This forum contribution addresses two major themes in de Goede’s original essay on ‘Financial security’: (1) the relationship between stable markets and the proverbial ‘security dilemma’; and (2) the development of new decision-technologies to address risk in the post-World War II period. Its argument is that the confluence of these two themes through rational choice theory represents a fundamental re-evaluation of the security dilemma and its relationship to the rule of law governing market relations, ushering (...) in an era of perpetual physical and financial insecurity. (shrink)

According to principles of modal security, evidence undermines a belief only when it calls into question certain purportedly important modal connections between one’s beliefs and the truth (e.g., safety or sensitivity). Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras have advanced such principles with the aim of blocking evolutionary moral debunking arguments. We examine a variety of different principles of modal security, showing that some of these are too strong, failing to accommodate clear cases of undermining, while others are too weak, (...) failing to do their advertised work of blocking evolutionary moral debunking arguments. If there is a security principle that slips between the horns of this dilemma—one that is both viable and debunker-blocking—it remains to be formulated. (shrink)

Plea bargains are the stock-in-trade of the modern American prosecutor’s office. The basic scenario, wherein a defendant agrees to plea guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence, is familiar to viewers of police procedurals. In an equally famous variation on the theme, the prosecutor requests something more than an admission of guilt: leniency will only be forthcoming if the defendant is willing to cooperate with the prosecutor in securing the conviction of another suspect. In some of these cases, the defendant (...) is a low-level criminal who has information on a high-level malefactor who is of more interest to the police. In others, the defendant and the person she is asked to testify against are of the same criminal rank, but evidentiary weaknesses induce the prosecutor to seek the aid of one suspect in order to convict the other. In this latter version, the classic tactic of film detectives is to offer the bargain to both defendants in the hopes that one will crack and agree to reveal what he knows about the other. The defendants could either be in custody for different crimes or be accomplices in the same offense. -/- The last variation (involving accomplices) is the subject of this Article. I take issue with the prosecutorial tactics in these cases because of the risk they create of punishing the comparatively virtuous person more than the comparatively vicious one for the same acts. As I will argue, it is the less honest person who is more likely to accept the prosecutor’s deal, leading the more honest person, who resisted temptation, to suffer greater penalties. -/- I contend that this scenario offends distributive justice, runs counter to the idea (accepted by some) that a proper goal of the state is the cultivation of good character in the citizenry, and is perverse insofar as a person will suffer more from the prosecutor's dilemma insofar as she is more or less a person of conscience. These negative considerations notwithstanding, I do not call for the abolition of accomplice plea bargaining but argue that the problems I raise should be considered when weighing its pros and cons. -/- This article was published in the company of a strong critical response by Guha Krishnamurthi, whose contribution I greatly appreciate. (shrink)

The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred (...) by a paternalistic state. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire. (shrink)

This article advances a critical analysis of John Rawls’s justification of liberal democratic nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War era as found in The Law of Peoples. Rawls’s justification overlooked how nuclear-armed liberal democracies are ensnared in two intransigent ethical dilemmas: one in which the mandate to secure liberal constitutionalism requires both the preservation and violation of important constitutional provisions in domestic affairs, and the other in which this same mandate requires both the preservation and violation of the liberal commitment (...) to international legal arrangements and to the rule of law generally. On this view, the choice to violate constitutional provisions and international legal arrangements is evidence of nuclear despotism. Moreover, this choice does not imply that the ethical foreign policy dilemmas were resolved. Instead, it implies that the dilemmas force liberal democratic governments into implementing ethically paradoxical policy outcomes. (shrink)

Many manipulation arguments against compatibilism rely on the claim that manipulation is relevantly similar to determinism. But we argue that manipulation is nothing like determinism in one relevant respect. Determinism is a "universal" phenomenon: its scope includes every feature of the universe. But manipulation arguments feature cases where an agent is the only manipulated individual in her universe. Call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents "existential manipulation." Our responsibility practices are impacted in different ways by (...) universal and existential phenomena. And this is a relevant difference, especially on Strawsonian approaches to moral responsibility, which take facts about our responsibility practices to be deeply connected to the nature of responsibility itself. We argue that Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility are immune to manipulation arguments, and no attempt to modify the scope of manipulation or determinism featured in these arguments will help incompatibilists secure their desired conclusion. (shrink)

Despite the good intention of humanitarian agencies, humanitarian assistance and relief aid exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Tanzania during 1994. In the case of Tanzania, humanitarian assistance relieved belligerents’ burden of sustaining conflicts, created safe spaces for armed combatants, undermined local economies, bestowed legitimacy upon belligerents, and fed armed combatants. This situation hence posed the typical humanitarian assistance dilemma for humanitarian agencies. While most scholars and aid practitioners suggest that humanitarian agencies should withdraw their assistance in these contexts given (...) aid’s apparent negative impact, there is relatively little research that properly identifies different kinds of ethical constraints and moral dilemmas that have long challenged humanitarian agencies. Referencing the case of late-twentieth-century Tanzania, this article contextualises the humanitarian assistance dilemma and systematically examines the ethical predicaments that surround it. Its analysis sheds light on moral quandaries that humanitarian agencies need to address in conflict situations. (shrink)

This book review of Lieber and Press's “The myth of the nuclear revolution: Power politics in the atomic age" challenges the authors' position that nuclear weapons essentially have the same properties of conventional weapons. We argue that nuclear weapons alter warfare because they can end human civilization, and they pose a shared risk of mutual destruction.

Economic pressures, mounting environmental, security and health requirements, are all critical factors that shape economic action. With regard to environmental protection, an economic entity acting as homo oeconomicus finds himself in a situation resembling a prisoner’s dilemma. Signposts for a possible resolution of this dilemma include an environmental management system, a system of environmental law based on the principles of environmental ethics, and a new conception of human nature.

