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)

The boundaries of democracy are typically defined by the boundaries of formal status citizenship. Such state-centered theories of democracy leave many migrants without a voice in political decision-making in the areas where they live and work, giving rise to a problem of democratic legitimacy. Drawing on two democratic principles of inclusion, the all affected interests and coercion principles, this article elaborates this problem and examines two responses offered by scholars of citizenship for what receiving states might do. The first approach (...) involves expanding the circle of citizenship to include resident noncitizens. A second approach involves disaggregating the rights conventionally associated with citizenship from the legal status of citizenship and extending some of those rights, including voting rights, to resident noncitizens. This article argues that both approaches fall short of satisfying the democratic principles of inclusion, which call for enfranchising individuals not only beyond the boundaries of citizenship but also beyond territorial boundaries. (shrink)

Do metaphorical sentences express facts or represent states of affairs in the world? Can a metaphorical statement tell us ‘what there is’? These questions raise the issue of whether metaphors can be used to make truth-claims; that is, whether metaphors can be regarded as assertions that can be evaluated as true or false. Some theorists on metaphor have argued for a negative answer to the above-mentioned questions. They have claimed, among others, that metaphorical utterances are non-descriptive uses of language (Blackburn (...) 1998); truth is not the constitutive aim of metaphors (Lamarque and Olsen 1994); metaphorical sentences do not have propositional contents (Davidson 1979; Cooper 1986; Rorty 1987, 1989; Lepore and Stone 2010, 2015); metaphorical utterances are neither assertions nor expressions of beliefs (Loewenberg 1973, 1975; Davies 1982; Davies 1984; Blackburn, 1984). I discuss a particular view, Metaphorical Expressivism, which exploits the relationship between truth, belief and assertion, and argues for the irrelevancy of truth to metaphors on the premise that metaphorical utterances do not count as assertions and that they do not count as the expression of beliefs. The denial of the truth-evaluability of metaphors on this view, I argue, is a product of an unmotivated tendency to see truth and meaning in terms of the portrayal of facts and a commitment to two untenable principles: literalism and representationalism. (shrink)

Aristotle and the classical rhetoricians conceived of metaphor as a figure of speech in which one thing is given a name or an attribute of another thing on the basis of some resemblance that exists between the two things. Wallace Stevens conceived of metaphor not as the production of pre-existing resemblances observed in nature but the “creation of resemblance by the imagination” (NA: 72). Resemblance, and not identity, according to Stevens, is the fundamental relation between the two terms of metaphor. (...) This is akin to contemporary accounts of metaphor in terms of the phenomenological or experiential seeing of one thing as another thing (Yoos 1971; Davidson 1979; Camp 2006a,b; Semino 2008; Ritchie 2013). Seeing one thing as another thing on the basis of resemblance or similarity implies that the one thing is not the other. I do two main things in this paper: one, I appraise the theoretical value of Wallace Stevens’ conception of metaphor as the creation of resemblance by the imagination; and two, I pose a challenge to the view that takes resemblance as fundamental to metaphor, arguing that in the cases I present, thinking of the relation as identity and not resemblance, concurs with our ontological commitments to the things compared in the metaphor. In the final analysis, I suggest that Stevens conception of metaphor as metamorphosis can meet the challenge: rather than thinking of the ‘is’ (identity) of metaphor as an ‘as’ (resemblance), for Stevens, the ‘as’ (resemblance) of metaphor metamorphosize into an ‘is’ (identity). (shrink)

This paper argues for the view that metaphors are assertions by locating metaphor within our social discursive practices of asserting and inferring. The literal and the metaphorical differ not in the stating of facts nor in the representation of states of affairs but in the kind of inferential involvements they have and the normative score-keeping practices within which the inferential connections are articulated. This inferentialist based account of metaphor is supplemented by insights from accommodation theory. The account is significant for (...) our understanding of both metaphor‟s figurativeness and cognitive content. (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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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).

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

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)

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)

It is our great pleasure to announce that the recipient of the 2020 Everett Mendelsohn Prize is Daniel Liu, whose essay, “The Cell and Protoplasm as Container, Object, and Substance, 1835–1861,” appeared in the Journal of the History of Biology, Volume 50, 4 (2017), pp. 889–925.

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)

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)

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)

According to Kwame Nkrumah, the conscience of the African society is plagued with three strands of influences which have competing and conflicting ideologies: “African society has one segment which comprises our traditional way of life; it has a second segment which is filled by the presence of the Islamic tradition in Africa; it has a final segment which represents the infiltration of the Christian tradition and culture of Western Europe into Africa, using colonialism and neocolonialism as its primary vehicles.” When (...) these three segments with their conflicting ideologies are allowed to co-exist, the African society “will be racked by the most malignant schizophrenia.” Nkrumah’s solution, philosophical consciencism, presents an ideology aimed at achieving a harmony among the three segments in such a way that is “in tune with the original humanist principles underlying African society.” I do two main things in this paper: first, I present an analysis and critique of Nkrumah’s understanding of how the harmony is to be achieved in African societies; and second, I show how the theoretical ideas of philosophical consciencism – materialism, dialectical change, categorial conversion, socialism – are given actual form and content on the social-political scene through an analysis of Nkrumah's set theoretic terms. (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 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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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.

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)

Since it was presented in 1963, Chisholm’s paradox has attracted constant attention in the deontic logic literature, but without the emergence of any definitive solution. We claim this is due to its having no single solution. The paradox actually presents many challenges to the formalization of deontic statements, including (1) context sensitivity of unconditional oughts, (2) formalizing conditional oughts, and (3) distinguishing generic from nongeneric oughts. Using the practical interpretation of ‘ought’ as a guideline, we propose a linguistically motivated logical (...) solution to each of these problems, and explain the relation of the solution to the problem of contrary-to-duty obligations. (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)

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.

