical science has been remarkably successful in explaining illness by categorizing diseases and then by identifying localizable lesions such as a virus and neoplasm in the body that cause those diseases. Not surprisingly, researchers have aspired to apply this powerful paradigm to addiction. So, for example, in a review of the neuroscience of addiction literature, Hyman and Malenka (2001, p. 695) acknowledge a general consensus among addiction researchers that “[a]ddiction can appropriately be considered as a chronic medical illness.” Like other (...) diseases, “Once addiction has taken hold, it tends to follow a chronic course.” (Koob and La Moal 2006, p. ?). Working from this perspective, much effort has gone into characterizing the symptomology of addiction and the brain changes that underlie them. Evidence for involvement of dopamine transmission changes in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) have received the greatest attention. Kauer and Malenka (2007, p. 844) put it well: “drugs of abuse can co-opt synaptic plasticity mechanisms in brain circuits involved in reinforcement and reward processing”. Our goal in this chapter to provide an explicit description of the assumptions of medical models, the different forms they may take, and the challenges they face in providing explanations with solid evidence of addiction. <br>. (shrink)

This paper is founded on the assumption that Philippine Studies has five different discouses: 1) Philippine studies as a neutral discourse; 2) colonial Philippine studies as a discourse that is based on western power and reinforces such power; 3) generic postcolonial Philippine studies as a discourse that critiques western hegemony; 4) Pilipinolohiya as a specific postcolonial discourse that was inaugurated by Prospero Covar; and 5) pantayong pananaw as another specific postcolonial discourse that was inaugurated by Zeus Salazar. Malay Journal, on (...) the other hand, is a scholarly periodical intended for researchers in the field of Philippine studies who use the Filipino language. Currently, it is the most respected journal that is exclusively published in Filipino language, based on the fact that it is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education and listed in a number of international abstracting and indexing organizations. This paper intends to establish which among these five discourses of Philippine studies is the most dominant in as far as the articles of the said journal are concerned. In order to attain such goal, this paper analyzed 50% random sample of the articles that were published from 2011, when the journal had completed its shift towards Philippine studies, up to 2015, the present complete year of publication for the said journal. (shrink)

Abstract: Rice, as a paramount staple crop worldwide, sustains billions of lives. Precise classification of rice types holds immense agricultural, nutritional, and economic significance. Recent advancements in machine learning, particularly Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), offer promise in enhancing rice type classification accuracy and efficiency. This research explores rice type classification, harnessing neural networks' power. Utilizing a rich dataset from Kaggle, containing 18,188 entries and key rice grain attributes, we develop and evaluate a neural network model. Our neural network, featuring a (...) single hidden layer, achieves remarkable results—a staggering 100% accuracy and a minute average error rate of 0.000001. Beyond performance metrics, we delve into the intricacies of rice type classification through feature importance analysis. The most influential features—'id,' 'Area,' 'MajorAxisLength,' 'MinorAxisLength,' 'Eccentricity,' 'ConvexArea,' 'EquivDiameter,' 'Extent,' 'Perimeter,' 'Roundness,' and 'AspectRatio'—uncover the physiological traits underpinning accurate rice classification. This research contributes to advancing rice classification methods and highlights the potential of ANNs in optimizing agricultural practices, ensuring food safety, and bolstering global trade. (shrink)

In the contemporary debate on moral status, it is not uncommon to find philosophers who embrace the the Principle of Full Moral Status, according to which the degree to which an entity E possesses moral status is proportional to the degree to which E possesses morally relevant properties until a threshold degree of morally relevant properties possession is reached, whereupon the degree to which E possesses morally relevant properties may continue to increase, but the degree to which E possesses moral (...) status remains the same. One philosopher who has contributed significantly to the contemporary debate on moral status and embraces the Principle of Full Moral Status is Mary Anne Warren. Warren holds not only that it is possible for some entities to possess full moral status, but that some entities actually do, e.g., normal adult human beings. I argue that two of Warren’s primary arguments for the Principle of Full Moral Status—the Argument from Pragmatism and the Argument from Explanatory Power—are significantly flawed. (shrink)