Philosophical reflection on racial profiling tends to take one of two forms. The first sees it as an example of ‘statistical discrimination,’ (SD), raising the question of when, if ever, probabilistic generalisations about group behaviour or characteristics can be used to judge particular individuals.(Applbaum 2014; Harcourt 2004; Hellman, 2014; Risse and Zeckhauser 2004; Risse 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2006; Lippert-Rasmussen 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2014) . This approach treats racial profiling as one example amongst many others of a general problem in egalitarian political philosophy, (...) occasioned by the fact that treating people as equals does not always require, or permit, us to treat them the same. The second form is concerned with how racial profiling illuminates the nature, justification, and reproduction of hierarchies of power and privilege based on skin colour and morphology. This form of reflection on racial profiling is therefore less about the justification for judging people based on the characteristics of the group to which they (appear to) belong, and more concerned with the specific ways in which the association of racialized minorities – and, in particular, black people – with crime, contributes to, and reflects, racial inequality, and oppression.(Kennedy 1998; Zack, 2015; Lever, 2005; Lever 2007). Both approaches to profiling have much to recommend them and, taken together, they form an essential component of the political philosophy of race. The statistical approach has the merits of linking racial profiling, as practice, to a body of other practices that generate and justify inequalities based on factors other than race, but it typically offers little by way of insight into the role of racial profiling itself in sustaining racial inequality and injustice. The racial construction approach, for obvious reasons, is rather better at the latter task, but its insights tend to come at the price of a broader understanding of the ways in which inequality is reproduced and justified, or of the ethical dilemmas raised by our competing claims to security. As we will see, insights from both approaches can be synthesized to clarify what, if anything, is wrong with racial profiling and what broader conclusions for equality and security follow from the study of profiling. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

I want to suggest that it would be bad if compatibilism were true, and that this gives us good reason to think that it isn't. This is, you might think, an outlandish argument, and the considerable burden of this paper is to convince you otherwise. There are two key elements at stake in this argument. The first is that it would be ‐ in a distinctive sense to be explained ‐ bad if compatibilism were true. The thought here is that (...) compatibilism ultimately presents us with a picture on which, in principle, powerful manipulators can effectively guarantee that finite moral agents should become blameworthy. To my mind, this isn't just false ‐ though I think that it is ‐ it is also such that it would be bad (unfortunate, undesirable…) if it were true. The second is that the fact that it would be ‐ in this sense ‐ bad if true gives us reason to think that it isn't. It may be bad that there is no afterlife. But that, in itself, hardly gives us reason to think that there is an afterlife. That is true, but ‐ as others before me have suggested ‐ when the object of the relevant badness is morality itself, the inference seems secure. A more general aim of the paper is to investigate the nature of this very form of argument in itself, and I compare my argument (inter alia) to a recent argument from Sayre–McCord against the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Quasi-realists aim to account for many of the trappings of metanormative realism within an expressivist framework. Chief among these is the realist way of responding to the Euthyphro dilemma: quasi-realists want to join realists in being able to say, "It’s not the case that kicking dogs is wrong because we disapprove of it. Rather, we disapprove of kicking dogs because it’s wrong." However, the standard quasi-realist way of explaining what we are up to when we assert the first of (...) these two sentences rests on a mistaken identification of metaphysical dependence (or grounding) with counterfactual covariation. This chapter proposes a better way for expressivists to understand such sentences, on which they serve to express complex states of mind in which an attitude bears a relation of psychological dependence (or basing) to another state of mind. It is argued that this proposal is a natural, versatile, and fruitful approach for expressivists to take that helps them secure the first half of the Euthyphro contrast—but at the cost of making it difficult to see how expressivists can make sense of that contrast’s second half. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framework demonstrates clearly that there is a (...) moral “lock-in”, and why the killing of day-old chicks is indeed an issue. Furthermore, it is shown that both alternative directions address some important objections with regard to the killing of day-old chicks, but that they also raise new dilemmas. It also becomes clear that the framework enables and secures anticipation, reflection, deliberation with and responsiveness to stakeholders, the four dimensions of responsible innovation, in a structured way. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to address a well-known dilemma for physicalism. If mental properties are type identical to physical properties, then their causal efficacy is secure, but at the cost of ruling out mentality in creatures very different to ourselves. On the other hand, if mental properties are multiply realizable, then all kinds of creatures can instantiate them, but then they seem to be causally redundant. The causal exclusion problem depends on the widely held principle that realized (...) properties inherit their causal powers from their realizers. While this principle holds for functional realization, it fails on a broader notion of realization that permits the realization of complex qualitative properties such as spatial and temporal patterns. Such properties are best seen as dependent powerful qualities, which have their causal roles in virtue of being the qualities they are, and do not inherit powers from their realizers. Recent studies have identified one such property—neural synchrony—as a correlate of consciousness. If synchrony is also partially constitutive of consciousness, then phenomenal properties are both multiply realizable and causally novel. I outline a version of representationalism about consciousness on which this constitution claim holds. (shrink)

Don’t form beliefs on the basis of coin flips or random guesses. More generally, don’t take belief gambles: if a proposition is no more likely to be true than false given your total body of evidence, don’t go ahead and believe that proposition. Few would deny this seemingly innocuous piece of epistemic advice. But what, exactly, is wrong with taking belief gambles? Philosophers have debated versions of this question at least since the classic dispute between William Clifford and William James (...) near the end of the nineteenth century. Here I reassess the normative standing of belief gambles from the perspective of epistemic decision theory. The main lesson of the paper is a negative one: it turns out that we need to make some surprisingly strong and hard-to-motivate assumptions to establish a general norm against belief gambles within a decision-theoretic framework. I take this to pose a dilemma for epistemic decision theory: it forces us to either make seemingly unmotivated assumptions to secure a norm against belief gambles, or concede that belief gambles can be rational after all. (shrink)

