The United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, USA, conducted a species status assessment for a petition to list the Alexander Archipelago wolf (Canis lupus ligoni) under the Endangered Species Act in 2020-2022. This federal undertaking could not be adequately prepared without including the knowledge of Indigenous People who have a deep cultural connection with the subspecies. Our objective is to communicate the authoritative expertise and voice of the Indigenous People who partnered on the project by demonstrating how their (...) knowledge contributed to the species status assessment. The Indigenous knowledge applied in the assessment is the cultural and intellectual property of those who have shared it. We employed rapid appraisal research to expeditiously develop a preliminary and qualitative understanding of Indigenous People's cultural and ecological knowledge of Alexander Archipelago wolves. We used semi-directed interviewing and inductive coding from grounded theory for text analysis. Indigenous knowledge contributed to the agency's understanding of the Alexander Archipelago wolf in Southeast Alaska and helped the agency with their classification decision. Indigenous research partners explained the rich cultural significance and position of wolves in Tlingit society and described human–wolf relationships and ecological interactions. The agency used a single-species assessment approach based in species ecology and conservation biology, whereas the Indigenous wolf experts applied a multi-species, community ecology approach based in a sociocultural context of balance and respect. The Indigenous wolf experts successfully addressed knowledge gaps identified by the agency. The partners were challenged by a short regulatory timeframe that did not allow for comprehensive study of Indigenous knowledge and constrained review and feedback by Indigenous experts. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service learned that its assessment framework was not designed to account for an Indigenous worldview. To level the playing field, the agency and Indigenous experts should discuss how to co-develop an assessment framework that equitably applies both perspectives. (shrink)

Pressuring someone into having sex would seem to differ in significant ways from pressuring someone into investing in one’s business or buying an expensive bauble. In affirming this claim, I take issue with a recent essay by Sarah Conly (‘Seduction, Rape, and Coercion’, Ethics, October 2004), who thinks that pressuring into sex can be helpfully evaluated by analogy to these other instances of using pressure. Drawing upon work by Alan Wertheimer, the leading theorist of coercion, she argues that so (...) long as pressuring does not amount to coercing someone into having sex, her consent to sex answers the important ethical questions about it. In this essay, I argue that to understand the real significance of pressuring into sex, we need to appeal to background considerations, especially the male-dominant gender hierarchy, which renders sexual pressuring different from its non-sexual analogues. Treating pressure to have sex like any other sort of interpersonal pressure obscures the role such sexual pressure might play in supporting gender hierarchy, and fails to explain why pressure by men against women is more problematic than pressure by women against men. I suggest that men pressuring women to have sex differs from the reverse case because of at least two factors: (1) gendered social institutions which add to the pressures against women, and (2) the greater likelihood that men, not women, will use violence if denied, and the lesser ability of women compared to men to resist such violence without harm. (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)

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)

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)

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)

There is a wealth of evidence which indicates that arguments are not very efficient tools for changing minds. Against this scepticism, Dutilh Novaes (2023) presents evidence that, given the right social context, arguments sometimes play a significant role in belief revision. However, drawing on Levy (2021), I argue that the evidence Dutilh Novaes cites is compatible with the view that it is not arguments that change individual minds but instead belief outsourcing that occurs alongside the consideration of arguments.

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)

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

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)

For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-control, seeing things as they are, living according to nature, owning one's roles (...) and fulfilling the responsibilities that those roles entail, the authors elucidate the extremely challenging ideas in Epictetus's brisk chapters. Divided into five distinct parts, this book provides readers with: -/- - A new translation of the Encheiridion by William O. Stephens. - A new introduction to ancient Stoicism, its system of concepts, and the ancient figures who shaped it. - A fresh treatment of the notorious and counter-intuitive 'Stoic paradoxes'. - An accessible overview of the origin and historical context of the Encheiridion. - Detailed commentaries on each chapter of the Encheiridion that clarify its recurring themes and highlight their interconnections. - Careful attention to the presentation of the arguments embedded in Epictetus's aphoristic style. - A thoughtful discussion of serious criticisms of Epictetus's Stoicism and replies to these objections. -/- Written with clarity and authority, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' provides a foundation from which readers can understand this important text and engage with the fundamental questions of Stoic philosophy and ethics. This guide will aid teachers of Epictetus, students encountering Stoicism for the first time, and readers seeking a greater understanding of Stoic ethics. (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)

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)

I defend a new version of the non-identity theodicy. After presenting the theodicy, I reply to a series of objections. I then argue that my approach improves upon similar approaches in the literature.