This article studies Madame de Lambert's early eighteenth-century views on aging, and especially the aging of women, by contextualizing them in a twofold way: It understands them as a response to La Rochefoucauld's skepticism concerning aging, women, and the aging of women; It understands them as being closely connected to a long series of scattered remarks concerning esteem, self-esteem, and honnêteté in Lambert's moral essays. Whereas La Rochefoucauld describes aging as a decline of intellectual, emotional, and physical powers and (...) is suspicious of the mechanisms of esteem and self-esteem, Lambert develops a view of aging as offering the chance to become more independent of the judgment of others, especially the chance for women to become more independent of the judgment of men. As she argues, aging offers women the possibility of cultivating genuinely estimable intellectual and emotional qualities that attract the justified esteem essential for a stable friendship, as well as the opportunity to develop a form of self-esteem that is based on respect for one's own capacities of judgment. (shrink)

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to global healthcare systems, necessitating accurate and timely forecasting of cases for effective mitigation strategies. In this research paper, we present a novel approach to predict COVID-19 cases using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), harnessing the power of machine learning for epidemiological forecasting. Our ANNs-based forecasting model has demonstrated remarkable efficacy, achieving an impressive accuracy rate of 97.87%. This achievement underscores the potential of ANNs in providing precise and data-driven insights into the dynamics (...) of the pandemic. However, this paper underscores the critical importance of a comprehensive evaluation beyond accuracy, including metrics such as sensitivity, specificity, and the area under the ROC curve (AUC-ROC), to assess the model's performance robustness. The research paper offers detailed insights into the architecture of the ANN model, encompassing critical hyperparameters, data preprocessing techniques, and regularization strategies employed to optimize model accuracy. Ethical considerations surrounding data privacy and potential biases within the COVID-19 dataset are also addressed. While the achieved accuracy is a significant milestone, this study underscores the dynamic and evolving nature of the pandemic, necessitating continuous model refinement and validation. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of considering false positives and false negatives in the context of public health decision-making. In conclusion, this research contributes to the arsenal of tools available for pandemic management by showcasing the potential of ANNs in COVID-19 case forecasting. It encourages ongoing exploration and adaptation of predictive models to enhance their applicability in real-world public health scenarios, ultimately contributing to more effective pandemic control and response efforts. (shrink)

Abstract: This research focuses on utilizing Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to predict Audit Risk accurately, a critical aspect of ensuring financial system integrity and preventing fraud. Our dataset, gathered from Kaggle, comprises 18 diverse features, including financial and historical parameters, offering a comprehensive view of audit-related factors. These features encompass 'Sector_score,' 'PARA_A,' 'SCORE_A,' 'PARA_B,' 'SCORE_B,' 'TOTAL,' 'numbers,' 'marks,' 'Money_Value,' 'District,' 'Loss,' 'Loss_SCORE,' 'History,' 'History_score,' 'score,' and 'Risk,' with a total of 774 samples. Our proposed neural network architecture, consisting of three (...) layers (1 input, 1 hidden, and 1 output), forms the core of this study. While it may seem simple, the power of ANNs lies not in complexity but in their ability to uncover intricate data patterns. The model underwent rigorous training and validation, resulting in remarkable outcomes—an accuracy of 100% and an average error rate of 0.000015. In addition to performance metrics, our research investigates feature importance, revealing the key contributors to Audit Risk prediction. Notably, 'Sector_score,' 'PARA_A,' 'SCORE_A,' 'PARA_B,' 'SCORE_B,' 'TOTAL,' 'numbers,' 'marks,' 'Money_Value,' 'District,' 'Loss,' 'Loss_SCORE,' 'History,' and 'History_score' emerged as the most influential factors, shedding light on the elements crucial for precise risk assessment. This study advances Audit Risk prediction models and highlights the potential of ANNs in strengthening financial system integrity and fraud prevention. The insights gained from our findings offer practical guidance for stakeholders in the audit and financial sectors. (shrink)

