Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...) asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non-moral in nature. (shrink)

This is a contribution to the symposium on Herman Cappelen’s book Fixing Language. Cappelen proposes a metasemantic framework—the “Austerity Framework”—within which to understand the general phenomenon of conceptual engineering. The proposed framework is austere in the sense that it makes no reference to concepts. Conceptual engineering is then given a “worldly” construal according to which conceptual engineering is a process that operates on the world. I argue, contra Cappelen, that an adequate theory of conceptual engineering must make reference to concepts. (...) This is because concepts are required to account for topic continuity, a phenomenon which lies at the heart of projects in conceptual engineering. I argue that Cappelen’s own account of topic continuity is inadequate as a result of the austerity of his metasemantic framework, and that his worldly construal of conceptual engineering is untenable. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in many workplaces. It is recognised that there are ethical dimensions to the ways in which organisations implement AI alongside, or substituting for, their human workforces. How will these technologically driven disruptions impact the employee–employer exchange? We provide one way to explore this question by drawing on scholarship linking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the psychological contract (PC). Using ISCT, we show that the macrosocial contract’s ethical AI norms of beneficence, non-maleficence, (...) autonomy, justice, and explicability can feed into national- and organisational-level microsocial contracts. We also outline the role of employees’ technology frames in this process. We then use an illustrative example to demonstrate how this multilevel normative background helps to inform the content of individuals’ PCs in the context of working with AI technologies. (shrink)

The increasing workplace use of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies has implications for the experience of meaningful human work. Meaningful work refers to the perception that one’s work has worth, significance, or a higher purpose. The development and organisational deployment of AI is accelerating, but the ways in which this will support or diminish opportunities for meaningful work and the ethical implications of these changes remain under-explored. This conceptual paper is positioned at the intersection of the meaningful work and ethical AI (...) literatures and offers a detailed assessment of the ways in which the deployment of AI can enhance or diminish employees’ experiences of meaningful work. We first outline the nature of meaningful work and draw on philosophical and business ethics accounts to establish its ethical importance. We then explore the impacts of three paths of AI deployment (replacing some tasks, ‘tending the machine’, and amplifying human skills) across five dimensions constituting a holistic account of meaningful work, and finally assess the ethical implications. In doing so we help to contextualise the meaningful work literature for the era of AI, extend the ethical AI literature into the workplace, and conclude with a range of practical implications and future research directions. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is to be explained by appeal to the externalist distinction between concepts and conceptions. If concepts are determined by non-conceptual relations to objective properties rather than by associated conceptions (whether individual or communal), then topic preservation through semantic change will be possible. The requisite level of objectivity is guaranteed by the possibility of collective error and does not depend on a stronger level of objectivity, such as mind-independence or independence from linguistic or social practice more generally. This means (...) that the requisite level of objectivity is exhibited not only by natural kinds, but also by a wide range of philosophical kinds, social kinds and artefactual kinds. The alternative externalist accounts of conceptual engineering offered by Herman Cappelen and Derek Ball fall back into a kind of descriptivism which is antithetical to externalism and fails to recognise this basic level of objectivity. (shrink)

Many of our most important goals require months or even years of effort to achieve, and some never get achieved at all. As social psychologists have lately emphasized, success in pursuing such goals requires the capacity for perseverance, or "grit." Philosophers have had little to say about grit, however, insofar as it differs from more familiar notions of willpower or continence. This leaves us ill-equipped to assess the social and moral implications of promoting grit. We propose that grit has an (...) important epistemic component, in that failures of perseverance are often caused by a significant loss of confidence that one will succeed if one continues to try. Correspondingly, successful exercises of grit often involve a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of failure, injury, rejection, and other setbacks that constitute genuine evidence that success is not forthcoming. Given this, we discuss whether and to what extent displays of grit can be epistemically as well as practically rational. We conclude that they can be (although many are not), and that the rationality of grit will depend partly on features of the context the agent normally finds herself in. In particular, grit-friendly norms of deliberation might be irrational to use in contexts of severe material scarcity or oppression. (shrink)

