Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended to probability operators. Some problems and prospects for probabilistic representations of content and context are explored.

I provide a novel, non-reductive, action-first skill-based account of active imagining. I call it the Skillful Action Account of Imagining (the skillful action account for short). According to this account, to actively imagine something is to form a representation of that thing, where the agent’s forming that representation and selecting its content together constitute a means to the completion of some imaginative project. Completing imaginative projects stands to the active formation of the relevant representations as an end. The account thus (...) bakes in the means-end order that some in action theory take to be definitional of intentional action. Moreover, in the spirit of this conception of intentional action, I hold that a central feature of the means-end order exhibited in active imagining is the agent’s direct non-observational knowledge both of her act of imagining and of its having this order. The agent knows that she’s actively imagining (that-)p and knows why she actively imagines this–to carry on the pretense, engage in the fiction, predict another’s behavior, reason about possibility or necessity, reason about contingent matters of fact, just imagine for its own sake, and so on. I show that the account accounts for the possibility of misimagining while holding onto the idea that we imagine what we intend to imagine. I likewise show that the account unifies imagining across types of imaginative project like those just listed in a way that tolerates conflict in the roles that imagining plays in the mental economy across those projects. Finally, I show that the account can accommodate passive imagining like involuntary and automatic imagining as well as mind wandering. -/- Acknowledgments: I'd like to thank Amy Kind, Robert Brandom, Colin Allen, Peter Langland-Hassan, Alison Springle, Daniel Munro, Nick Wiltsher, and Andrew Rubner for excellent comments on earlier drafts from which this paper greatly benefited. I'd also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for extremely helpful comments. And I'd like to thank participants of the 2022 Simulationism Conference hosted by the Centre for Philosophy of Memory and the 4th Annual Conference [Online/Virtual] for Imagination Domination (COVID) hosted by Amy Kind for excellent feedback on earlier versions of the paper. (shrink)

Deontologists have been slow to address decision-making under risk and uncertainty, no doubt because the standard approaches to non-moral decision theory appear superficially similar to consequentialist moral reasoning. I identify some central tenets of simple decision theory and show that they should not put deontologists off, before showing where we should go next to develop a comprehensive deontological decision theory.

Purpose This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. -/- Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe (...) trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. -/- Findings Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. -/- Originality/value Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue. (shrink)

Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. The reader (...) is left stranded: to reach plausible conclusions, Walzer deployed an implausible conception of our rights to life; McMahan’s more rigorous account of those rights generates untenable conclusions. Absent new developments, it seems that the prospects for grounding the ethics of war in individual rights are poor: any theory of our rights to life that is sufficiently indiscriminate to work in the chaos of war is not discriminating enough to be a plausible theory of our rights to life. Perhaps by rejecting the ideal of the rights-respecting war altogether we might develop an alternative theory of justified warfare, which marries theoretical soundness with conclusions that we can more confidently support. (shrink)

Cancer biology features the ascription of normal functions to parts of cancers. At least some ascriptions of function in cancer biology track local normality of parts within the global abnormality of the aberration to which those parts belong. That is, cancer biologists identify as functions activities that, in some sense, parts of cancers are supposed to perform, despite cancers themselves having no purpose. The present paper provides a theory to accommodate these normal function ascriptions—I call it the Modeling Account of (...) Normal Function (MA). MA comprises two claims. First, normal functions are activities whose performance by the function-bearing part contributes to the self-maintenance of the whole system and, thereby, results in the continued presence of that part. Second, MA holds that models of system-level activities that are (partly) constitutive of self-maintenance are improved by including a representation of the relevant function-bearing part and by making reference to the activity/activities that part performs which contribute(s) to those system-level activities. I contrast MA with two other accounts that seek to explicate the ascription of normal functions in biology, namely, the organizational account and the selected effects account. Both struggle to extend to cancer biology. However, I offer ecumenical readings which allow them to recover some ascriptions of normal function to parts of cancers. So, though I contend that MA excels in this respect, the purpose of this paper is served if it provides materials for bridging the gap between cancer biology, philosophy of cancer, and the literature on function. (shrink)