Abstract: This research delves into the utilization of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as a powerful tool for predicting the overall ratings of books by leveraging a diverse set of attributes. To achieve this, we employ a comprehensive dataset sourced from Goodreads, enabling us to thoroughly examine the intricate connections between the different attributes of books and the ratings they receive from readers. In our investigation, we meticulously scrutinize how attributes such as genre, author, page count, publication year, and reader reviews (...) influence a book's overall rating. Through rigorous analysis and experimentation, we construct an advanced ANN model tailored for predictive analysis in the realm of book ratings. The outcomes of our study reveal the remarkable potential of ANNs in this domain. The ANN model exhibits an impressive level of accuracy when it comes to forecasting book ratings, underlining the efficacy and promise of artificial neural networks in enhancing our understanding and prediction of book evaluations. This research opens up new avenues for leveraging machine learning techniques to gain deeper insights into the dynamics of book ratings and reader preferences. (shrink)

Abstract: In this study, we explore the possibility of classifying the plant species. We collected the plant species from Kaggle website. This dataset encompasses 544 samples, encompassing 136 distinct plant species. Recent advancements in machine learning, particularly Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), offer promise in enhancing plant Species classification accuracy and efficiency. This research explores plant Species classification, harnessing neural networks' power. Utilizing a rich dataset from Kaggle, containing 544 entries, we develop and evaluate a neural network model. Our neural network, (...) featuring a single hidden layer, achieves remarkable results—a staggering 100% accuracy and a minute average error rate of 0.002. Beyond performance metrics, we delve into the intricacies of plant Species classification through feature importance analysis. The most influential features— Vegsout, durflow, semiros, pdias, begflow, wind, leafy, autopoll and insects— uncover the physiological traits underpinning accurate rice classification. This research contributes to advancing rice classification methods and highlights the potential of ANNs in optimizing agricultural practices, ensuring plant safety, and bolstering global trade. (shrink)

Climate change temperature prediction plays a crucial role in effective environmental planning. This study introduces an innovative approach that harnesses the power of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) within the Just Neural Network (JustNN) framework to enhance temperature forecasting in the context of climate change. By leveraging historical climate data, our model achieves exceptional accuracy, redefining the landscape of temperature prediction without intricate preprocessing. This model sets a new standard for precise temperature forecasting in the context of climate change. Moreover, our (...) research provides valuable insights into the pivotal factors influencing temperature variations, making significant contributions to environmental science and climate mitigation strategies. (shrink)

While many scholars join in the call for an experiential shift in thinking and living, it is not always clear how it could be done. Recent environmental philosophy has illuminated the significance of re-animating human–environment relations on an experiential level for endeavouring a new (or renewed) ethical, experiential, and, indeed, existential stance of the human as part of the environed embodiment. In relation to this call, I explore embodied critical thinking (ECT) as a tool for recognising, revitalising, and reflecting embodied, (...) enactive, and embedded thinking that comes from a felt sense. Thus, this chapter employs some of the TAE (Thinking at the Edge) steps for ECT research as a practical approach to facilitating and embracing a new way of thinking that is crucial for reconnecting humans with their lived environments, but also for emancipating research practices to enable research that goes out from such a renewed connectivity. In particular, the chapter traces the application of Eugene Gendlin’s move of instancing to showcase the use of embodied knowing and felt sense in environmental contexts. Thus, it showcases how, in fundamental ways that speak directly to and from our embodied embeddedness, ECT has an emancipatory impact in ways that resonate with lived experiences. (shrink)

This article explores the ‘lack of meaning’ in contemporary society as a consequence of Western dualist thought paradigms and ontologies, via Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘reactive nihilism’ following the colloquial murder of God. The article then explores processual and new materialist approaches in the understanding of the lived and carnal self, arguing for immanent and senseful materiality as an ethical platform for religious, environmental, and societal solidarity for tomorrow. For the theoretical justification of the processual approach in understanding the enfleshed (...) self, the article employs John Dupré’s processual approach in the philosophy of biology, as well as Astrida Neimani’s critical posthumanism, and contextualizes these considerations with Erich Fromm’s ethical distinction of being and having. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