Popper's account of refutation is the linchpin of his famous view that the method of science is the method of conjecture and refutation. This thesis critically examines his account of refutation, and in particular the practice he deprecates as avoiding a refutation. I try to explain how he comes to hold the views that he does about these matters; how he seeks to make them plausible; how he has influenced others to accept his mistakes, and how some of the ideas (...) or responses to Popper of such people are thus similarly mistaken. I draw some distinctions necessary to the provision of an adequate account of the so-called practice of avoiding a refutation, and try to rid the debate about this practice of at least one red herring. I analyse one case of 'avoiding' a refutation in detail to show how the rationality of scientific practice eludes both Popper and many of his commentators. Popper's skepticism about contingent knowledge prevents him from providing an acceptable account of contingent refutation, and so his method is really the method of conjecture and conjecture. He cannot do without the concepts of knowledge and refutation, however, if his account of science is to be plausible or persuasive, and so he equivocates between, amongst other things, refutation as disproof and refutation as the weaker notion of discorroboration. I criticise David Stove's account of this matter, in particular to show how he misses this point. An additional advantage Popper would secure from this equivocation is that if refutations were mere discorroborations they would be easier to achieve, and hence more common in science, than is the case. On Popper's weak notion of refutation, it would be possible to refute true theories since corroboration does not entail truth. There are two other related doctrines Popper holds about refutation which, if accepted, make some refutations seem easier to obtain than is the case. I call these doctrines 'Strong Popperian Falsificationism' (SPF) and 'Weak Popperian Falsificationism' (WPF). SPF is the false doctrine that if a prediction from some theory is refuted then that theory is refuted. Popper does not always endorse SPF. In particular, when confronted with a counterexample to it, he retreats to WPF, which is the false doctrine that if a prediction from some theory is refuted then that theory is prima facie refuted. WPF , or even SPF, can seem plausible if one has in mind predictions derived from theories in strong or conclusive tests of those theories, which I suggest Popper characteristically does. v Popper is disposed to describe any such case of predictive failure which does not lead to the refutation of the theory concerned as one in which that refutation has been avoided. To reinforce his portrayal of the refutation, or the attempted refutation, of major scientific theories as the rational core of scientific practice, Popper treats the so-called practice of avoiding a refutation as untypical of science, and much so-called avoidance he dismisses as unscientific or pseudo-scientific. I argue that his notion of avoiding a refutation is incoherent. Popper is further driven to believe that such avoidance is possible, however, because he conflates sentences with propositions and propositions with propositional beliefs. Also, he wishes to avoid being saddled with the relativisim that is a consequence of his weak account of refutation as discorroboration. Popper believes that ad hoc hypotheses are the most important of the unscientific means of avoiding a refutation. I argue that his account of such hypotheses is also incoherent, and that several hypotheses thought to be ad hoc in his sense are not. Such hypotheses appear to be so largely because of Popper's use of rhetoric and partly because these hypotheses are unacceptable for other reasons. I conclude that to know that a hypothesis is ad hoc in Popper's sense does not illuminate scientific practice. Popper has also attempted to explicate ad hocness in terms of some undesirable, or allegedly undesirable, properties of hypotheses or the explanations they would provide. The first such property is circularity, which is undesirable; the second such property is reduction in empirical content, which is not. In the former case I argue that non-circularity is clearly preferable to non-ad hocness as a criterion for a satisfactory explanation or explanans, as the case may be, and in the latter case that Popper is barking up the wrong tree. Some cases of so-called avoidance are obviously not unscientific. The discovery of Neptune from a prediction based on the reasonable belief that there were residual perturbations in the motion of Uranus is an important case in point, and one that is much discussed in the literature. The manifest failure of astronomers to account for Uranus's motion did not lead to the refutation of Newton's law of gravitiation, yet significant scientific progress obviously did result. Retreating to WPF, Popper claims that Newton's law was prima facie refuted. In general, astronomers have never shared this view, and they are correct in not doing so. I argue that the law of gravitation would have been prima facie refuted only if there had been good reason at the time to believe as false what is true, namely, that an unknown trans-Uranian planet was the cause of those Uranian residuals. Knowledge of the trans-Uranian region was then so slight that it was merely a convenient assumption, one which there was little reason to believe was false, that the known influences on Uranus's motion were the only such influences. I conclude that in believing vi or supposing that it was this assumption that was false, rather than the law of gravitation, Leverrier and Adams, the co-predictors of Neptune, were acting rationally and intelligently. Popper's commentators offer a variety of accounts of the alleged practice of avoiding a refutation, and of this case in particular. I analyse a sample of their accounts to show how common is the acceptance of some of Popper's basic mistakes, even amongst those who claim to reject his falsificationism, and to display the effects on their accounts of this acceptance of his mistakes. Many commentators recognize that anomalies are typically dealt with by changes in the boundary conditions or in other of the auxiliary propositions employed. Where many still go wrong, however, is in retaining the presupposition of WPF which encouraged Popper to hold the contradictory view about anomalies in the first place. Thus Imre Lakatos and others, for example, have developed a 'siege mentality' about major scientific theories; they see them as under continual threat of refutation from anomalies, and so come to believe that dogmatism is essential in science if such theories are to survive as they do. I examine various such doomed attempts to reconcile Popper with the history of science. It is a common failure in this literature to conflate or to fail to see the need to distinguish a belief from a supposition, and an epistemic reason from a pragmatic reason. I argue that only if one does draw these distinctions can one give an adequate account of how anomalies are rationally dealt with in science. The other important strand in Popper's thinking about 'avoidance' of refutation which has seriously misled some of his commentators is his unfounded belief in the dangers of ad hoc hypotheses. I examine the accounts that a sample of such commentators provide of the trans-Uranian planet hypotheses of Leverrier and Adams. These commentators imply or assert what Popper only hints at, namely, that there is something fishy about this hypothesis. I provide a further defence of the rationality of entertaining this hypothesis at the time. I conclude with a few remarks about Popper's dilemma in respect of scientific practice and his long standing emphasis on refutations. (shrink)

