We construct a machine that knows its own code, at the price of not knowing its own factivity.

Prior scholarly approaches to meaningful work have largely fallen into two camps. One focuses on identifying how work can contribute to a meaningful life. The other studies the antecedents and outcomes of workers experiencing their work as meaningful. Neither of these approaches, however, captures what people look for when they seek meaningful work—or so I argue. In this paper, I give a new, commitment-based account of meaningful work by focusing on the reasons people have to choose meaningful work over other (...) options. I draw on philosopher Ruth Chang’s account of voluntarist reasons (reasons that arise from an act of the will) to argue that commitments can create distinctive reasons to pursue certain work. It is the presence of these distinctive reasons that makes work meaningful. (shrink)

We study the structure of families of theories in the language of arithmetic extended to allow these families to refer to one another and to themselves. If a theory contains schemata expressing its own truth and expressing a specific Turing index for itself, and contains some other mild axioms, then that theory is untrue. We exhibit some families of true self-referential theories that barely avoid this forbidden pattern.

We argue that C. Darwin and more recently W. Hennig worked at times under the simplifying assumption of an eternal biosphere. So motivated, we explicitly consider the consequences which follow mathematically from this assumption, and the infinite graphs it leads to. This assumption admits certain clusters of organisms which have some ideal theoretical properties of species, shining some light onto the species problem. We prove a dualization of a law of T.A. Knight and C. Darwin, and sketch a decomposition result (...) involving the internodons of D. Kornet, J. Metz and H. Schellinx. A further goal of this paper is to respond to B. Sturmfels’ question, “Can biology lead to new theorems?”. (shrink)

Decision theory has had a long-standing history in the behavioural and social sciences as a tool for constructing good approximations of human behaviour. Yet as artificially intelligent systems (AIs) grow in intellectual capacity and eventually outpace humans, decision theory becomes evermore important as a model of AI behaviour. What sort of decision procedure might an AI employ? In this work, I propose that policy-based causal decision theory (PCDT), which places a primacy on the decision-relevance of predictors and simulations of agent (...) behaviour, may be such a procedure. I compare this account to the recently-developed functional decision theory (FDT), which is motivated by similar concerns. I also address potentially counterintuitive features of PCDT, such as its refusal to condition on observations made at certain times. (shrink)

Reinhardt’s conjecture, a formalization of the statement that a truthful knowing machine can know its own truthfulness and mechanicalness, was proved by Carlson using sophisticated structural results about the ordinals and transfinite induction just beyond the first epsilon number. We prove a weaker version of the conjecture, by elementary methods and transfinite induction up to a smaller ordinal.

Elementary patterns of resemblance notate ordinals up to the ordinal of Pi^1_1-CA_0. We provide ordinal multiplication and exponentiation algorithms using these notations.

Ever since its inception, the theory of evolution has been reified into an “-ism”: Darwinism. While biologists today tend to shy away from the term in their research, the term is still actively used in the broader academic and societal contexts. What exactly is Darwinism, and how precisely are its various uses and abuses related to the scientific theory of evolution? Some call for limiting the meaning of the term “Darwinism” to its scientific context; others call for its abolition; yet (...) others claim the term refers to a myth-like story. In this paper we propose a conceptually grounded overview of the term. We show how the scientific dimension of Darwinism feeds into, and is influenced by, guises of Darwinism as a methodology and as an ethically and politically charged “worldview”. The full meaning of Darwinism, as well as how this meaning has changed over time, can only be understood through the complex interaction between these three dimensions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that constructivism in mathematics faces a dilemma. In particular, I maintain that constructivism is unable to explain (i) the application of mathematics to nature and (ii) the intersubjectivity of mathematics unless (iii) it is conjoined with two theses that reduce it to a form of mathematical Platonism. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first section of the paper, I explain the difference between mathematical constructivism and mathematical Platonism and I outline my argument. (...) In the second, I argue that the best explanation of how mathematics applies to nature for a constructivist is a thesis I call Copernicanism. In the third, I argue that the best explanation of how mathematics can be intersubjective for a constructivist is a thesis I call Ideality. In the fourth, I argue that once constructivism is conjoined with these two theses, it collapses into a form of mathematical Platonism. In the fifth, I confront some objections. (shrink)