Do sensory measurements deserve the label of “measurement”? We argue that they do. They fit with an epistemological view of measurement held in current philosophy of science, and they face the same kinds of epistemological challenges as physical measurements do: the problem of coordination and the problem of standardization. These problems are addressed through the process of “epistemic iteration,” for all measurements. We also argue for distinguishing the problem of standardization from the problem of coordination. To exemplify our claims, we (...) draw on olfactory performance tests, especially studies linking olfactory decline to neurodegenerative disorders. (shrink)

Dog whistling—speech that seems ordinary but sends a hidden, often derogatory message to a subset of the audience—is troubling not just for our political ideals, but also for our theories of communication. On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention is typically assumed or even inferred from the act, and perhaps for good reason, for dog whistles seem misleading by design, not just by chance. In this (...) paper, I argue that, to understand when and why it’s possible to dog-whistle unintentionally (and indeed, intentionally), we’ll need to recognize the structure of our linguistic practices. For dog whistles and for covertly coded speech more generally, this structure is a pair of practices, one shared by all competent speakers and the other known only to some, but deployable in the same contexts. In trying to identify these enabling conditions, we’ll discover what existing theories of communicated content overlook by focusing on particular utterances in isolation, or on individual speakers’ mental states. The remedy, I argue, lies in attending to the ways in which what is said is shaped by the temporally extended, socio-politically structured linguistic practices that utterances instantiate. (shrink)

Aim This thesis aims to develop a deeper understanding of how employees acculturate post-acquisition, its impact on their organisational identity. Methodology This research encompasses a qualitative case study which was developed by following an interpretative, abductive approach that allowed us to work simultaneously with theory and our empirical material. Nineteen semi-structured interviews, conducted at our case company Oaklers Group, together with observations, built the foundation of this thesis. Literature review In our literature review, we are outlining previous research on acculturation (...) as well as on the concept of organisational identity. Contributions This thesis contributes to the existing literature with a detailed description of the individual acculturation process of employees, its impact on organisational identity and the influence of communication on the acculturation process. (shrink)

Together we can achieve things that we could never do on our own. In fact, there are sheer endless opportunities for producing morally desirable outcomes together with others. Unsurprisingly, scholars have been finding the idea of collective moral obligations intriguing. Yet, there is little agreement among scholars on the nature of such obligations and on the extent to which their existence might force us to adjust existing theories of moral obligation. What interests me in this paper is the perspective of (...) the moral deliberating agent who faces a collective action problem, i.e. the type of reasoning she employs when deciding how to act. I hope to show that agents have collective obligations precisely when they are required to employ ‘we-reasoning’, a type of reasoning that differs from I-mode, best response reasoning, as I shall explain below. More precisely, two (or more) individual agents have a collective moral obligation to do x if x is an option for action that is only collectively available (more on that later) and each has sufficient reason to rank x highest out of the options available to them. (shrink)

Moral duties concerning climate change mitigation are – for good reasons – conventionally construed as duties of institutional agents, usually states. Yet, in both scholarly debate and political discourse, it has occasionally been argued that the moral duties lie not only with states and institutional agents, but also with individual citizens. This argument has been made with regard to mitigation efforts, especially those reducing greenhouse gases. This paper focuses on the question of whether individuals in industrialized countries have duties to (...) reduce their individual carbon footprint. To this end it will examine three kinds of arguments that have been brought forward against individuals having such duties: the view that individual emissions cause no harm; the view that individual mitigation efforts would have no morally significant effect; and the view that lifestyle changes would be overly-demanding. The paper shows how all three arguments fail to convince. While collective endeavours may be most efficient and effective in bringing about significant changes, there are still good reasons to contribute individually to reducing emission. After all, for most people the choice is between reducing one’s individual emissions and not doing anything. The author hopes this paper shows that one should not opt for the latter. (shrink)