Basándome en la explicación que hace Jean-Paul Sartre de la violencia, sostengo que no solo la mala fe es inevitable en la práctica, sino que una mala fe limitada es necesaria para la autenticidad. Aunque violar la libertad de otros es mala fe, es imposible no violar nunca la libertad de alguien. Además, y de manera fundamental, la estructura ontológica del para-sí implica que este solo puede ser auténtico en el modo de no ser auténtico. Tratar de evitar por completo (...) la mala fe es, en sí mismo, un acto de mala fe, porque es un intento de constituirse como esencialmente auténtico, pero el para-sí no tiene esencia preexistente. Sin embargo, al reconocer la total responsabilidad de uno por elegir la mala fe, se limita su alcance. Esta mala fe limitada es, de hecho, necesaria para la autenticidad, un proyecto vivido en situaciones concretas y no una ley moral categórica que prohíbe la mala fe. [This is a Spanish translation by Leandro Sánchez Marín of the article "The Authentic Person's Limited Bad Faith".]. (shrink)

Words change meaning over time. Some meaning shift is accompanied by a corresponding change in subject matter; some meaning shift is not. In this paper I argue that an account of linguistic meaning can accommodate the first kind of case, but that a theory of concepts is required to accommodate the second. Where there is stability of subject matter through linguistic change, it is concepts that provide the stability. The stability provided by concepts allows for genuine disagreement and ameliorative change (...) in the context of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

This is a defence of the claim that names are predicates with a demonstrative element in their singular use.

In this paper, I argue that an adequate meta-semantic framework capable of accommodating the range of projects currently identified as projects in conceptual engineering must be sensitive to the fact that concepts (and hence projects relating to them) fall into distinct kinds. Concepts can vary, I will argue, with respect to their direction of determination, their modal range, and their temporal range. Acknowledging such variations yields a preliminary taxonomy of concepts and generates a meta-semantic framework that allows us both to (...) accommodate the full range of cases and to identify a proper subset of concepts for special ameliorative consideration. Ignoring such variations, in contrast, leads to a restricted meta-semantic framework that accommodates only a subset of the particular projects while generating implausible accounts of others. (shrink)

The basic kinds of physical causality that are foundational for other kinds of causality involve objects and the causal relations between them. These interactions do not involve events. If events were ontologically significant entities for causality in general, then they would play a role in simple mechanical interactions. But arguments about simple collisions looked at from different frames of reference show that events cannot play a role in simple mechanical interactions, and neither can the entirely hypothetical causal relations between events. (...) These arguments show that physics, which should be authoritative when it comes to the metaphysics of causality, gives no reasons to believe that events are causal agents. Force relations and some cases of energy-momentum transfer are examples of causal relations, with forces being paradigmatic in the macroscopic world, though it is conceivable that there are other kinds of causal relation. A relation between two objects is a causal relation if and only if when it is instantiated by the two objects there is a possibility that the objects that are the terms of the relation could change. The basic metaphysics of causality is about objects, causal relations, changes in objects, and a causal primitive. The paper also includes a discussion of the metaphysics of forces and a discussion of the metaphysics of energy and momentum exchanges. (shrink)

Scientific information plays an important role in shaping policies and recommendations for behaviors that are meant to improve the overall health and well-being of the public. However, a subset of the population does not trust information from scientific authorities, and even for those that do trust it, information alone is often not enough to motivate action. Feelings of shame can be motivational, and thus some recent public policies have attempted to leverage shame to motivate the public to act in accordance (...) with science-based recommendations. We argue that because these shame policies are employed in non-communal contexts, they are both practically ineffective and morally problematic: shame is unlikely to be effective at motivating the public to behave in accordance with science-based policy, and shaming citizens is an unethical way to get them to comply. We argue that shame-based policies are likely to contribute to further distrust in scientific authority. (shrink)