Advances in forensic techniques have expanded the temporal horizon of criminal investigations, facilitating investigation of historic crimes that would previously have been considered unsolvable. Public enthusiasm for pursuing historic crimes is exemplified by recent high-profile trials of celebrities accused of historic sexual offences. These circumstances give new urgency to the question of how we should decide which historic offences to investigate. A satisfactory answer must take into account the ways in which the passage of time can erode the benefits of (...) criminal investigation, the costs associated with investigating old crimes, and the need to prioritize investigations in the face of limited police resources. This article emphasizes the first of these factors. It begins by considering the moral goals of a criminal justice system and the contribution of criminal investigations to the achievement of these goals, distinguishing between contributions that depend on further steps in the criminal justice process, such as prosecution and punishment, and contributions that can have value independently of these further steps. Using this important distinction, the article then examines a range of factors that relate the passage of time to criminal justice goals, including the seriousness of the crime; deterioration of evidence; death of the offender, victim and others affected by the crime; and diminished psychological connectedness between those affected by the crime and their current selves. While the range and non-uniformity of relevant factors preclude a simple answer to the question of when historic crimes should be investigated and call instead for case-by-case assessment, we find that the analysis does support some general conclusions that can guide such an assessment. (shrink)

The Gamer’s Dilemma consists of three intuitively plausible but conflicting assertions: (i) Virtual murder is morally permissible. (ii) Virtual child molestation is morally forbidden. (iii) There is no relevant moral difference between virtual murder and virtual child molestation in computer games. Numerous attempts to resolve (or dissolve) the Gamer’s Dilemma line the field of computer game ethics. Mostly, the phenomenon is approached using expressivist argumentation: Reprehensible virtual actions express something immoral in their performance but are not immoral by themselves. Consequentialists, (...) on the other hand, claim that the immorality of virtual actions arises from their harmful consequences. I argue that both approaches have serious difficulties meeting the moral challenge posed by the Gamer’s Dilemma. They tend to confuse the morality of in-game actions either with the morality of their real-world counterparts or with the morality of games as objects. Following this critical analysis, I will develop a Kantian argument and defend it against two objections. So far, deontological responses to the Gamer’s Dilemma have been sought in vain. Yet, with Kant, its moral challenge can be met by looking at the gamer’s reasons. From this perspective, the Gamer’s Dilemma is based on a false assumption: the moral status of gaming acts does not derive from a normative equation with their real-world counterparts but only from their justifications. (shrink)

In this paper I am going to raise a problem for recent attempts to derive positive duties from Kant’s universalizability tests. In particular, I argue that these recent attempts are subject to reductio and that the most obvious way of patching them renders them impracticable. I begin by explaining the motivation for these attempts. Then I describe how they work and begin my attack. I conclude by considering some patches.

Fragmentalism was originally introduced as a new A-theory of time. It was further refined and discussed, and different developments of the original insight have been proposed. In a celebrated paper, Jonathan Simon contends that fragmentalism delivers a new realist account of the quantum state—which he calls conservative realism—according to which: the quantum state is a complete description of a physical system, the quantum state is grounded in its terms, and the superposition terms are themselves grounded in local goings-on about the (...) system in question. We will argue that fragmentalism, at least along the lines proposed by Simon, does not offer a new, satisfactory realistic account of the quantum state. This raises the question about whether there are some other viable forms of quantum fragmentalism. (shrink)

In recent years, the number of studies examining mind wandering has increased considerably, and research on the topic has spread widely across various domains of psychological research. Although the term “mind wandering” has been used to refer to various cognitive states, researchers typically operationalize mind wandering in terms of “task-unrelated thought” (TUT). Research on TUT has shed light on the various task features that require people’s attention, and on the consequences of task inattention. Important methodological and conceptual complications do persist, (...) however, in current investigations of TUT. As we argue, these complications may be dampening the development of a more nuanced scientific account of TUT. Here, we outline three of the more prominent methodological and conceptual complications in the literature on TUT, and we discuss potential directions for researchers to take as they move forward in their investigations of TUT. (shrink)