WINNER BEST SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY BOOK IN 2021 / NASSP BOOK AWARD 2022 -/- Together we can often achieve things that are impossible to do on our own. We can prevent something bad from happening or we can produce something good, even if none of us could do it by herself. But when are we morally required to do something of moral importance together with others? This book develops an original theory of collective moral obligations. These are obligations that individual moral (...) agents hold jointly, but not as unified collective agents. To think of some of our obligations as joint or collective is the best way of making sense of our intuitions regarding collective moral action problems. Where we have reason to believe that our efforts are most efficient as part of a collective endeavor we may incur collective obligations together with others who are similarly placed as long as we are able to establish compossible individual contributory strategies towards that goal. The book concludes with a discussion of “massively shared obligations” to large-scale moral problems such as global poverty. (shrink)

In recent decades, concepts of group agency and the morality of groups have increasingly been discussed by philosophers. Notions of collective or joint duties have been invoked especially in the debates on global justice, world poverty and climate change. This paper enquires into the possibility and potential nature of moral duties individuals in unstructured groups may hold together. It distinguishes between group agents and groups of people which – while not constituting a collective agent – are nonetheless capable of performing (...) a joint action. It attempts to defend a notion of joint duties which are neither duties of a group agent nor duties of individual agents, but duties held jointly by individuals in unstructured groups. Furthermore, it seeks to illuminate the relation between such joint duties on the one hand and individual duties on the other hand. Rebutting an argument brought forward by Wringe, the paper concludes that it is not plausible to assume that all humans on earth can together hold a duty to mitigate climate change or to combat global poverty given that the members of that group are not capable of joint action. (shrink)

The challenges facing us today require practical wisdom to allow us to react appropriately. In this paper, we argue that at a group level, we will make better decisions if we respect and take into account the moral judgment of agents with diverse styles of cognition and moral reasoning. We show this by focusing on the example of autism, highlighting different strengths and weaknesses of moral reasoning found in autistic and non-autistic persons respectively.

This article explores the negative framing of environmental concern in the context of food procurement and consumption, through the lens of the myth of Eden considering the ontological and genealogical aspects of the experienced exile from nature. The article first considers the theoretical context of the negative framing of food ethics. Demonstrating the consequences of the experience of food as abject, the article then goes on to discuss the exile from Eden as an explanatory myth for the perceptual inbetweenness of (...) humankind. The aim of the article is to outline the genealogical markers of the negative framing of food ethics via the discussion of the exile from Eden. In the context of a new materialist understanding of the nature–culture continuum, the article depicts the exile as a perceptual rather than ontological divide that does not reflect a factual human inbetweenness but mirrors the objectification of nature by stripping the flesh of its spirit. Such reenvisioning is thought to be a pivotal aspect for mitigating the affectual abjectivity of food and recapturing the factual entanglement of body–environment to enable affirmative environmental ethics. (shrink)

In this article, I will consider whether, and in what way, doxastic states can harm. I’ll first consider whether, and in what way, a person’s doxastic state can harm her, before turning to the question of whether, and in what way, it can harm someone else.

We use generic sentences like ‘Blondes are stupid’ to express stereotypes. But why is this? Does the fact that we use generic sentences to express stereotypes mean that stereotypes are themselves, in some sense, generic? I argue that they are. However, stereotypes are mental and generics linguistic, so how can stereotypes be generic? My answer is that stereotypes are generic in virtue of the beliefs they contain. Stereotypes about blondes being stupid contain a belief element, namely a belief that blondes (...) are stupid. This belief is an attitude taken towards the same proposition expressed by the sentence ‘Blondes are stupid’, hence why we use the latter to articulate the former. -/- This generic account of stereotypes can help us better understand their inner workings. I focus on one feature of generics, variability in the types of facts that can make them true, and argue that it can explain how stereotypes shape inferential patterns and thereby guide how we treat members of stereotyped groups. This feature, in turn, illuminates the harms caused by stereotyping and suggests some courses of action. (shrink)