Suppose some person 'A' sets out to accomplish a difficult, long-term goal such as writing a passable Ph.D. thesis. What should you believe about whether A will succeed? The default answer is that you should believe whatever the total accessible evidence concerning A's abilities, circumstances, capacity for self-discipline, and so forth supports. But could it be that what you should believe depends in part on the relationship you have with A? We argue that it does, in the case where A (...) is yourself. The capacity for "grit" involves a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of evidence suggesting that one might fail, and this makes it rational to respond to the relevant evidence differently when you are the agent in question. We then explore whether similar arguments extend to the case of "believing in" our significant others -- our friends, lovers, family members, colleagues, patients, and students. (shrink)

In a series of recent articles, Robin Jeshion has developed a theory of singular thought which she calls ‘cognitivism’. According to Jeshion, cognitivism offers a middle path between acquaintance theories—which she takes to impose too strong a requirement on singular thought, and semantic instrumentalism—which she takes to impose too weak a requirement. In this article, I raise a series of concerns about Jeshion's theory, and suggest that the relevant data can be accommodated by a version of acquaintance theory that distinguishes (...) unsuccessful thoughts of singular form from successful singular thoughts, and in addition allows for ‘trace-based’ acquaintance. (shrink)

It can be hard to see where money fits in the world. Money seems both real and imaginary, since it has obvious causal powers, but is also, just as obviously, something humans have just made up. Recent philosophical accounts of money have declared it to be real, but for very different reasons. John Searle and Francesco Guala disagree over whether money is just whatever acts like money, or just whatever people believe to be money. In developing their accounts of institutions (...) as a part of social reality, each uses money as a paradigm institution, but they disagree on how institutions exist. Searle argues that the institution of money belongs to an ontological level separate from the physical world, held up by the collective intentions of a group, while Guala claims that money is a part of the ordinary physical world and is just whatever performs a “money-like function” in a group, regardless of what that group believes about it. Here, we argue that any purely functional account like Guala’s will be unable to capture the distinctive phenomenon of money, since monetary transactions are defined by the attitudes transactors hold toward them. Money will be obscured or misidentified if defined functionally. As we go on to show by examining recent work by Smit et al., belief in money does not require taking on all of Searle’s ontological commitments, but money and mental contents will stand or fall together. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that content externalism and privileged access are compatible, but that one can, in a sense, have privileged access to the world. The supposedly absurd conclusion should be embraced.

In this article, we describe the notion of dialogue move intended as the minimal unit for the analysis of dialogues. We propose an approach to discourse analysis based on the pragmatic idea that the joint dialogical intentions are also co-constructed through the individual moves and the higher-order communicative intentions that the interlocutors pursue. In this view, our goal is to bring to light the pragmatic structure of a dialogue as a complex net of dialogical goals, which represent the communicative purposes (...) that the interlocutors intend to achieve through their utterances. Dialogue moves are shown to represent the necessary interpretive link between the general description of the dialogical context or type and the syntactical analysis of the sentences expressed by the individual utterances. In the concluding part of this article, we show how this method can be used and further developed for analyzing various types of real-life dialogues, outlining possible uses and lines of empirical research based thereon. (shrink)

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Although this thought experiment was originally introduced to illuminate questions in the theory of reference, it has also played a crucial role in empirically informed debates within the philosophy of psychology about people’s ordinary natural kind concepts. Those debates have sought to accommodate (...) an apparent fact about ordinary people’s judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results from four experiments showing that people do not, in fact, have this intuition. Instead, people tend to have the intuition that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. We explore the implications of this finding for debates about theories of natural kind concepts, arguing that it supports views positing two distinct criteria for membership in natural kind categories – one based on deeper causal properties, the other based on superficial, observable properties. (shrink)