Biologists explain organisms’ behavior not only as having been programmed by genes and shaped by natural selection, but also as the result of an organism’s agency: the capacity to react to environmental changes in goal-driven ways. The use of such ‘agential explanations’ reopens old questions about how justified it is to ascribe agency to entities like bacteria or plants that obviously lack rationality and even a nervous system. Is organismic agency genuinely ‘real’ or is it just a useful fiction? In (...) this paper we focus on two questions: whether agential explanations are to be interpreted ontically, and whether they can be reduced to non-agential explanations (thereby dispensing with agency). The Kantian approach we identify interprets agential explanations non-ontically, yet holds agency to be indispensable. Attributing agency to organisms is not to be taken literally in the way we attribute physical properties such as mass or acceleration, but nor is it a mere heuristic or predictive tool. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence of our own rational capacity: as long as we are rational agents ourselves, we cannot avoid seeing agency in organisms. (shrink)

In response to the spread of COVID-19, governments across the world have, with very few exceptions, enacted sweeping restrictive lockdown policies that impede citizens’ freedom to move, work, and assemble. This paper critically responds to the central arguments for restrictive lockdown legislation. We build our critique on the following assumption: public policy that enjoys virtually unanimous support worldwide should be justified by uncontroversial moral principles. We argue that that the virtually unanimous support in favor of restrictive lockdowns is not adequately (...) justified by the arguments given in favor of them. Importantly, this is not to say that states ought not impose restrictive lockdown measures, but rather that the extent of the acceptance of these measures is not proportionate to the strength of the arguments for lockdowns. -/- We begin by exploring the case for restrictive lockdowns. We first argue that several of the principles that are used to justify the lockdowns yield unexpectedly revisionary implications for other political problems that many would be unwilling to accept. We then outline what we consider the strongest argument for a lockdown—namely, that its net welfare benefits are great enough to defeat the moral presumption against restricting citizens’ civil liberties to move, work, and assemble. However, we give a number of reasons for doubting that the lockdown’s net welfare benefits are, in fact, sufficiently high to defeat the presumption against it. (shrink)

Loyalty is considered central to people’s moral life, yet little is known about how people think about what it means to be loyal. We used a prototype approach to understand how loyalty is represented in Colombia and the United States and how these representations mediate attributions of loyalty and moral judgments of loyalty violations. Across 7 studies (N = 1,984), we found cross-cultural similarities in the associative meaning of loyalty (Study 1) but found differences in the centrality of features associated (...) with loyalty (Study 2) and the latent structure of loyalty representations (Study 3). Colombians represent loyalty in terms of more general moral characteristics, while US participants represent loyalty in terms of interpersonal commitment, both in contrast with current approaches to loyalty. By comparing representations of loyalty and honesty, we establish that difference in loyalty conceptualizations reflect a different way of thinking about loyalty rather than morality more generally (Study 4). Further, Colombians attributed greater loyalty to individuals with general moral characteristics compared to participants from the United States sample (Study 5) and were more likely to classify non-loyal values as loyalty-related (Study 6). While the centrality of prototypical features predicts categorizing norm violations as loyalty-related, differences in prototypical structure account for differences in the severity of moral judgment for such violations (Study 7), which suggests that loyalty representations have similar functions even though these representations differ in structural characteristics. (shrink)

This is an opinionated guide to the literature on epistemic dilemmas. It discusses seven kinds of situations where epistemic dilemmas appear to arise; dilemmic, dilemmish, and non-dilemmic takes on them; and objections to dilemmic views along with dilemmist’s replies to them.