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)

One might think that if the majority of virtue signallers judge that a proposition is true, then there is significant evidence for the truth of that proposition. Given the Condorcet Jury Theorem, individual virtue signallers need not be very reliable for the majority judgment to be very likely to be correct. Thus, even people who are skeptical of the judgments of individual virtue signallers should think that if a majority of them judge that a proposition is true, then that provides (...) significant evidence that the proposition is true. We argue that this is mistaken. Various empirical studies converge on the following point: humans are very conformist in the contexts in which virtue signalling occurs. And stereotypical virtue signallers are even more conformist in such contexts. So we should be skeptical of the claim that virtue signallers are sufficiently independent for the Condorcet Jury Theorem to apply. We do not seek to decisively rule out the relevant application of the Condorcet Jury Theorem. But we do show that careful consideration of the available evidence should make us very skeptical of that application. Consequently, a defense of virtue signalling would need to engage with these findings and show that despite our strong tendencies for conformism, our judgements are sufficiently independent for the Condorcet Jury Theorem to apply. This suggests new directions for the debate about the epistemology of virtue signalling. (shrink)

I examine the history of the concept of spontaneity in philosophy and the social sciences, particularly as it relates to monetary phenomena. I then offer an argument for the general significance of spontaneity. The essay concludes that scholars across the humanities and social sciences, whatever their (disciplinary, political, ideological, etc.) persuasion, would be well-served to further develop the theory of spontaneity and its social effects.

G.E.M. Anscombe famously remarked that an adequate philosophy of psychology was needed before we could do ethics. Fifty years have passed, and we should now ask what significance our best theories of the psychology of agency have for moral philosophy. My focus is on non-moral conceptions of autonomy and self-governance that emphasize the limits of deliberation -- the way in which one's cares render certain options unthinkable, one's intentions and policies filter out what is inconsistent with them, and one's resolutions (...) function to block further reflection. I argue that we can expect this deliberative "silencing" to lead to moral failures that occur because the morally correct option was filtered out of the agent's deliberation. I think it follows from these conceptions of self-governance that we should be considered culpable for unwitting acts and omissions, even if they express no ill will, moral indifference, or blameworthy evaluative judgments. The question is whether this consequence is acceptable. Either way, the potential tradeoff between self-governance and moral attentiveness is a source of doubt about recent attempts to ground the normativity of rationality in our concern for self-governance. (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)

This article examines the thoughts and works of Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain and evangelical philosopher Norman Geisler in light of their understanding of Thomas Aquinas’s view of faith and reason.

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)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 148-168, March 2022.

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.

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)

This research examines the most important historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and religious factors before, during, and after the reign of Communism in Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 2021 and their effect on the extreme increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, in the present-day Czech Republic. It devotes special attention to the role of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii) and the changing policies of the Holy See vis-à-vis this Church, examining these policies' impact on the continuing (...) decline of Roman Catholicism in the Czech Republic after the collapse of Communism. The article also deals with Pope Pius XII's Secret Mandates of 1948-1950, the Second Vatican Council, and the Holy See's Ostpolitik. Scholars, who previously relied only on the views of the Czechs, blame the unprecedented drop in Christianity, the near-total destruction of the Catholic Church, and the rise in atheism on the Czechoslovak communist government's four decades of totalitarianism. Although the increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity were substantial during the era of Communism from 1948 to 1989, our data indicate that the decline in Christianity, particularly the historically predominating Roman Catholicism, did not commence with the 1948 communist coup d’état but traces its origins to the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the conclusion of WWI and the establishment of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918. What's more, this research shows that the most significant and unprecedented steep deterioration of the Christian Faith, namely Roman Catholicism, did not occur during the era of Communism but only after the Czechoslovak communist government collapsed in 1989. This massive decay did not happen even during the most extraordinary communist persecution of the Catholic Church during the era of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. This research further finds that the Holy See's ill-advised policies and systematic, sustained, and prevalent failures in leadership, guidance, and teachings are responsible for the near destruction of the Roman Catholic Church and especially the end destruction of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii), in the Czech and Slovak Republics after the fall of Communism. These failures furthermore contributed to the Czech Republic, the historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia that once were in the center of Christendom, degenerating into the most atheist country in Europe and the world today. (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.