Traditionally, discussions of moral participation – and in particular moral agency – have focused on fully formed human actors. There has been some interest in the development of morality in humans, as well as interest in cultural differences when it comes to moral practices, commitments, and actions. However, until relatively recently, there has been little focus on the possibility that nonhuman animals have any role to play in morality, save being the objects of moral concern. Moreover, when nonhuman cases are (...) considered as evidence of moral agency or subjecthood, there has been an anthropocentric tendency to focus on those behaviors that inform our attributions of moral agency to humans. For example, some argue that the ability to evaluate the principles upon which a moral norm is grounded is required for full moral agency. Certainly, if a moral agent must understand what makes an action right or wrong, then most nonhuman animals would not qualify (and perhaps some humans too). However, if we are to understand the evolution of moral psychology and moral practice, we need to turn our attention to the foundations of full moral agency. We must first pay attention to the more broadly normative practices of other animals. Here, we begin that project by considering evidence that great apes and cetaceans participate in normative practices. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw on a recent account of perceptual knowledge according to which knowledge is contrastive. I extend the contrastive account of perceptual knowledge to yield a contrastive account of self-knowledge. Along the way, I develop a contrastive account of the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, regrets and so on) and suggest that a contrastive account of the propositional attitudes implies an anti-individualist account of propositional attitude concepts (the concepts of belief, desire, regret, and so on).

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

I reconsider the concept of dignity in several ways in this article. My primary aim is to move dignity in a more relational direction, drawing on care ethics to do so. After analyzing the power and perils of dignity and tracing its rhetorical, academic, and historical influence, I discuss three interventions that care ethics can make into the dignity discourse. The first intervention involves an understanding of the ways in which care can be dignifying. The second intervention examines whether the (...) capacity to care should be considered a distinguishing moral power – as rationality often is – in light of which humans have dignity. In the third intervention, I cast dignity as a fundamentally relational concept and argue that relationality is constitutive not only of dignity but also of the wider enterprise of normativity. I understand relationality as the condition of connection in which all human beings stand with some other human beings. A thought experiment involving the last person on earth helps to reframe the normative significance of human relatedness. Dignity emerges as fundamentally grounded in relationality. (shrink)

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to make decisions in human resource management (HRM) raises questions of how fair employees perceive these decisions to be and whether they experience respectful treatment (i.e., interactional justice). In this experimental survey study with open-ended qualitative questions, we examine decision making in six HRM functions and manipulate the decision maker (AI or human) and decision valence (positive or negative) to determine their impact on individuals’ experiences of interactional justice, trust, dehumanization, and perceptions of decision-maker role appropriate- (...) ness. In terms of decision makers, the use of human decision makers over AIs generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In terms of decision valence, people experiencing positive over negative decisions generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In instances where these cases conflict, on some indicators people preferred positive AI decisions over negative human decisions. Qualitative responses show how people identify justice concerns with both AI and human decision making. We outline implications for theory, practice, and future research. (shrink)

The psychological contract refers to the implicit and subjective beliefs regarding a reciprocal exchange agreement, predominantly examined between employees and employers. While contemporary contract research is investigating a wider range of exchanges employees may hold, such as with team members and clients, it remains silent on a rapidly emerging form of workplace relationship: employees’ increasing engagement with technically, socially, and emotionally sophisticated forms of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies. In this paper we examine social robots (also termed humanoid robots) as likely (...) future psychological contract partners for human employees, given these entities transform notions of workplace technology from being a tool to being an active partner. We first overview the increasing role of robots in the workplace, particularly through the advent of sociable AI, and synthesize the literature on human–robot interaction. We then develop an account of a human-social robot psychological contract and zoom in on the implications of this exchange for the enactment of reciprocity. Given the future focused nature of our work we utilize a thought experiment, a commonly used form of conceptual and mental model reasoning, to expand on our theorizing. We then outline potential implications of human-social robot psychological contracts and offer a range of pathways for future research. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in many workplaces. It is recognised that there are ethical dimensions to the ways in which organisations implement AI alongside, or substituting for, their human workforces. How will these technologically driven disruptions impact the employee–employer exchange? We provide one way to explore this question by drawing on scholarship linking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the psychological contract (PC). Using ISCT, we show that the macrosocial contract’s ethical AI norms of beneficence, non-maleficence, (...) autonomy, justice, and explicability can feed into national- and organisational-level microsocial contracts. We also outline the role of employees’ technology frames in this process. We then use an illustrative example to demonstrate how this multilevel normative background helps to inform the content of individuals’ PCs in the context of working with AI technologies. (shrink)