Background Professional communities such as the medical community are acutely concerned with negligence: the category of misconduct where a professional does not live up to the standards expected of a professional of similar qualifications. Since science is currently strengthening its structures of self-regulation in parallel to the professions, this raises the question to what extent the scientific community is concerned with negligence, and if not, whether it should be. By means of comparative analysis of medical and scientific codes of conduct, (...) we aim to highlight the role of negligence provisions in codes of conduct for scientists, and to discuss the normative consequences for future codes of conduct. -/- Methods We collected scientific and medical codes of conduct in a selection of OECD countries, and submitted each code of conduct to comparative textual analysis. -/- Results Negligence is invariably listed as an infraction of the norms of integrity in medical codes of conduct, but only rarely so in the scientific codes. When the latter list negligence, they typically do not provide any detail on the meaning of ‘negligence’. -/- Discussion Unlike codes of conduct for professionals, current codes of conduct for scientists are largely silent on the issue of negligence, or explicitly exclude negligence as a type of misconduct. In the few cases where negligence is stipulated to constitute misconduct, no responsibilities are identified that would help prevent negligence. While we caution against unreasonable negligence provisions as well as disproportionate sanctioning systems, we do argue that negligence provisions are crucial for justified trust in the scientific community, and hence that there is a very strong rationale for including negligence provisions in codes of conduct. (shrink)

Can you find an xy-equation that, when graphed, writes itself on the plane? This idea became internet-famous when a Wikipedia article on Tupper’s self-referential formula went viral in 2012. Under scrutiny, the question has two flaws: it is meaningless (it depends on fonts) and it is trivial. We fix these flaws by formalizing the problem.

In this article I respond to the obligation to institute the policy of decoupled crop subsidies as is provided in Pilchman’s article “Money for Nothing: Are decoupled Crop Subsidies Just?” With growing problems of poor nutrition in the United States there have been two different but related phenomenon that have appeared. First, the obesity epidemic that has ravaged the nation and left an increasing number of people very unhealthy; and second, the phenomenon of food deserts where individuals are unable to (...) access fresh fruits and vegetables. A possible solution to this problem, as has been proposed by some, is to institute a decoupled crop subsidy that would increase the production of fruits and vegetables in the United States. In this paper I explore the possible unintended consequences of this policy and how it may violate liberal international conceptions of justice. I conclude that there must be further empirical research before anyone can call decoupled crop subsidies an obligation to justice. (shrink)

The Generality Problem is widely recognized to be a serious problem for reliabilist theories of justification. James R. Beebe's Statistical Solution is one of only a handful of attempted solutions that has garnered serious attention in the literature. In their recent response to Beebe, Julien Dutant and Erik J. Olsson successfully refute Beebe's Statistical Solution. This paper presents a New Statistical Solution that countenances Dutant and Olsson's objections, dodges the serious problems that trouble rival solutions, and retains the theoretical virtues (...) that made Beebe's solution so attractive in the first place. There indeed exists a principled, rigorous, conceptually sparse, and plausible solution to the Generality Problem: it is the New Statistical Solution. (shrink)

In enhancement ethics, evolutionary theory has been largely perceived as supporting liberal views on enhancement, where decisions to enhance are predominantly regulated by the principle of individual autonomy. In this paper I critique this perception in light of recent scientific developments. Cultural evolutionary theory suggests a picture where individual interests are entangled with community interests, and this undermines the applicability of the principle of autonomy. This is particularly relevant for enhancement ethics, given how – I argue – decisions to enhance (...) are often influenced by desires to increase social status. The “service view on enhancement”, based on principles of service and trust, is proposed as offering better guidance for the challenges of social living. (shrink)

The verb ‘to know’ can be used both in ascriptions of propositional knowledge and ascriptions of knowledge of acquaintance. In the formal epistemology literature, the former use of ‘know’ has attracted considerable attention, while the latter is typically regarded as derivative. This attitude may be unsatisfactory for those philosophers who, like Russell, are not willing to think of knowledge of acquaintance as a subsidiary or dependent kind of knowledge. In this paper we outline a logic of knowledge of acquaintance in (...) which ascriptions like ‘Mary knows Smith’ are regarded as formally interesting in their own right, remaining neutral on their relation to ascriptions of propositional knowledge. The resulting logical framework, which is based on Hintikka’s modal approach to epistemic logic, provides a fresh perspective on various issues and notions at play in the philosophical debate on acquaintance. (shrink)