Abstract- Administrative corruption has a long history in Pakistan which affected each public institution since its inception. Good governance in Pakistan never took a sigh due to Bribery in public sector and versatile Miraculous of Corruption in Public Administration. Administrative corruption possesses a multidimensional and complex phenomenon that has been created by numerous factors to affect at a wide range and each segment of society to be exhibited in a diversity of roles and traits. This study is considering significance of (...) the subject and discovers the respondents’ response and identifies the causes and consequence of this dilemma. The current research attempts to measure the administrative corruption in education sector in Sindh and it also encompasses the implications on education professionals’ performance and their profession. For data analysis, sampling was derived from teaching, and non-teaching staff in education sector to construct open ended questionnaires and respondents’ privacy was ensured to fill the survey items. For data collection, 203 respondents feedback was secured and analysis was carried out by means of SPSS. The self-constructed questionnaires were used and the findings of the study support the administrative corruption in education sector was faced by respondents in the form of agent and non-agent based corruption in the treasury and concerned offices in the education department. In this way, agent based corruption and non-agent based corruption maintain positive and significant relation with Administrative Corruption. Moreover, prevailing study also encircles implications and recommendation, limitations, and future direction. Keywords: Administrative Corruption, Education Sector, Administrative System, Bribery. (shrink)

During the corona pandemic, politicians have been forced to make urgent decisions under pressure while balancing between challenging options: protecting citizens’ health or causing major social and economic difficulties through security measures. Part of the dilemma has been whether the chosen security measures are oversized, causing fundamental economic and social problems, or not sufficiently enough, thus putting people’s lives at risk. In illustrating our discussion with actions taken by press conferences (PCs) of the Finnish Government, we discuss (...) how nonknowing has governed political decision-making in the corona crisis and how tackling the pandemic has required politicians and experts to develop a capability of dealing with the epistemic conditions of nonknowledge. When information about the virus was constantly updated, the epistemic states of ‘not-yet-known’ or ‘partly-known’ substantially affect the rhythms in which political decisions are made in managing the spread of COVID-19. We suggest that Prime Minister Marin and her cabinet developed a policy of epistemic humility where the legitimation of decision is not based on scientific knowledge but rather on the temporality of nonknowing. The crisis created a favourable momentum for addressing issues of nonknowing in politics, which are easily kept outside of the public attention. (shrink)

Local and global dependencies and interactions between individuals, groups and institutions are becoming increasingly opaque and risky. This is due to increased importance of highly complex abstract systems created and supported in order to maintain of transport, communications, finance, energy, media, security infrastructure, as well as social and cultural institutions. These systems require the knowledge and skills of experts. Professionals that not only satisfy identified needs, but also create new thereby contribute the development of cultural narcissism phenomenon. The aim (...) of the book is to discuss relations of experts and mass narcissism, on the background of shaping the knowledge societies and knowledge-based economies, and moreover their transformations towards the societies and economies based on creativity and wisdom. Undertaken analysis is contribute to sociology of expertise and intervention by indicating four selected contemporary issues: dilemmas of the knowledge society development; selection between trust substitutes and its reconstruction methods; transformations of social stratification; and the choice of pathways to socio-economic development. (shrink)

A significant proportion of child protection cases involve care-experienced mothers, which reveals a continuous cycle of mothers who lose their children to social services after having been in state care themselves as children. While the importance of protecting children requires little explanation and forms the justificatory basis for child protection interventions, it is important to remember that care-experienced mothers were once children entrusted to the state’s care, and who arguably have been failed by the state in that their parenting opportunities (...) are significantly reduced. This paper aims to address this underexplored dilemma between protecting children and safeguarding mothering opportunities for care-experienced mothers. Appealing to the concept of solidarity, I argue that the state has an obligation to increase its compensatory efforts to secure the right of care-experienced women to not only become parents but to be able to be parents, with the aim of breaking the cycle of care experience. (shrink)