People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for human well-being, then claims that we cannot have (...) these relationships, if we do not recognise associative duties, before concluding that we should therefore recognise associative duties. I then introduce a nonteleological alternative, grounded in the Appropriate Response approach to ethical theory. (shrink)

After some generalities about connections between functions and relations in Sections 1 and 2 recalls the possibility of taking the semantic values of ‐ary Boolean connectives as ‐ary relations among truth‐values rather than as ‐ary truth functions. Section 3, the bulk of the paper, looks at correlates of these truth‐value relations as applied to formulas, and explores in a preliminary way how their properties are related to the properties of “logical relations” among formulas such as equivalence, implication (entailment) and contrariety (...) (logical incompatibility), concentrating for illustrative purposes on binary logical relations such as those just listed. To avoid an excess of footnotes, some points have been deferred to an Appendix as “Longer Notes”. (shrink)

Theories of moral responsibility rely on tracing principles to account for derivative moral responsibility. Manuel Vargas has argued that such principles are problematic. To show this, he presents cases where individuals are derivatively blameworthy for their conduct, but where there is no suitable earlier time to which their blameworthiness can be traced back. John Martin Fischer and Neal Tognazzini have sought to resolve this problem by arguing that blameworthiness in these scenarios can be traced back, given the right descriptions of (...) these agents’ later conduct. I contend that this strategy may succeed against Vargas’s particular examples, but that it fails to resolve the larger problem. After clarifying some key issues about derivative responsibility and tracing principles, I develop a case that isn’t amenable to Fischer and Tognazzini’s treatment. I then suggest the outlines of a compromise solution to the problem for tracing principles. (shrink)

Cancer biologists ascribe normal functions to parts of cancer. Normal functions are activities that parts of systems are in some minimal sense supposed to perform. Cancer biologists’ finding normality within the abnormality of cancer pose difficulties for two main approaches to normal function. One approach claims that normal functions are activities that parts are selected for. However, some parts of cancers that have normal functions aren’t selected to perform them. The other approach claims that normal functions are part-activities typical for (...) the system and that contribute to survival/reproduction. However, cancers are too heterogeneous to establish what’s typical across a type. (shrink)

Here is my thesis (and the outline of this paper). Increasingly secret, complex and inscrutable computational systems are being used to intensify existing power relations, and to create new ones (Section II). To be all-things-considered morally permissible, new, or newly intense, power relations must in general meet standards of procedural legitimacy and proper authority (Section III). Legitimacy and authority constitutively depend, in turn, on a publicity requirement: reasonably competent members of the political community in which power is being exercised must (...) be able to determine that power is being exercised legitimately and with proper authority (Section IV). The publicity requirement can be satisfied only if the powerful can explain their decision-making—including the computational tools that they use to support it—to members of their political community. Section V applies these ideas to opaque computational systems. Section VI addresses objections; Section VII concludes. (shrink)

The temporal structure for motivating, monitoring, and making sense of agency depends on encoding, maintaining, and accessing the right contents at the right times. These functions are facilitated by memory. Moreover, in informing action, memory is itself often active. That remembering is essential to and an expression of agency and is often active suggests that it is a type of action. Despite this, Galen Strawson (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103, 227–257, 2003) and Alfred Mele (2009) deny that remembering is (...) an action. They claim that memory fails to admit of control. Remembering is automatic—once remembering starts, the process can neither be stopped nor intervened on. Moreover, the agent does not initiate remembering. An agent has control over an event or process if and only if she has the capacity and opportunity to initiate and intervene on that event or process. Actions are events over which an agent has control. Since it is automatic, we fail to have control over remembering. Thus, remembering is not an action. In this paper, I draw out an assumption of Strawson’s and Mele’s accounts: an event-type whose tokens exhibit automaticity cannot, for that reason, be an action (§2). Against this assumption, I draw parallels between skilled bodily action and memory. I show that memory exhibits two defining features of skill: it can be learned with practice and it admits of attributions of excellence (§3). These features reveal how intelligent control is exerted in the exercise of skill despite apparent automaticity—control is gained over time (§4). Since exercises of skill are by definition actions and since memory exemplifies the defining features of skill, memory is a skill and instances of remembering are actions too. (shrink)