There is an old meta-philosophical worry: very roughly, metaphysical theories have no observational consequences and so the study of metaphysics has no value. The worry has been around in some form since the rise of logical positivism in the early twentieth century but has seen a bit of a renaissance recently. In this paper, I provide an apology for metaphysics in the face of this kind of concern. The core of the argument is this: pure mathematics detaches from science in (...) much the same manner as metaphysics and yet it is valuable nonetheless. The source of value enjoyed by pure mathematics extends to metaphysics as well. Accordingly, if one denies that metaphysics has value, then one is forced to deny that pure mathematics has value. The argument places an added burden on the sceptic of metaphysics. If one truly believes that metaphysics is worthless (as some philosophers do), then one must give up on pure mathematics as well. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good—especially the first essay, “The Idea of Perfection”—is often associated with a critique of a certain picture of agency and its proper place in ethical thought. There is implicit in this critique, however, an alternative, much richer one. I propose a reading of Murdochian agency in terms of the continuous activity of cultivating and refining a distinctive practical standpoint, and I apply this reading to her account of moral progress. For Murdoch moral progress depends on (...) transcending egoism and achieving clear perception of a normatively-saturated reality, but it would be a mistake to think of egoism in terms of selfishness, or clarity in terms of altruism. Rather, I argue, Murdochian moral progress requires overcoming socially-conditioned and often ideological forms of alienation, and making the social conditions that inform our practical standpoints self-conscious. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the traditional interpretations of Kant’s Formula of a Law of Nature from recent attacks leveled by Faviola Rivera-Castro, James Furner, Ido Geiger, Pauline Kleingeld and Sven Nyholm. After a short introduction, the paper is divided into four main sections. In the first, I set out the basics of the three traditional interpretations, the Logical Contradiction Interpretation, the Practical Contradiction Interpretation and the Teleological Contradiction Interpretation. In the second, I examine the work of Geiger, Kleingeld and (...) Nyholm: these three commentators reject the traditional interpretations entirely, but I argue that this rejection is ill-founded. In the third and fourth, I take a detailed look at Furner’s work, work in which he seeks to revise (rather than reject) the traditional interpretations. I argue that, despite his more modest aims, Furner’s revision is also ill-founded. (shrink)

The third Meditation is typically understood to contain two a posteriori arguments for the existence of God. The author focuses on the second argument, where Descartes proves the existence of God partly in virtue of proving that Descartes cannot be the cause of himself. To establish this, Descartes argues that if he were the cause of himself, then he would endow himself with any conceivable perfection. The justification for this claim is that bringing about a substance is more difficult than (...) creating an attribute, so anything that can do the former can do the latter. While current explanations of this justification are either implausible or inadequate, the author argues that this principle derives support from a scholastic distinction between being-as-such and determinate being. With this distinction in view, we can make sense of Descartes's argument without appealing to ambiguous or inadequate notions. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom regarding the aims and shortcomings of Kantian constructivism is mistaken. The aim of metaethical constructivism is not to provide a naturalistic account of the objectivity of normative facts by deriving substantive morality from a conception of agency so thin as to be uncontroversial (a task at which it is generally regarded to have failed). Its aim is to explain the “grip” that normative facts have on us—to avoid what I call the problem of normative alienation. So understood, (...) Kantian constructivism faces two problems: that determinate normative facts cannot be derived from agency and that its individualistic conception of agency cannot account for the sociality of morality. I propose and elaborate a social conception of agency that is better able to address the latter problem while still avoiding normative alienation, and evaluate two different strategies for responding to the former problem. (shrink)

Socialists have historically thought a lot about the catastrophic risks society faces. Today many DSA chapters have gotten involved in mutual aid to respond to the Covid crisis, generating a debate about how mutual aid fits into socialist work. One form of community engagement that is likely to be increasingly necessary, and is an opportunity for radicalizing angry neighbors, is disaster preparedness. While the prepper subculture is perceived as right-wing, and parts are tied into the militia movement, there are also (...) opportunities for progressive organizations to work with FEMA and local governments. This essay discusses distinctive socialist perspectives on disasters past and future and gives examples of strategic ways socialists can help build disaster-resilient communities. (shrink)