In learning chemistry at the entry level, many learners labor under misconceptions about the subject matter that are so fundamental that they are typically never addressed. A fundamental misconception in chemistry appears to arise from an adding of existing phenomenal concepts to newly-acquired chemical concepts, so that beginning learners think of chemical entities as themselves having the very same ‘macro’ properties that we observe through the senses. Those who teach or practice chemistry never acquire these misconceptions because they were able (...) to naturally pick up the nature of the subject to begin with. But as a result, they remain unaware of the foundational assumptions and understanding that they operate with and that many beginning learners persistently lack. Thus, a systematic picture of the workings of chemical theory as they relate to observable phenomena needs to be elucidated so that the attention of chemical educators is drawn to the fundamental understanding of the subject that they already possess and that beginning learners of chemistry lack, so that beginning learners can be given the opportunity to gain an understanding of how chemical explanations are in general related to observable phenomena. The ‘layered’ way in which chemical and physical entities are related to each other within chemical theory can also be clarified in this way. To afford this picture, the philosophical concepts of supervenience and emergence are explained and applied to chemistry, as philosophers of chemistry have already done. The result provides a model for teaching chemistry that, if consistently applied, has the potential to greatly enhance fundamental understanding of the subject matter. (shrink)

Åsa Maria Wikforss has proposed a response to Burge's thought-experiments in favour of social externalism, one which allows the individualist to maintain that narrow content is truth-conditional without being idiosyncratic. The narrow aim of this paper is to show that Wikforss' argument against social externalism fails, and hence that the individualist position she endorses is inadequate. The more general aim is to attain clarity on the social externalist thesis. Social externalism need not rest, as is typically thought, on the possibility (...) of incomplete linguistic understanding or conceptual error. I identify the unifying principle that underlies the various externalist thought-experiments. (shrink)

This paper explores the position that moral enhancement interventions could be medically indicated in cases where they provide a remedy for a lack of empathy, when such a deficit is considered pathological. In order to argue this claim, the question as to whether a deficit of empathy could be considered to be pathological is examined, taking into account the difficulty of defining illness and disorder generally, and especially in the case of mental health. Following this, Psychopathy and a fictionalised mental (...) disorder are explored with a view to consider moral enhancement techniques as possible treatments for both conditions. At this juncture, having asserted and defended the position that moral enhancement interventions could, under certain circumstances, be considered medically indicated, this paper then goes on to briefly explore some of the consequences of this assertion. First, it is acknowledged that this broadening of diagnostic criteria in light of new interventions could fall foul of claims of medicalisation. It is then briefly noted that considering moral enhancement technologies to be akin to therapies in certain circumstances could lead to ethical and legal consequences and questions, such as those regarding regulation, access, and even consent. (shrink)

Juhani Yli-Vakkuri has argued that the Twin Earth thought experiments offered in favour of semantic externalism can be replaced by a straightforward deductive argument from premisses widely accepted by both internalists and externalists alike. The deductive argument depends, however, on premisses that, on standard formulations of internalism, cannot be satisfied by a single belief simultaneously. It does not therefore, constitute a proof of externalism. The aim of this article is to explain why.

Forgiveness presupposes that there is someone responsible to forgive for some wrongdoing. An innocent person who hasn’t committed any wrong or who is not responsible for his actions is not blameworthy. Our anger would be misplaced if there is nobody or nothing to be angry at in the first place. The aim of the paper is to answer whether Taylor Swift’s song “Innocent”, which was a response to the infamous incident of Kanye West interrupting Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 (...) MTV Video Music Awards, could be seen as an instance of forgiveness – even though innocence normally precludes the possibility of forgiveness. (shrink)