The project of “public reason” claims to offer an epistemological resolution to the civic dilemma created by the clash of incompatible options for the rational exercise of freedom adopted by citizens in a diverse community. The present Article proposes, via consideration of a contrast between two classical accounts of dialectical reasoning, that the employment of “public reason,” in substantive due process analysis, is unworkable in theory and contrary to more reflective Supreme Court precedent. Although logical commonalities might be available (...) to pick out from the multitude of particularized accounts of what constitutes “civic order,” no “public reason” so derived could adequately capture - and thus be able to secure in a practical sense - any single determinate civic order, much less one that would be consistent with all citizens' conceptions of public order. Part I of this Article raises a number of issues for consideration relating to the epistemology of law and focuses especially on the concept of public reason and its critique. Part II addresses alternative approaches to legal reasoning suggested by classical accounts of practical reasoning and virtue theory and considers the operation of such legal analysis outside the area of substantive due process; Part III analyzes post-Lawrence case law confirming the dilemma created by the Supreme Court's ambiguous approaches to substantive due process and concludes that only one interpretation - that articulated fully in Washington v. Glucksberg and given lip service in Lawrence v. Texas - provides a method for resolving novel substantive due process challenges that is philosophically sound as well as historically coherent. Rather than perpetuating a fiction that denies the propriety of lawmaking unless based on principles that all citizens can rationally agree upon, an appropriate model of substantive due process analysis recognizes that law must inevitably be based upon principles that cannot be agreed upon by all citizens in virtue of rationality alone. -/- Abstract Footnotes (291) Beta -/- Revise My Submission -/- -/- One-Click Download | Share | Email | Add to Briefcase -/- Facebook | Twitter | Digg | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | Permalink Using the URL or DOI link below will ensure access to this page indefinitely -/- Based on your IP address, your paper is being delivered by: New York, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] Illinois, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] Brussels, Belgium Processing request. [Processing request.] Seoul, Korea Processing request. [Processing request.] California, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] -/- If you have any problems downloading this paper, please click on another Download Location above, or view our FAQ File name: SSRN-id1004757. ; Size: 424K -/- Sample Cover You will receive a black and white printed and perfect bound version of this document in 8 1/2 x 11 inch format, with glossy color front and back covers. Currently shipping to the US addresses only. Your order will be shipped within three business days. Quantity: Total Price = $0.50 plus shipping (U.S. Only) -/- If you have any problems with this purchase, please email [email protected] or call 1-585-442-8170. Reason's Freedom and the Dialectic of Ordered Liberty -/- Edward C. Lyons University of Notre Dame Law School -/- Cleveland State Law Review, Vol. 55, p. 157, 2007 -/- Abstract: The project of "public reason" claims to offer an epistemological resolution to the civic dilemma created by the clash of incompatible options for the rational exercise of freedom adopted by citizens in a diverse community. The present Article proposes, via consideration of a contrast between two classical accounts of dialectical reasoning, that the employment of "public reason," in substantive due process analysis, is unworkable in theory and contrary to more reflective Supreme Court precedent. Although logical commonalities might be available to pick out from the multitude of particularized accounts of what constitutes "civic order," no "public reason" so derived could adequately capture - and thus be able to secure in a practical sense - any single determinate civic order, much less one that would be consistent with all citizens' conceptions of public order. -/- Part I of this Article raises a number of issues for consideration relating to the epistemology of law and focuses especially on the concept of public reason and its critique. Part II addresses alternative approaches to legal reasoning suggested by classical accounts of practical reasoning and virtue theory and considers the operation of such legal analysis outside the area of substantive due process; Part III analyzes post-Lawrence case law confirming the dilemma created by the Supreme Court's ambiguous approaches to substantive due process and concludes that only one interpretation - that articulated fully in Washington v. Glucksberg and given lip service in Lawrence v. Texas - provides a method for resolving novel substantive due process challenges that is philosophically sound as well as historically coherent. -/- Rather than perpetuating a fiction that denies the propriety of lawmaking unless based on principles that all citizens can rationally agree upon, an appropriate model of substantive due process analysis recognizes that law must inevitably be based upon principles that cannot be agreed upon by all citizens in virtue of rationality alone. -/- Keywords: substantive due process, practical reason, public reason, Rawls, Casey, Lawrence, Glucksberg, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, dialectic, autonomy, freedom -/- . (shrink)

When police abuse their duties, it undermines the state's internal security. It creates a crisis of legitimacy of police because people detest them for their abuse and tyranny. In 1957, IACP (the International Association of Chiefs of Police) developed an ethics tool Code of Ethics for law enforcement. Nevertheless, training has been focused and emphasized on techniques and tactics of policing. Ethics is not the part of presell of the training. The Code of Ethics is pronounced once in a (...) life only during pass-out day. Police face dilemmas in real-time situations with people and society. This is why, this article is concerned with ethics a tool, and procedures to reduce police abuse. (shrink)

The "second-generation indigenization" hypothesis of Huntington's phenomenological observations on totalitarianism in Cold War regime collapse subtly portrayed the realpolitik interest groups' political influences with autocracy disbandment processes. The research puts democratization as the premise and globalization as purpose for the analysis, with the cultural anthropological psychopathology & criminological elements of genocide and crime against humanity explained, underlying some of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s organizational behaviors. With the regionalism purposes & approaches to multilateralism by People's Republic of China (PRC), (...) the end of democratization is leveraged against the procedural means with power politics of declared “decmocracy”. Between quantitative autocratic controls and realpolitik local-regional interest groups, the connotation of democratization in liberal international globalization has either been used for militant purposes or pushed the landscape of regime collapse into realpolitik local groups and autocratic controls in the process of globalization, with a case study on a local branch of Argricultural Bank of China on supply-side hijacking by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC). With the industrial interests omposed on realpolitik local groups, autocratic regionalism becomes of the "best interest scenario" for the realpolitik local groups with psychopathological spread of the criminological behaviors, by the cyber organizational criminal operations correlated with PRC’s approaches to international relations and multilateralism through bilateral trade & finance in monetary and currency domains, developed into the digitization of economies with criminological schemes in telecommunication, information, and informatics systems. However, the diminishing autonomy & freedom of the territorial population in turn derogated the real economy that wielded the prisoners' dilemma between autocracy and totalitarianism in a negative sum game deterioration cycle, with the censorship practices by the illicit regimes for propaganda controls sustaining "ideology security". In the democratization process of the dictatorial regime, "second-generation indigenization" is thus mapped to the sectarian interests respondent to dictatorial propaganda generation, other than a natural phenomenon out of autonomy and freedom premises in decision theory. The article recaps the coup d'état between Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai before Xi took the autocratic power, and analyzes the human rights situation in the obstacle of democratization and by the coercion mechanism imposed on the mainland China civil society for the militant purposes, with its behaviral spread of censorship to the “internet platforms” in liberal democratic countries by financial interest incentives and avoidance from war threats, whereby military backends in the cyber systems already indicate otherwise. (shrink)