Humans are prone to producing morally suboptimal and even disastrous outcomes out of ignorance. Ignorance is generally thought to excuse agents from wrongdoing, but little attention has been paid to group-based ignorance as the reason for some of our collective failings. I distinguish between different types of first-order and higher order group-based ignorance and examine how these can variously lead to problematic inaction. I will make two suggestions regarding our epistemic obligations vis-a-vis collective (in)action problems: (1) that our epistemic obligations (...) concern not just our own knowledge and beliefs but those of others, too and (2) that our epistemic obligations can be held collectively where the epistemic tasks cannot be performed by individuals acting in isolation, for example, when we are required to produce joint epistemic goods. (shrink)

It is often argued that our obligations to address structural injustice are collective in character. But what exactly does it mean for ‘ordinary citizens’ to have collective obligations visà- vis large-scale injustice? In this paper, I propose to pay closer attention to the different kinds of collective action needed in addressing some of these structural injustices and the extent to which these are available to large, unorganised groups of people. I argue that large, dispersed and unorganised groups of people are (...) often in a position to perform distributive collective actions. As such, ordinary citizens can have massively shared obligations to address structural injustice through distributive action, but, ultimately, such obligations are ‘collective’ only in a fairly weak sense. (shrink)

Is the sense of smell a source of aesthetic perception? Traditional philosophical aesthetics has centered on vision and audition but eliminated smell for its subjective and inherently affective character. This article dismantles the myth that olfaction is an unsophisticated sense. It makes a case for olfactory aesthetics by integrating recent insights in neuroscience with traditional expertise about flavor and fragrance assessment in perfumery and wine tasting. My analysis concerns the importance of observational refinement in aesthetic experience. I argue that the (...) active engagement with stimulus features in perceptual processing shapes the phenomenological content, so much so that the perceptual structure of trained smelling varies significantly from naive smelling. In a second step, I interpret the processes that determine such perceptual refinement in the context of neural decision-making processes, and I end with a positive outlook on how research in neuroscience can be used to benefit philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

This paper is about an underappreciated aspect of generics: their non-specificity. Many uses of generics, utterances like ‘Seagulls swoop down to steal food’, express non-specific generalisations which do not specify their quantificational force or flavour. I consider whether this non-specificity arises as a by-product of context-sensitivity or semantic incompleteness but argue instead that generics semantically express non-specific generalisations by default as a result of quantifying existentially over more specific ones.

Whether anorexic patients should be able to refuse treatment when this potentially has a fatal outcome is a vexed topic. A recent proposal for a new category of ‘terminal anorexia’ suggests criteria when a move to palliative care or even physician assisted suicide might be justified. I argue that this proposed diagnosis presents a false sense of certainty of the illness trajectory by conceptualizing anorexia in analogy with physical disorders and stressing the effects of starvation. Furthermore, this conceptualization is in (...) conflict with the claim that individuals who meet the diagnostic criteria for terminal anorexia have decision making capacity. It should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

We can often achieve together what we could not have achieved on our own. Many times these outcomes and actions will be morally valuable; sometimes they may be of substantial moral value. However, when can we be under an obligation to perform some morally valuable action together with others, or to jointly produce a morally significant outcome? Can there be collective moral obligations, and if so, under what circumstances do we acquire them? These are questions to which philosophers are increasingly (...) turning their attention. It is fair to say that traditional ethical theories cannot give a satisfying answer to the questions, focusing as they do on the actions and attitudes of discreet individual agents. It should also be noted that the debate surrounding collective moral obligations is ongoing and by no means settled. This chapter discusses and compares the different attempts to date to answer the above questions. It proposes a set of meta-criteria—or desiderata— for arbitrating between the various proposals. (shrink)