Mental actions are things we do with our minds. Consider inferring, deliberating, imagining, remembering, calculating, and so on. I introduce a non-reductive alternative to standard causalist accounts of mental action that understands such action in terms of dispositions for performing mental actions. I call this alternative the powers framework. On the powers framework, habitual and skillful mental actions are themselves infused with practical intelligence by being expressions of the agent’s rational tendencies and capacities, respectively. The intelligence exemplified in the performance (...) of habitual and skillful mental actions stems from the agent’s having shaped the corresponding tendencies and capacities through training and practice. In this way, mental habits and skills are ‘second nature’ to us. I substantiate the powers framework by giving an account of imagining as a type of skillful mental action. In particular, I argue that imagination is a power to construct representations and select their contents as a means to performing learned behaviors like pretending, engaging with fiction, predicting others’ behavior, reasoning about possibility and necessity, reasoning hypothetically or counterfactually about contingent matters of fact, and even imagining for its own sake. I extend the account of imagining to episodic remembering. I argue that such remembering, considered as a mental action, is a kind of imagining by virtue of the agent’s constructing a representation and selecting its content as a means of performing the learned behavior of navigating her personal past. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that using lethal or otherwise serious force in self-defense is justified only when three conditions are satisfied: first, there are some grounds for the defender to give priority to his own interests over those of the attacker (whether because the attacker has lost the protection of his right to life, for example, or because of the defender’s prerogative to prefer himself to others); second, the harm used is proportionate to the threat thereby averted; third, the harm (...) is necessary to avert that threat. The first and second conditions have been exhaustively discussed, but the third has been oddly neglected. Meanwhile a prominent school of thought has arisen, in the ethics of war, which seeks to ground the justification of killing in war in principles of individual self-defense. They too have failed to offer any substantive analysis of necessity, while at the same time appealing to it when it suits them to do so. In this paper, I attempt a detailed analysis of the necessity constraint on defensive force, and explore the implications of that analysis for the attempt to transpose principles of individual self-defense into the context of warfare. (shrink)

In 1753, the Berlin Academy announced that the focus of the prize essay contest of 1755 would be optimism, with entrants required (among other things) ‘to put forward arguments that will be thought most fitting to confirm or destroy this system’. In line with these instructions, entrants submitted essays that were either pro- or anti-optimism. This was to the dismay of one of the judges of the contest, André-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716–1764), who had, by his own admission, surreptitiously (...) attempted to influence the entrants by sketching out a ‘middle point’ between the polarized pro- and anti-optimist positions in a series of books published between 1754 and 1755, namely Thoughts on Freedom, The Diogenes of d’Alembert, and On Chance under the Rule of Providence. The aim of this essay is to elucidate and historically contextualize Prémontval’s highly original ‘middle point’, as outlined implicitly in the aforementioned books and much more explicitly in a series of essays published after the essay contest had concluded. (shrink)

This essay defends the claim that episodic remembering is a mental action by arguing that episodic remembering and sensory- or experience-like imagining are of a kind in a way relevant for agency. Episodic remembering is a type of imaginative project that involves the agential construction of imagistic-content and that aims at (veridically) representing particular events of the personal past. Neurally intact adults under normal conditions can token experiential memories of particular events from the personal past (merely) by intending or trying (...) to. An agent’s ability to actively remember depends not only on her being able to determine that some memory event occurs but on her ability to construct the relevant scene at will as well. I claim that the ability to guide construction with respect to imagistic-content is distinctive feature of a subset of active imagining. Episodic remembering is of a kind with that subset of active imagining by being a process of agential construction of imagistic-content, in this case, scene construction that aims at (veridically) representing the personal past. Agential scene construction in the context of remembering is the agent’s exploring her personal past as a highly circumscribed region of modal space. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask how – and whether – the rectification of injury at which corrective justice aims is possible, and by whom it must be performed. I split the injury up into components of harm and wrong, and consider their rectification separately. First, I show that pecuniary compensation for the harm is practically plausible, because money acts as a mediator between the damaged interest and other interests. I then argue that this is also a morally plausible approach, because (...) it does not claim too much for compensation: neither can all harms be compensated, nor can it be said when compensation is paid that the status quo ante has been restored. I argue that there is no conceptual reason for any particular agent paying this compensation. I then turn to the wrong, and reject three proposed methods of rectification. The first aims to rectify the wrong by rectifying the harm; the second deploys punitive damages; the third, punishment. After undermining each proposal, I argue that the wrong can only be rectified by a full apology, which I disaggregate into the admission of causal and moral responsibility, repudiation of the act, reform, and, in some cases, disgorgement and reparations, which I define as a good faith effort to share the burden of the victim’s harm. I argue, further, that only the injurer herself can make a full apology, and it is not something that can be coerced by other members of society. As such, whether rectification of the wrong can be a matter of corrective justice is left an open question. (shrink)