James Olson, author of the book Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying (p.15), questions “What actions by a state are permissible in pursuing the state’s interests? Are lying, cheating, manipulation, deception, coercion and other techniques of espionage and covert action justifiable in national self-defense?” To expand his thought, to that end, I say, “Can different moral and ethical theories co-exist during war or conflict?” Can we extend our range of options in dealing with terrorism globally in an effort to (...) satisfy our national security objectives using principles outlined in the many moral and ethical theories? In short answer, yes. This paper will address moral and ethical theories that I believe justify the use of a range of options or extended options to combat terrorism to meet our national security objectives without severely corrupting our universal morals or ethics. -/- Strictly speaking from a theory basis, and a common sense approach-with no religious affirmations-I ascribe to a combination of principles of the Just War theory and Moral Absolutism philosophy. It is my belief that we cannot engage terrorists’ Realpolitik and normative ethical relativist frame-of- mind to justify the use of force based on one moral or ethical theory or philosophy. A combination of principles from the Just War theory and Moral Absolutism philosophy can morally and ethically justify engagement in combating terrorism. (shrink)

This paper introduces and motivates a solution to a dilemma from peer disagreement. Following Buchak (2021), I argue that peer disagreement puts us in an epistemic dilemma: there is reason to think that our opinions should both change and not change when we encounter disagreement with our epistemic peers. I argue that we can solve this dilemma by changing our credences, but not our beliefs in response to disagreement. I explain how my view solves the dilemma (...) in question, and then offer two additional arguments for it: one related to contents and attitudes, and another related to epistemic peerhood. (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine the notion of an epistemic dilemma, its characterizations in the literature, and the different intuitions prompted by it. I will illustrate that the notion of an epistemic dilemma is expected to capture various phenomena that are not easily unified with one concept: while some aspects of these phenomena are more about the agent in a certain situation, other aspects seem to be more about the situation as such. As a consequence, incompatible intuitions (...) emerge concerning the transparency of epistemic dilemmas as well as regarding the role that doxastic suspension plays in resolving cases of epistemic dilemma. I suggest to distinguish between the mental state of agents who find themselves in an epistemic dilemma and the normative situation that gives rise to a dilemma. I will refer to the agent’s mental state as epistemic conflict and will reserve the term epistemic dilemma for evidential situations in which epistemic principles either recommend incompatible doxastic responses or render all options impermissible. The concept of epistemic conflict not only captures the mental state of agents who find themselves in a genuine epistemic dilemma but also applies to agents who face difficult epistemic choices that they cannot resolve without substantial cognitive (and often pragmatic) effort, for example, via doxastic suspension. (shrink)

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

Food security brings a number of benefits to humanity from which nobody can be excluded and which can be simultaneously enjoyed by all. An economic understanding of the concept sees food security qualify as a global public good. However, there are four other ways of understanding a public good which are worthy of attention. A normative public good is a good from which nobody ought to be excluded. Alternatively, one might acknowledge the benevolent character of a public good. (...) Others have argued that public goods demand being public in the sense of being visible to all. Finally, it has also been argued that public goods are those goods which need joint action to be produced and maintained. This chapter discusses these five understandings of the public good in relation to food security and highlights the advantage of assessing policies from each of these perspectives. (shrink)

We make the case that the Prisoner’s Dilemma, notwithstanding its fame and the quantity of intellectual resources devoted to it, has largely failed to explain any phenomena of social scientific or biological interest. In the heart of the paper we examine in detail a famous purported example of Prisoner’s Dilemma empirical success, namely Axelrod’s analysis of WWI trench warfare, and argue that this success is greatly overstated. Further, we explain why this negative verdict is likely true generally and (...) not just in our case study. We also address some possible defenses of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. (shrink)

Douglas Edwards is arguably the most prominent contemporary advocate of moderate alethic pluralism. Significantly influenced by Crispin Wright and Michael Lynch, his work on the nature of truth has become widely discussed in the topical literature. Edwards labels his version of moderate alethic pluralism determination pluralism. At first blush, determination pluralism appears philosophically promising. The position deserves thoughtful consideration, particularly because of its capacity to accommodate the scope problem. I argue, however, that upon analysis the view is better understood as (...) a form of metaphysical dualism or what I will call meta-dualism. Furthermore, determination pluralists face a dilemma; there appears to be an instability at the core of their dualistic model. On the one horn of the dilemma, they need a clear metaphysical demarcation at the interface of their two necessary domains. On the other horn, they seem to need to a metaphysically vague boundary at the interface of their two necessary domains. Determination pluralism needs substantial revision. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on a particular sort of case where it’s plausible that epistemic requirements can conflict: cases where an agent’s higher-order evidence supports doubting her reliability in reacting to her ordinary evidence. Conflicting epistemic requirements can be seen as generating epistemic dilemmas. The paper examines two ways that people have sought to recognize conflicting requirements without allowing them to generate epistemic dilemmas: separating epistemic norms into two different varieties, and positing rational indeterminacy in cases where principles conflict. It argues (...) that these views incur costs, and that the sense in which they avoid dilemmas does not gain them an advantage over a view that simply recognizes dilemmas as a natural outgrowth of agents’ rational reflection on their own thinking. (shrink)

Conferralism is the view that social properties are neither intrinsic to the things that have them nor possessed simply by virtue of their causal or spatiotemporal relations to other things, but are somehow bestowed (intentionally or not, explicitly or not) upon them by persons who have both the capacity and the standing to bestow them. We argue that conferralism faces a dilemma: either it is viciously circular, or it is limited in scope in a way that undercuts its motivation.