Aristotle analyses a large range of objects as composites of matter and form. But how exactly should we understand the relation between the matter and form of a composite? Some commentators have argued that forms themselves are somehow material, that is, forms are impure. Others have denied that claim and argued for the purity of forms. In this paper, I develop a new purist interpretation of Metaphysics Z.10-11, a text central to the debate, which I call 'hierarchical purism'. I argue (...) that hierarchical purism can overcome the difficulties faced by previous versions of purism as well as by impurism. Roughly, on hierarchical purism, each composite can be considered and defined in two different ways: From the perspective of metaphysics, composites are considered only insofar as they have forms and defined purely formally. From the perspective of physics, composites are considered insofar as they have forms and matter and defined with reference to both. Moreover, while the metaphysical definition is a definition in the strict sense of 'definition', the physical definition is a definition in a loose sense. Analogous points hold for intelligible composites and geometry. Finally, neither sort of definitional practice implies that, for Aristotle, forms are impure. (shrink)

Samuel seeks out Kurt at a pub and initiates a discussion. Soon Kurt becomes engaged. What is it that is incomplete?

Scholars have often thought that a monistic reading of Aristotle’s definition of the human good – in particular, one on which “best and most teleios virtue” refers to theoretical wisdom – cannot follow from the premises of the ergon argument. I explain how a monistic reading can follow from the premises, and I argue that this interpretation gives the correct rationale for Aristotle’s definition. I then explain that even though the best and most teleios virtue must be a single virtue, (...) that virtue could in principle be a whole virtue that arises from the combination of all the others. I also clarify that the definition of the human good aims at capturing the nature of human eudaimonia only in its primary case. (shrink)

Judgments of blame for others are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires. However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing? We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about others’ mental control, (...) people self-project their own perceived mental control to anchor third-personal judgments about mental control and concomitant responsibility for negligent wrongdoing. In four experiments (N = 841), we tested whether perceptions of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Study 1 showed that the ease with which people can counterfactually imagine an individual being non-negligent mediated the relationship between judgments of control and blame. Studies 2a and 2b indicated that perceived mental control has a strong effect on judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and that first-personal judgments of mental control are moderately correlated with third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Finally, we used an autobiographical memory manipulation in Study 3 to make personal episodes of forgetfulness salient. Participants for whom past personal episodes of forgetfulness were made salient judged negligent wrongdoers less harshly compared to a control group for whom past episodes of negligence were not salient. Collectively, these findings suggest that first-personal judgments of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and indicate a novel role for counterfactual thinking in the attribution of responsibility. (shrink)

Inductive logic would be the logic of arguments that are not valid, but nevertheless justify belief in something like the way in which valid arguments would. Maybe we could describe it as the logic of “almost valid” arguments. There is a sort of transitivity to valid arguments. Valid arguments can be chained together to form arguments and such arguments are themselves valid. One wants to distinguish the “almost valid” arguments by noting that chains of “almost valid” arguments are weaker than (...) the links that form them. But it is not clear that this is so. I have an apparent counterexample the claim. Though: as is typical in these sorts of situations, it is hard to tell where the problem lies. (shrink)

Confabulation is typically understood to be dysfunctional. But this understanding neglects the phenomenon’s potential benefits. In fact, we think that the benefits of non-clinical confabulation provide a better foundation for a general account of confabulation. In this paper, we start from these benefits to develop a social teleological account of confabulation. Central to our account is the idea that confabulation manifests a kind of willful ignorance. By understanding confabulation in this way, we can provide principled explanations for the difference between (...) clinical and non-clinical cases of confabulation and the extent to which confabulation is rational. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a novel argument for scientific realism. In contrast to most recent defenses of SR, my defense of SR does not rely on the no-miracles argument. Instead, I take a more unconventional approach: I focus on the different kinds of justification available to different individuals in relation to different kinds of propositions. I maintain that this alternative focus shows that most people are warranted in believing many propositions about unobservables. The paper is divided into three main (...) sections. In the first, I rehearse the main moves in the recent debate about SR. In the second, I argue that the discussion in section one enables us to see that most of the arguments in the recent debate about SR mistake their target: instead of being about SR, they are about meta-SR. I argue that what I call the JJ-principle should be rejected and, further, that if the JJ-principle is rejected, then meta-SR may be cleaved from SR. This enables me to advance to a position I call thin realism in the third and final section of the paper. (shrink)