Nudges are small changes in the presentation of options that make a predictable impact on people's decisions. Proponents of nudges often claim that they are justified as paternalistic interventions that respect autonomy: they lead people to make better choices, while still letting them choose for themselves. However, existing work on nudges ignores the possibility of “hard choices”: cases where a person prefers one option in some respects, and another in other respects, but has no all‐things‐considered preference between the two. In (...) this paper, I argue that many significant medical decisions are hard choices that provide patients with an opportunity to exercise a distinctive sort of “formative autonomy” by settling their preferences and committing themselves to weigh their values in a particular way. Since nudges risk infringing formative autonomy by depriving patients of this opportunity, their use in medical contexts should be sensitive to this risk. (shrink)

Seneca asserts in Letter 121 that we mature by exercising self-care as we pass through successive psychosomatic “constitutions.” These are babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus). The self-care described by Seneca is 'self-affiliation' (oikeiōsis, conciliatio) the linchpin of the Stoic ethical system, which defines living well as living in harmony with nature, posits that altruism develops from self-interest, and allows that pleasure and pain are indicators of well-being while denying that happiness consists in pleasure and that (...) pain is misery. Augustine divides the narrative of his own development into the stages of babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus) in the Confessions, a text wherein he claims familiarity with more than a few works of Seneca (Conf. 5.6.11). Furthermore, he had access to Stoic accounts of affiliation not only in Seneca’s Letter 121, but also in Cicero’s On Goals, and in non-extant sources of Stoic ethical theory. After pointing out that Augustine endorsed the notion of self-affiliation outside of the Confessions, I raise the question of whether he also makes the notion of affiliation thematic in his philosophical autobiography. I argue that he does indeed present himself and some of his primary relationships – with his mother and his long-term girlfriend – in terms of personal and social oikeiōsis. In addition, his self-critiques in the early books of the Confessions can be more fully understood if compared to Stoic developmental theory. He depicts himself as failing to progress intellectually, socially, and morally: although he passed through the successive constitutions, becoming physically larger and cognitively capable, he did not mature correctly by the standards of his Stoic sources. (shrink)

Although they are often grouped together in comparison with non-dualist theories, Plato's soul-body dualism, and Descartes' mind-body dualism, are fundamentally different. The doctrines examined are those of the Phaedo and the Meditations. The main difference, from which others flow, lies in Plato's acceptance and Descartes' rejection of the assumption that the soul (= intellect) is identical with what animates the body.

Writing and genre scholarship has become increasingly attuned to how various nontextual features of written genres contribute to the kinds of social actions that the genres perform and to the activities that they mediate. Even though scholars have proposed different ways to account for nontextual features of genres, such attempts often remain undertheorized. By bringing together Writing, Activity, and Genre Research, and Multimodal Interaction Analysis, the authors propose a conceptual framework for multimodal activity-based analysis of genres, or Multimodal Writing, Activity, (...) and Genre (MWAG) analysis. Furthermore, by drawing on previous studies of the laboratory notebook (lab book) genre, the article discusses the rhetorical action the genre performs and its role in mediating knowledge construction activities in science. The authors provide an illustrative example of the MWAG analysis of an emergent scientist’s lab book and discuss its contributions to his increasing participation in medical physics. The study contributes to the development of a theoretically informed analytical framework for integrative multimodal and rhetorical genre analysis, while illustrating how the proposed framework can lead to the insights into the sociorhetorical roles multimodal genres play in mediating such activities as knowledge construction and disciplinary enculturation. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to move toward a relational moral theory of harm through examination of a common yet underexplored form of child maltreatment: childhood psychological abuse. I draw on relational theory to consider agential, intrapersonal, and interpersonal ways in which relational harms develop and evolve both in intimate relationships and in conditions of oppression. I set forth three distinctive yet interconnected forms of relational harm that childhood psychological abuse causes: harm to the relational agency of individuals, harm (...) to the relationships individuals hold with themselves, especially with regard to how they respect, know, and trust themselves, and harm to interpersonal relationships of both a direct and indirect nature in present and future timeframes. I close by noting that while relationships can be the site of human brutality that destroys the relational self, paradoxically and promisingly, they also can be a primary means of the relational reconstitution of the self. Ultimately, relational analyses of the harms of childhood psychological abuse reveal several key elements of a relational theory of harm and demonstrate the significance of relational harms for moral philosophy. (shrink)

Les définitions du spécisme en philosophie insistent sur une dimension individuelle du spécisme. Or, nous dit Sarah Zanaz, le spécisme est un système culturel, institutionnel et économique, qui transcende la seule responsabilité individuelle.