Democracy is the central political issue of our age, yet debates over its nature and goals rarely engage with feminist concerns. Now that women have the right to vote, they are thought to present no special problems of their own. But despite the seemingly gender-neutral categories of individual or citizen, democratic theory and practice continues to privilege the male. This book reconsiders dominant strands in democratic thinking - focusing on liberal democracy, participatory democracy, and twentieth century versions of civic republicanism (...) - and approaches these from a feminist perspective. Anne Phillips explores the under-representation of women in politics, the crucial relationship between public and private spheres, and the lessons of the contemporary women's movement as an experience in participatory democracy. (shrink)

This chapter provides a high-level introduction to the topic of propaganda. We survey a number of the most influential accounts of propaganda, from the earliest institutional studies in the 1920s to contemporary academic work. We propose that these accounts, as well as the various examples of propaganda which we discuss, all converge around a key feature: persuasion which bypasses audiences’ rational faculties. In practice, propaganda can take different forms, serve various interests, and produce a variety of effects. Propaganda can aim (...) to affect not only audiences’ beliefs and attitudes, but also their emotions and moods, and in turn how audiences subsequently reason or act. While propaganda is often thought of as false or misinformation, it can instead involve framing effects (“The war on drugs”), covert messaging (“There are Muslims among us”), emotionally charged slogans (“Make America Great Again”), or myths (“The American dream”). These forms of propaganda mislead audiences, not by introducing false information, but by making some beliefs and values, rather than others, salient. In fact, propaganda can even employ straightforwardly true claims (again, as in “There are Muslims among us”) and seemingly objective bureaucratic reports (“Crime has risen 4.2%”). To understand how these and other mechanisms enable propaganda to persuade by arational means, further study is needed. To that end, throughout the chapter we identify a number of places where the study of meaning and communication can help elucidate propaganda, as well as the places where propaganda issues challenges for the study of meaning. (shrink)

Renaissance philosopher, mathematician, and theologian Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) said that there is no proportion between the finite mind and the infinite. He is fond of saying reason cannot fully comprehend the infinite. That our best hope for attaining a vision and understanding of infinite things is by mathematics and by the use of contemplating symbols, which help us grasp "the absolute infinite". By the late 19th century, there is a decisive intervention in mathematics and its philosophy: the philosophical mathematician (...) Georg Cantor (1845-1918) says that between the realm of the finite and the absolute infinite, there is an intermediate realm partaking in properties in a certain sense of both the finite and the infinite: the transfinite realm. Like the finite, the transfinite realm is a realm of mathematical objects, numbers, and knowledge. Like the absolute infinite, the transfinite is a form of infinity insofar as transfinite sets and numbers transcend any finite number. Echoing Cusanus and neo-Platonism, Cantor says that the transfinite sequence of all ordinals is a symbol of the absolutely infinite, that is, God. Moreover, Cantor envisioned his transfinite set theory (Mengenlehre) as providing the analytical methods and techniques necessary for a comprehensive, organic, non-reductive description of nature, a Naturphilosophie. Thus Cantor’s novel mathematics is presented as part of a long tradition, to which Cusanus, Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz and others belong, in which the infinity and infinite character of organic life forms is appreciated, and is in some sense a mirror or symbol of the divine. The doctrine of symbolism and their different approach to the laws of logic present in both the work of Cusanus and Cantor enables these thinkers to articulate a transcendental apophatic approach to divinity. (shrink)

In the recent epistemological literature much has been written about the nature of suspending judgement or agnosticism. There has also been a surge of recent interest in the nature of ignorance. But what is the relationship between these two epistemically significant states? Prima facie, both suspension and ignorance seem to involve the lack of a correct answer to a question. And, again prima facie, there may be some intuitive attraction to the idea that when one is ignorant whether p, one (...) ought to suspend judgement whether p. In this paper we will explore a range of different possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension of judgement. We will also discuss how both ignorance and suspension are related to having inconclusive evidence. As we will see, the issues can become quite complex due to the fact that there are different, competing views about the nature of ignorance and also about the nature of suspension. Moreover, there are importantly different kinds of epistemic norms. Our overall aim then will be to systematically chart how these different choices will impact the possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension. (shrink)

A fallibilist theory of knowledge is employed to make sense of the idea that agents know what they are doing 'without observation' (as on Anscombe's theory of practical knowledge).