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti-normativism). I argue against (...) both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. (shrink)

One way to determine whether a mental condition should be considered a disorder is to first give necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a disorder and then see if it meets these conditions. But this approach has been criticized for begging normative questions. Concerning autism (and other conditions), a neurodiversity movement has arisen with essentially two aims: (1) advocate for the rights and interests of individuals with autism, and (2) de-pathologize autism. We argue that denying autism’s disorder status (...) could undermine autism’s exculpatory role in cases where individuals with autism are charged with a crime. Our argument raises a dilemma for the neurodiversity movement: advocating for the rights and interests of individuals with autism may require viewing autism as a condition that can be inherently disabling (at least for some individuals). If this is right, autism’s disorder status might be maintained (again, at least for some individuals) without deriving this result from any general account of disorder. (shrink)

The dilemma I present for Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory concerns a theory which includes idealizations but also an account of how you apply the theory to less ideal reality. If this does not count as an ideal theory, then theories of justice need not be ideal. If it does, then ideal theories can be action guiding.

Daniel Greco (forthcoming) argues that there cannot be epistemic dilemmas. I argue that he is wrong. I then look in detail at a would-be epistemic dilemma and argue that no non-dilemmic approach to it can be made to work. Along the way, there is discussion of octopuses, lobsters, and other ‘inscrutable cognizers’; the relationship between evaluative and prescriptive norms; a failed attempt to steal a Brueghel; epistemic and moral blame and residue; an unbearable guy who thinks he’s God’s gift (...) to women; excuses; stupid games involving hats; radical permissivism; how I’ll never be able to afford to buy a house in Hampstead; and many other exciting topics. (shrink)

Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are not (...) well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's "dilemma of case studies," and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put. (shrink)

Perceptually secured knowledge consists of beliefs that amount to knowledge just because they are based on suitable perceptual states. Relationism about the ground of perceptually secured knowledge is the view that if a perceptual state can make a belief based on it amount to knowledge, then it can do that because it constitutes an appropriate kind of relational state, e.g., a state of perceptual acquaintance. I explore the prospects of both maintaining that some beliefs amount to perceptually secured knowledge and (...) developing a relationist account of their ground. (shrink)

Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends (...) in the energy sector. Our paper discusses energy security status and innovations in the energy sector in European Union (EU). We analyze the recent up-to-date developments of the energy policy and exploitation of energy sources, as well as scrutinize the channels of energy streaming to the EU countries and the risks associated with this energy import. Moreover, we argue that the shift to the low-carbon production of energy and the massive deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) might become the key issue in ensuring the energy security and independency of the EU from its external energy supplies. Both RES, distributed energy resources (DER) and “green energy” that will be based on the energy efficiency and the shift to the alternative energy supply might change the energy security status quo for the EU. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that an account of security as a basic human right must incorporate moral security. Broadly speaking, a person possesses subjective moral security when she believes that her basic interests and welfare will be accorded moral recognition by others in her community and by social, political, and legal institutions in her society. She possesses objective moral security if, as a matter of fact, her interests and welfare are regarded by her society as (...) morally important—for example, when violent crimes against her being taken to warrant the same punishment and condemnation as equivalent crimes against others. Moral security, thus characterized, is an essential part of what it is to be secure as a human person, and any right to security must include it. In the first part of the paper I critique alternative narrower accounts of the right to security, before defending my account of moral security in Section 2. Section 3 explores how acts of racialized and gendered violence are attacks on the moral security of the victims and of all members of the groups to which the victims belong. Broader structural and institutional forms of racial and sexual discrimination further compound the impact of such acts on moral security. Understanding how racial and sexual discrimination and violence are attacks on moral security offers a new way of thinking about the scope and urgency of a state’s duty to combat racial and sexual discrimination, an issue I explore in the final section of the paper. -/- . (shrink)

In virtue of what do we enjoy episodes of pleasure? According to the phenomenological theory of pleasure, we enjoy pleasures in virtue of having certain kinds of phenomenal experiences. According to the attitude theory of pleasure, we enjoy pleasures in virtue of having a certain kind of pro-attitude. In this chapter, we show that the attitude theory faces a dilemma. The attitude that is relevant to pleasure—the desire, liking, or favoring—is either necessarily co-instantiated with certain phenomenology, or not. If (...) the attitude theorist denies that the relevant attitudes are phenomenologically enriched in this sense, then their theory has the problematic implication that pleasure can come radically apart from phenomenology. This leads to a *problem of hedonic inversion*. If the attitude theorist instead affirms that the relevant attitudes are phenomenologically enriched, then they undermine their main objection to the phenomenological theory of pleasure. This is the so-called *heterogeneity problem*, according to which pleasures do not feel alike. Either way, the attitudinal theorist faces a difficult challenge in their ongoing debate with phenomenological theorists. (shrink)

According to what we will call subjectivity theories of consciousness, there is a constitutive connection between phenomenal consciousness and subjectivity: there is something it is like for a subject to have mental state M only if M is characterized by a certain mine-ness or for-me-ness. Such theories appear to face certain psychopathological counterexamples: patients appear to report conscious experiences that lack this subjective element. A subsidiary goal of this chapter is to articulate with greater precision both subjectivity theories and the (...) psychopathological challenge they face. The chapter’s central goal is to present two new approaches to defending subjectivity theories in the face of this challenge. What distinguishes these two approaches is that they go to great lengths to interpret patients’ reports at face value – greater length, at any rate, than more widespread approaches in the extant literature. (shrink)

One of the most influential recent accounts of attention is Wayne Wu’s. According to Wu, attention is selection-for-action. I argue that this proposal faces a dilemma: either it denies clear cases of attention capture, or it acknowledges these cases but classifies many inattentive episodes as attentive.