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)

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)

Religious fictionalism is the theory that it is morally and intellectually legitimate to affirm religious sentences and to engage in public and private religious practices, without believing the content of religious claims. This article discusses the main features of fictionalism, contrasts hermeneutic, and revolutionary kinds of fictionalism and explores possible historical and recent examples of religious fictionalism. Such examples are found in recent theories of faith, pragmatic approaches to religion, and mystical traditions in religious theology.

Apophaticism -- the view that God is both indescribable and inconceivable -- is one of the great medieval traditions of philosophical thought about God, but it is largely overlooked by analytic philosophers of religion. This paper attempts to rehabilitate apophaticism as a serious philosophical option. We provide a clear formulation of the position, examine what could appropriately be said and thought about God if apophaticism is true, and consider ways to address the charge that apophaticism is self-defeating. In so doing (...) we draw on recent work in the philosophy of language, touching on issues such as the nature of negation, category mistakes, fictionalism, and reductionism. (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)

In 1947 Donald Cary Williams claimed in The Ground of Induction to have solved the Humean problem of induction, by means of an adaptation of reasoning first advanced by Bernoulli in 1713. Later on David Stove defended and improved upon Williams’ argument in The Rational- ity of Induction (1986). We call this proposed solution of induction the ‘Williams-Stove sampling thesis’. There has been no lack of objections raised to the sampling thesis, and it has not been widely accepted. In our (...) opinion, though, none of these objections has the slightest force, and, moreover, the sampling thesis is undoubtedly true. What we will argue in this paper is that one particular objection that has been raised on numerous occasions is misguided. This concerns the randomness of the sample on which the inductive extrapolation is based. (shrink)

Visions of future applications of artificial intelligence tend to veer toward the naively optimistic or frighteningly dystopian, neglecting the numerous human factors necessarily involved in the design, deployment and oversight of such systems. The dream that AI systems may somehow replace the irregularities and struggles of human governance with unbiased efficiency is seen to be non-scientific and akin to a religious hope, whereas the current trajectory of AI development indicates that it will increasingly serve as a tool by which humans (...) exercise control over other humans. To facilitate the responsible development of AI systems for the public good, we discuss current conversations on the topics of transparency and accountability. (shrink)

Many philosophers, psychologists, and medical practitioners believe that killing is no worse than letting die on the basis of James Rachels's Bare-Difference Argument. I show that his argument is unsound. In particular, a premise of the argument is that his examples are as similar as is consistent with one being a case of killing and the other being a case of letting die. However, the subject who lets die has both the ability to kill and the ability to let die (...) while the subject who kills lacks the ability to let die. Modifying the latter example so that the killer has both abilities yields a pair of cases with morally different acts. The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die is the best explanation of this difference. (shrink)

People who report believing in God fear death. They also experience grief when someone they love dies. Philosophers and social scientists sometimes claim that this can only be plausibly explained by the hypothesis that people who claim to believe in God do not really believe in God. I show that this is mistaken. I identify three independently plausible explanations of why people who genuinely believe in God would have these behaviors and attitudes. First, there is an evolutionary explanation of why (...) the fear of death would be resilient even if one genuinely believes God has good things in store for us after death. Second, people often fear low probability outcomes. It may be that religious people are afraid of hell or the cessation of existence even if they judge those outcomes to have a low probability. Third, belief in God is typically combined with views according to which death is accompanied by the permanent loss and radical transformation of important relationships. (shrink)

Many philosophers and members of the public think it is wrong to procreate. If one wants children, it is permissible to adopt. But procreation is allegedly impermissible because there is some respect in which adoption is better than procreation. I show that such objections are unsound.

Introduction to the Special Volume, “Method, Science and Mathematics: Neo-Kantianism and Analytic Philosophy,” edited by Scott Edgar and Lydia Patton. At its core, analytic philosophy concerns urgent questions about philosophy’s relation to the formal and empirical sciences, questions about philosophy’s relation to psychology and the social sciences, and ultimately questions about philosophy’s place in a broader cultural landscape. This picture of analytic philosophy shapes this collection’s focus on the history of the philosophy of mathematics, physics, and psychology. The following (...) essays uncover, reflect on, and exemplify modes of philosophy that are engaged with these allied disciplines. They make the case that, to the extent that analytic philosophers are still concerned with philosophy’s ties to these disciplines, we would do well to pay attention to neo-Kantian views on those ties. (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)

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.

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)

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)

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

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)

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)