Most current techniques to deal with invasive species are ineffective or have highly damaging side effects. To this end suppression-drives based on clustered regularly inter-spaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) have been touted as a potential silver bullet for the problem, allowing for a highly focused, humane and cost-effective means of removing a target species from an environment. Suppression-drives come with serious risks, however, such that the precautionary principle seems to warrant us not deploying this technology. The focus of this paper (...) is on one such risk – the danger of a suppression-drive escaping containment and wiping out the target species globally. Here, I argue that in most cases this risk is significant enough to warrant not using a gene-drive. In some cases, however, we can bypass the precautionary principle by using an approach that hinges on what I term the ‘Worst-Case Clause’. This clause, in turn, provides us with a litmus test that can be fruitfully used to determine what species are viable targets for suppression-drives in the wild. Using this metric in concert with other considerations, I suggest that only three species are currently possible viable targets – the European rabbit, ship rat and Caribbean Tree Frog. (shrink)

It seems like people have character traits that explain a good deal of their behavior. Call a theory character realism just in case it vindicates this folk assumption. Recently, Christian Miller has argued that the way to reconcile character realism with decades of psychological research is to adopt metaphysical reductivism about character traits. Some contemporary psychological theories of character and virtue seem to implicitly endorse such reductivism; others resist reduction of traits to finer-grained mental components or processes; and still others (...) remain silent on the metaphysics of traits. In this paper we argue that character realists do not have to, and in fact should not, be reductivists. We introduce a theoretical dilemma for reductivist character realism. Then we explain how nonreductivists can meet the standards for empirical adequacy laid out by Miller and others. Further, we argue, hylomorphic nonreductivism avoids the theoretical dilemma that threatens reductivism. It also fits nicely the major commitments of recent models of virtue in psychology. Thus, character realists should not be reductivists. (shrink)

This book engages with the most urgent philosophical questions pertaining to the problem of terrorism. What is terrorism? Could it ever be justified? Assuming that terrorism is just one of many kinds of political violence, the book denies that it is necessarily wrong and worse than war. In fact, it may be justifiable under certain circumstances.

Does a diagnosis of brain dysfunction matter for ascriptions of moral responsibility? This chapter argues that, while knowledge of brain pathology can inform judgments of moral responsibility, its evidential value is currently limited for a number of practical and theoretical reasons. These include the problem of establishing causation from correlational data, drawing inferences about individuals from group data, and the reliance of the interpretation of brain findings on well-established psychological findings. Brain disorders sometimes matter for moral responsibility, however, because they (...) change an individual’s moral psychology in a way that is beyond their control. While control over psychological changes is not an excusing factor, brain disorders can mitigate moral responsibility because they confront individuals with new psychological deficits or urges for which their previous moral education and existing external and internal moral resources have not prepared them. (shrink)

Defenders of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology hold that practical factors have implications for a belief’s epistemic status. Paradigm defenders of pragmatic encroachment have held—to state their positions roughly— that whether someone’s belief that p constitutes knowledge depends on the practical reasons that she has (Stanley 2005), that knowing p is necessary and sufficient for treating p as a reason for action (Hawthorne and Stanley 2008), or that knowing p is sufficient for reasonably acting as if p (Fantl and McGrath 2009: (...) 66). Although their defenders may not always pose their theses in the language of practical reasons, the idea of a practical reason is central to each of these views. Yet there remain issues concerning the nature and basis of practical reasons on which defenders of pragmatic encroachment have not taken a position, including—as I will explain—the issue of whether internalism or externalism about reasons is true. It may be thought that the position the defender of pragmatic encroachment takes on this does not make a difference to the truth or falsity of her main thesis. In this chapter, I will show that it does matter, in the sense that her view will generate different verdicts about cases depending on whether she endorses internal- ism or externalism about reasons. Given the role of cases in providing intui- tive support for or against the theory, this, in turn, makes a difference to the plausibility of pragmatic encroachment. (shrink)