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)

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)

In this paper I argue first, that a contrastive account of self-knowledge and the propositional attitudes entails an anti-individualist account of propositional attitude concepts, second, that the final account provides a solution to the McKinsey paradox, and third, that the account has the resources to explain why certain anti-skeptical arguments fail.

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

A Better Ape covers the evolution of morality from the birth of our ape family through the evolution of human species and all the way up to the development of modern societies. In this summary, we highlight several main elements of this account: the co-evolution of morality with intelligence and complex sociality; the role of social institutions and religious morality in the cultural evolution of behaviorally modern humans in prehistory; the increasing complexity of the moral mind through biological evolution in (...) apes, gene-culture co-evolution in various human species, cultural evolution in Homo sapiens, and rational-cultural evolution in recent centuries; and, finally, a cultural evolutionary model of progressive and regressive moral change on which a key factor driving moral progress is social and democratic integration. (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)

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)

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)

Advances in AI are powering increasingly precise and widespread computational propaganda, posing serious threats to national security. The military and intelligence communities are starting to discuss ways to engage in this space, but the path forward is still unclear. These developments raise pressing ethical questions, about which existing ethics frameworks are silent. Understanding these challenges through the lens of “cognitive security,” we argue, offers a promising approach.

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)

Translation (French to English) of Jean-Luc Nancy's "L'Annoncée.".

This article argues, contra-Derrida, that Foucault does not essentialize or pre-comprehend the meaning of life or bio- in his writings on biopolitics. Instead, Foucault problematizes life and provokes genealogical questions about the meaning of modernity more broadly. In The Order of Things, the 1974-75 lecture course at the Collège de France, and Herculine Barbin, the monster is an important figure of the uncertain shape of modernity and its entangled problems. Engaging Foucault’s monsters, I show that the problematization of life is (...) far from a “desire for a threshold,” à la Derrida. It is a spur to interrogating and critiquing thresholds, a fraught question mark where we have “something to do.” As Foucault puts it in “The Lives of Infamous Men,” it an ambiguous frontier where beings lived and died and they appear to us “because of an encounter with power which, in striking down a life and turning it to ashes, makes it emerge, like a flash [...].”. (shrink)

There are many ways to understand the meanings of the #MeToo movement. Analyses of its significance have proliferated in popular media; some academic analyses have also recently appeared. Commentary on the philosophical and epistemic significance of the #MeToo movement has been less plentiful. The specific moment of the #MeToo movement in which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony garnered a widespread social media response from sexual violence survivors highlighted the power of a particular form of epistemic response, what I call ‘epistemic (...) refusal.’ In breaking our silence, those of us who are sexual violence survivors have used this strategy to refuse the dominant epistemic structures that have kept us tightly in check. Mass informal disclosure of survivor status represented in conjunction with hashtags such as #MeToo, #WhyIDidntReport, and #BelieveHer creates space for epistemic, ethical, and political community between survivors of sexual violence by denying hegemonic epistemic discourses of contemporary rape culture. Regarding Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony and the social media response it garnered, analysis of three main elements proves particularly illuminating: the nature of mass informal disclosure of sexual violence, what the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport reveals about refusing silence, and what the hashtags #BelieveHer and #BelieveSurvivors can show us about what it takes to begin to overcome epistemic gaslighting. (shrink)

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 essay examines the analysis of language in The Concept of Anxiety and argues that language ultimately reveals itself as both dangerous and salvific. The pseudonymous author, Vigilius Haufniensis, is suspicious of language, for it divides the individual from herself and thereby makes possible the self-forgetfulness of objective chatter. Indeed, this warning (which commenters have tended to follow uncritically) is a legitimate one – yet it fails to grasp that by rendering the self other than itself, language constitutes the self. (...) In other words, the individual’s very existence depends on language. Moreover, the attempt to establish oneself as absolutely self-identical is precisely sin. Language opens us to alterity, and for this reason the demonic cannot endure it and seeks to control it. Language is uncontrollable, however, to the point that no sign permits us to be certain that we have rightly distinguished good from evil, the salvific from the demonic – and salvation can come only if we renounce the attempt to establish distinctions that are beyond our power. By employing a pseudonymous figure who views language with suspicion, Kierkegaard shows that language is dangerous, even deadly, but also allows us to realize that language is the condition of possibility for salvation. (shrink)

Democracy is rule by the demos, but by what criteria is the demos constituted? Theorists of democracy have tended to assume that the demos is properly defined by national boundaries or by the territorial boundaries of the modern state. In a recent turn, many democratic theorists have advanced the principles of affected interests and coercion as the basis for defining the boundaries of democracy. According to these principles, it is not co-nationals or fellow citizens but all affected or all subjected (...) to coercion who constitute the demos. In this paper, I argue that these recent approaches to the boundary problem are insufficiently attentive to the conditions of democracy. Democracy is not merely a set of procedures; it also consists of substantive values and principles. Political equality is a constitutive condition of democracy, and solidarity is an instrumental condition of democracy. The affected interests and coercion principles create serious problems for the realization of these conditions – problems of size and stability. Building on this critique, this paper presents democratic considerations for why the demos should be bounded by the territorial boundaries of the state, grounded in the state’s role in (1) securing the constitutive conditions of democracy, (2) serving as the primary site of solidarity conducive to democratic participation, and (3) establishing clear links between representatives and their constituents. I examine and reject a third alternative, a global demos bounded by a world state, and conclude by considering some practical implications of my argument. (shrink)