Most Western Buddhists employ both utilitarian and virtue ethics, in the paradoxical unity of compassion and wisdom. On the one hand, our personal karmic clarity is most related to our cultivation of compassionate intention, but on the other hand we also need to develop penetrating insight into the most effective means to the ends. We do not believe that the person who helps others without any intention of doing so to have accrued merit, while we look upon the person who (...) causes others suffering with the best intentions a hapless fool. Similarly, in approaching the abortion decision, both the mindset of the actors and the utilitarian consequences are important. (shrink)

Samuel Kerstein’s recent (2013) How To Treat Persons is an ambitious attempt to develop a new, broadly Kantian account of what it is to treat others as mere means and what it means to act in accordance with others’ dignity. His project is explicitly nonfoundationalist: his interpretation stands or falls on its ability to accommodate our pretheoretic intuitions, and he does an admirable job of handling carefully a range of well fleshed out and sometimes subtle examples. In what follows, (...) I shall give a quick summary of the chapters and then say two good things about the book and one critical thing. (shrink)

I provide a theory of the metaphysical foundations of identity: an account what grounds facts of the form a=b. In particular, I defend the claim that indiscernibility grounds identity. This is typically rejected because it is viciously circular; plausible assumptions about the logic of ground entail that the fact that a=b partially grounds itself. The theory I defend is immune to this circularity.

A number of health care professionals assert a right to be exempt from performing some actions currently designated as part of their standard professional responsibilities. Most advocates claim that they should be excused from these duties simply by averring that they are conscientiously opposed to performing them. They believe that they need not explain or justify their decisions to anyone; nor should they suffer any undesirable consequences of such refusal. Those who claim this right err by blurring or conflating three (...) issues about the nature and role of conscience, and its significance in determining what other people should permit them to do (or not do). Many who criticize those asserting an exemption conflate the same questions and blur the same distinctions, if not expressly, by failing to acknowledge that sometimes a morally serious agent should not do what she might otherwise be expected to do. Neither side seems to acknowledge that in some cases both claims are true: a conscientious professional should not do her professional duty AND others need not permit or excuse her refusal. I identify these conflations and specify conditions in which a professional might reasonably refuse to do what she is required to do. Then I identify conditions in which the public should exempt a professional from some of her responsibilities. I argue that professionals should refuse far less often than most advocates do . . . and that they should be even less frequently exempt for that failure. Finally, there are compelling reasons why we could not implement a consistent moral policy giving advocates what they want, likely not even in qualified form. (shrink)

Jennifer Saul argues that the evidence from the literature on implicit biases entails a form of skepticism. In this paper, I argue that Saul faces a dilemma: her argument is either self-defeating, or it does not yield a skeptical conclusion. For Saul, both results are unacceptable; thus, her argument fails.

Experiences of enlightened unity with Nature or with Deity are reported not only in the mystical literature of the past but also in contemporary accounts of the psychedelic adventurer. In Chapter 13, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes seeks to fathom such reported states within the framework of the metaphysics of Benedict de Spinoza – a metaphysics encompassing monism, pantheism, panpsychism, and the eternal substance: the timelessness of pure Nature, God itself. God is Nature for Spinoza. To achieve this framework, the tenets of (...) Spinozism are explicated with a culmination in the Intellectual Love of God, amor Dei intellectualis, where the finite mind and infinite intellect of Nature unite. Sjöstedt-Hughes then provides a phenomenological account of the unitive states occasioned by certain psychedelic substances, notably the ever-so potent 5-MeO-DMT, comparing these phenomenological elements to the ontological aspects of Spinozism. This comparative analysis will proffer a Spinozan-Psychedelic symbiosis: that certain psychedelic states can be understood through the Spinozan system, and that the Spinozan system can be intuited through certain psychedelic states – a blinding flash of Spinozism that can change one’s relation to oneself and to Nature itself. (shrink)