Augustine on select metaphysical topics: hylomorphism vs. dualism, theories of God, angels.

Abstract In this paper I criticise a recent account of fictional discourse proposed by Nathan Salmon. Salmon invokes abstract artifacts as the referents of fictional names in both object- and meta-fictional discourse alike. He then invokes a theory of pretence to forge the requisite connection between object-fictional sentences and meta-fictional sentences, in virtue of which the latter can be assigned appropriate truth-values. I argue that Salmon's account of pretence renders his appeal to abstract artifacts as the referents of fictional names (...) in object-fictional discourse explanatorily redundant. I further argue that his account is therefore no improvement over those he criticises, thus leaving his own account unmotivated. (shrink)

Concerns that people would be disinclined to voluntarily undergo moral enhancement have led to suggestions that an incentivised programme should be introduced to encourage participation. This paper argues that, while such measures do not necessarily result in coercion or undue inducement (issues with which one may typically associate the use of incentives in general), the use of incentives for this purpose may present a taboo tradeoff. This is due to empirical research suggesting that those characteristics likely to be affected by (...) moral enhancement are often perceived as fundamental to the self; therefore, any attempt to put a price on such traits would likely be deemed morally unacceptable by those who hold this view. A better approach to address the possible lack of participation may be to instead invest in alternative marketing strategies and remove incentives altogether. (shrink)

A long tradition of psychological research has explored the distinction between characteristics that are part of the self and those that lie outside of it. Recently, a surge of research has begun examining a further distinction. Even among characteristics that are internal to the self, people pick out a subset as belonging to the true self. These factors are judged as making people who they really are, deep down. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the true self and (...) identify features that distinguish people’s understanding of the true self from their understanding of the self more generally. In particular, we consider recent findings that the true self is perceived as positive and moral, and that this tendency is actor-observer invariant and cross-culturally stable. We then explore possible explanations for these findings and discuss their implications for a variety of issues in psychology. (shrink)

Advances in immunotherapy pave the way for vaccines that target not only infections, but also unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. A nicotine vaccine that eliminates the pleasure associated with smoking could potentially be used to prevent children from adopting this addictive and dangerous behavior. This paper offers an ethical analysis of such vaccines. We argue that it would be permissible for parents to give their child a nicotine vaccine if the following conditions are met: (1) the vaccine is expected to (...) result in a net benefit to each individual vaccinated, (2) the expected harms from the side effects of the vaccine are lower than the non-voluntary harms of smoking, and (3) there are no less manipulative methods available that are as effective at preventing smoking initiation. Finally, we show how the framework developed here could be used to analyze the ethics of other chemical interventions designed to modify children’s behavior. (shrink)

Is there a sense in which we exercise direct volitional control over our beliefs? Most agree that there is not, but discussions tend to focus on control in forming a belief. The focus here is on sustaining a belief over time in the face of ‘epistemic temptation’ to abandon it. It is argued that we do have a capacity for ‘doxastic self-control’ over time that is partly volitional in nature, and that its exercise is rationally permissible.