This thesis examines the key moral principles that should govern decision-making by police and military when using lethal force. To this end, it provides an ethical analysis of the following question: Under what circumstances, if any, is it morally justified for the agents of state-sanctioned security institutions to use lethal force, in particular the police and the military? Recent literature in this area suggests that modern conflicts involve new and unique features that render conventional ways of thinking about the (...) ethics of armed conflict, and the use of lethal force, as inadequate or redundant. In particular, there is an increased concern with the moral difficulties created by “non-standard” cases. This is where the police or military are obliged to operate outside their conventional contexts. In such non-standard cases, on what moral basis can (or should) state actors – especially the police and military – use lethal force? One approach argues that there is nothing morally exceptional about the use of lethal force by police or military. This says the only available moral justification for using lethal force is killing in self-defence or defence of others. In contrast, I use an institutional approach to develop a moral framework for the state’s morally exceptional use of lethal force. The institutional approach is concerned with the ends (telos) or purpose of a social institution. It says that the moral purpose of a social institution alters the moral responsibilities of its agents; what is referred to as role morality. My analysis demonstrates that there is an important moral distinction between justified killing in self-defence and state-sanctioned uses of lethal force. My claim is that police and military uses of lethal force are not morally justified in the same way as the average person’s use of lethal force (i.e. self-defence or defence of others). Instead, I argue that the state-sanctioned institutional role of police and military give these state actors special moral duties, and therefore exceptional moral justification, for using lethal force. I argue that the institutional end of the police is the preservation of public safety. This includes using lethal force where it is necessary to protect life and prevent serious injury to jurisdictional inhabitants. In contrast, a morally responsible state uses military force to defend the “common good.” That is, when it is necessary to defend the peaceful functioning of a state from armed threats or other forms of political violence. I then conclude that non-standard cases require the addition of jus ad vim (or the just use of military force short-of-war) as a hybrid element to the moral framework for the state-sanctioned use of lethal force. This provides a better way of applying ethics to the use of military force when defending the common good against serious threats in non-standard cases. This is because jus ad vim complements the conventional military paradigm by permitting the use of military capabilities to defend the common good. But, at the same time, it inhibits the move towards the more destructive levels of violence characteristic of conventional warfighting. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe a problem for calibrationism: a view about higher order evidence according to which one's credences should be calibrated to one's expected degree of reliability. Calibrationism is attractive, in part, because it explains our intuitive judgments, and provides a strong motivation for certain theories about higher order evidence and peer disagreement. However, I will argue that calibrationism faces a dilemma: There are two versions of the view one might adopt. The first version, (...) I argue, has the implausible consequence that, in a wide range of cases, calibrationism is the only constraint on rational belief. The second version, in addition to having some puzzling consequences, is unmotivated. At the end of the paper I sketch a possible solution. (shrink)

Instability occurs when the very fact of choosing one particular possible option rather than another affects the expected values of those possible options. In decision theory: An act is stable iff given that it is actually performed, its expected utility is maximal. When there is no stable choice available, the resulting instability can seem to pose a dilemma of practical rationality. A structurally very similar kind of instability, which occurs in cases of anti-expertise, can likewise seem to create dilemmas (...) of epistemic rationality. One possible line of response to such cases of instability, suggested by both Jeffrey (1983) and Sorensen (1987), is to insist that a rational agent can simply refuse to accept that such instability applies to herself in the first place. According to this line of thought it can be rational for a subject to discount even very strong empirical evidence that the anti-expertise condition obtains. I present a new variety of anti-expertise condition where no particular empirical stage-setting is required, since the subject can deduce a priori that an anti-expertise condition obtains. This kind of anti-expertise case is therefore not amenable to the line of response that Jeffrey and Sorensen recommend. (shrink)

Freedom and security are often portrayed as things that have to be traded off against one another, but this view does not capture the full complexity of the freedom-security relationship. Rather, there seem to be four different ways in which freedom and security connect to each other: freedom can come at the cost of security, security can come at the cost of freedom, freedom can work to the benefit of security, and security can (...) work to the benefit of freedom. This paper analyses each of these connections in turn. It shows that particular understandings of freedom can help us to see particular connections between freedom and security. The practical examples used to illustrate these connections are drawn from the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be suggested that, in the face of challenges such as this one, taking into account all four connections between freedom and security can ultimately help decision-makers in upholding both. (shrink)

This paper presents a new kind of problem in the ethics of distribution. The problem takes the form of several “calibration dilemmas,” in which intuitively reasonable aversion to small-stakes inequalities requires leading theories of distribution to recommend intuitively unreasonable aversion to large-stakes inequalities. We first lay out a series of such dilemmas for prioritarian theories. We then consider a widely endorsed family of egalitarian views and show that they are subject to even more forceful calibration dilemmas than prioritarian theories. Finally, (...) we show that our results challenge common utilitarian accounts of the badness of inequalities in resources. (shrink)

Perhaps death’s badness is an illusion. Epicureans think so and argue that agents cannot be harmed by death when they’re alive nor when they’re dead. I argue that each version of Epicureanism faces a fatal dilemma: it is either committed to a demonstrably false view about the relationship between self-regarding reasons and well-being or it is involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism. I first provide principled reason to think that any viable view about the badness of death (...) must allow that agents have self-regarding reason to avoid death if doing so would increase their total well-being. I then show that Epicurean views which do not preserve this link are subject to reductio arguments and so should be rejected. After that, I show that the Epicurean views which accommodate this desideratum are involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism. (shrink)