Does the content of a physically dangerous job affect the moral permissibility of hiring for that job? To what extent may employers consider costs in choosing workplace safety measures? Drawing on Kantian ethical theory, this article defends two strong ethical standards of workplace safety. First, the content of a hazardous job does indeed affect the moral permissibility of offering it. Unless employees need hazard pay to meet basic needs, it is permissible to offer a dangerous job only if prospective employees (...) have a reason other than hazard pay to choose this job instead of safer alternatives. Second, employers typically cannot justify omitting expensive safety measures by paying employees more, even if employees prefer higher pay to greater safety. Employers offering dangerous jobs must meet these two standards to avoid treating their employees merely as means. (shrink)

Are we ever morally permitted to do what is morally wrong? It seems intuitive that we are, but evidence for dissociations among judgment of permissibility and wrongness are relatively scarce. Across 4 experiments (N = 1,438), we show that people judge that some behaviors can be morally wrong and permissible. The dissociations arise because these judgments track different morally relevant aspects of everyday moral encounters. Judgments of individual rights predicted permissibility but not wrongness, while character assessment predicted wrongness but not (...) permissibility. These findings suggest a picture in which moral evaluation is granular enough to express reasoning about different types of normative considerations, notably the possibility that people can exercise their rights in morally problematic ways. (shrink)

In recent years, some have claimed that a Darwinian perspective will revolutionize the study of human society and culture. This project is viewed with disdain and suspicion, on the other hand, by many practicing social scientists. This article seeks to clear the air in this heated debate by dissociating two claims that are too often assumed to be inseparable. The first is the ‘ontological’ claim that Darwinian principles apply, at some level of abstraction, to human society and culture. The second (...) is the more ‘pragmatic’ claim that this observation necessitates substantial changes in the practices of social scientists. Even if some version of the first claim is true, I argue – which I believe is quite likely – the second does not follow. This observation ought to chasten the most overzealous advocates of Darwinian social science, as well as softening the instinctive resistance of many social scientists and historians to the genuine insights enabled by a Darwinian approach. The conclusion discusses these insights, the most important of which is a methodological prescription for normative theory. (shrink)

Jaakko Hintikka proposed treating objectual perception sentences, such as “Alice sees Bob,” as de re propositional perception sentences. Esa Saarinen extended Hintikka’s idea to eventive perception sentences, such as “Alice sees Bob smile.” These approaches, elegant as they may be, are not philosophically neutral, for they presuppose, controversially, that the content of all perceptual experiences is propositional in nature. The aim of this paper is to propose a formal treatment of objectual and eventive perception sentences that builds on Hintikka’s modal (...) approach to propositional attitude ascriptions while avoiding controversial assumptions on the nature of perceptual experiences. Despite being simple and theoretically frugal, our approach is powerful enough to express a variety of interesting philosophical views about propositional, objectual, and eventive perception sentences, thus enabling the study of their inferential relationships. (shrink)

We present a game mechanic called pseudo-visibility for games inhabited by non-player characters (NPCs) driven by reinforcement learning (RL). NPCs are incentivized to pretend they cannot see pseudo-visible players: the training environment simulates an NPC to determine how the NPC would act if the pseudo-visible player were invisible, and penalizes the NPC for acting differently. NPCs are thereby trained to selectively ignore pseudo-visible players, except when they judge that the reaction penalty is an acceptable tradeoff (e.g., a guard might accept (...) the penalty in order to protect a treasure because losing the treasure would hurt even more). We describe an RL agent transformation which allows RL agents that would not otherwise do so to perform some limited self-reflection to learn the training environments in question. (shrink)