In this paper, I argue that an externalist theory of thought content provides the means to resolve two debates in moral philosophy. The first—that between judgement internalism and judgement externalism—concerns the question of whether there is a conceptual connection between moral judgement and motivation. The second—that between reasons internalism and reasons externalism—concerns the relationship between moral reasons and an agent's subjective motivational set. The resolutions essentially stem from the externalist claim that concepts can be grasped partially, and a new moral (...) theory, which I call ‘moral externalism’, emerges. (shrink)

This article brings Gillian Brock and Alex Sager's recently published books into conversation with my book, Immigration and Democracy. It begins with a summary of the main normative arguments of my book to set the stage for critical engagement with Brock and Sager's books. While I agree with Brock's Justice for People on the Move that state power must be justified to both insiders and outsiders, I think she gives too little weight to the value of collective self-determination. I distinguish (...) between justice and collective self-determination and argue that each is an important component of legitimacy. Sager's Against Borders focuses on immigration enforcement and contends that violence is inherent in border controls. Every legal system is backed by the threat of the use of force; the question is whether the use of force by state agents is justified. In contrast to Sager, I argue that the proper response to the injustices of current immigration enforcement is reform, not abolition, of the immigration system. (shrink)

The increasing use of Generative AI raises many ethical, philosophical, and legal issues. A key issue here is uncertainties about how different degrees of Generative AI assistance in the production of text impacts assessments of the human authorship of that text. To explore this issue, we developed an experimental mixed methods survey study (N = 602) asking participants to reflect on a scenario of a human author receiving assistance to write a short novel as part of a 3 (high, medium, (...) or low degrees of assistance) X 2 (human or AI assistant) factorial design. We found that, for a human author, the degree of assistance they receive matters for our assessments of their level of authorship, creatorship, and responsibility, but not what or who rendered that assistance, although it was more important to disclose human rather than AI assistance. However, in our assessments of the assisting agent, human assistants were viewed as warranting higher rates of authorship, creatorship, and responsibility, compared to AI assistants rendering the same level of support. These results help us to better understand emerging norms around collaborative human-AI generated text, with implications for other types of collaborative content creation. (shrink)

The Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles , according to which two objects are identical if they share all the same properties, has come in for much criticism. Michael Della Rocca has recently defended PII on the grounds that it is needed to forestall the possibility that where there appears to be only one object present, there is actually a multiplicity of exactly-overlapping such objects. Katherine Hawley has criticized this approach for violating a plausible “ground rule” in applying rules of (...) indiscernibility to questions of identity: where there is putative duplication, it must be qualitatively significant. Hawley further suggests that with this rule in hand, one can tell the difference between the presence of one and two indiscernible objects without recourse to either PII or brute, nonqualitative individuation. In this paper, I critically examine Hawley’s contention and find that her appeal to “qualitatively significant duplication” fails since its application to distinct indiscernibles involves a difference that is primarily quantitative anyway. The upshot is a different proposed set of “ground rules” for applying the criterion of qualitative difference when seeking a grounding or explanation for distinctness and identity. (shrink)

This essay examines Susan Moller Okin’s writing on conflicts between religious freedom and sex equality, and her criticism of ‘political liberal’ approaches to these conflicts, which I take to be a part of her lifelong critique of the public–private distinction. I argue that, while Okin ultimately accepted a version of the distinction, she was much less hopeful than most liberal theorists that private actions could be made just without a great deal of public coercion. This comes through especially in her (...) writing on religion. I suggest an approach to addressing these conflicts that seeks to respect religious liberty more than Okin’s prescriptions suggest she did but which, in my view, is more consistent with Okin’s own liberal commitments. (shrink)

While there is increasing moral consideration for terrestrial vertebrate non-human animals (mammals and birds), little to no consideration is granted to aquatic animals (fish, cephalopods, and crustaceans). These animals are even often overlooked by the animal rights movement, despite constituting the majority of victims in animal production and consumption, with estimates ranging from 94 to 98%. Every year, between 1 and 3 trillion aquatic animals are killed worldwide. This article aims to highlight, based on recent neuroscientific and ethological advances, that (...) aquatic animals are capable of feeling pain and are sentient, thus capable of experiencing conscious negative mental states. This relatively recent knowledge allows us to examine critically the ethical implications of practices such as fishing and fish farming, as well as the cultural representations that underpin them. (shrink)

Invited review of the anthology of new papers _Philosophy of Chemistry: Growth of a New Discipline_.