this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they can (...) justify overrid- ing the rights to life of some of those who must be killed to win a war. It then shows how these duties can be operationalised in practice: first, showing how soldiers who fight on behalf of their community can act on reasons that apply to the members of that community; second, showing that the argument from associative duties does not prove too much—in particular, that it does not license the intentional killing of noncombatants in war. (shrink)

Many of us believe (1) Saving a life is more important than averting any number of headaches. But what about risky cases? Surely: (2) In a single choice, if the risk of death is low enough, and the number of headaches at stake high enough, one should avert the headaches rather than avert the risk of death. And yet, if we will face enough iterations of cases like that in (2), in the long run some of those small risks of (...) serious harms will surely eventuate. And yet: (3) Isn't it still permissible for us to run these repeated risks, despite that knowledge? After all, if it were not, then many of the risky activities that we standardly think permissible would in fact be impermissible. Nobody has yet offered a principle that can accommodate all of 1-3. In this paper, I show that we can accommodate all of these judgements, by taking into account both ex ante and ex post perspectives. In doing so, I clear aside an important obstacle to a viable deontological decision theory. (shrink)

We investigate a basic probabilistic dynamic semantics for a fragment containing conditionals, probability operators, modals, and attitude verbs, with the aim of shedding light on the prospects for adding probabilistic structure to models of the conversational common ground.

I argue that riskier killings of innocent people are, other things equal, objectively worse than less risky killings. I ground these views in considerations of disrespect and security. Killing someone more riskily shows greater disrespect for him by more grievously undervaluing his standing and interests, and more seriously undermines his security by exposing a disposition to harm him across all counterfactual scenarios in which the probability of killing an innocent person is that high or less. I argue that the salient (...) probabilities are the agent’s sincere, sane, subjective probabilities, and that this thesis is relevant whether your risk-taking pertains to the probability of killing a person or to the probability that the person you kill is not liable to be killed. I then defend the view’s relevance to intentional killing; show how it differs from an account of blameworthiness; and explain its significance for all-things-considered justification and justification under uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper asks whether we can defend associative duties to our compatriots that are grounded solely in the relationship of liberal co-citizenship. The sort of duties that are especially salient to this relationship are duties of justice, duties to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship, and a duty to favour the interests of compatriots over those of foreigners. Critics have argued that the liberal conception of citizenship is too insubstantial to sustain these duties — indeed, that it (...) gives us little reason to treat compatriots any differently from how we treat foreigners, with all the practical consequences that this would entail. I suggest that on a specific conception of liberal citizenship we can, in fact, defend associative duties, but that these extend only to the duty to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship. Duties of justice and favouritism, I maintain, cannot be particularised to one's compatriots. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is a suite of Latin papers from 1685, some of which are still unpublished, in which Leibniz writes in the guise of a Catholic in order to defend Catholicism and counter Protestant objections, and this despite him being a lifelong Lutheran. After providing an overview of these writings (which I refer to as Leibniz’s “Catholic” writings) and the grounds for dating them to May–June 1685, I consider their purpose, arguing against the claim that they were (...) intended to support Church reunion and suggesting instead that they were apologetic in nature, intended as a reactivation or reimagining of Leibniz’s earlier “Catholic Demonstrations” project. I identify the patron Leibniz had in mind for these writings as Landgrave Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels and support this by a detailed comparison of the “Catholic” writings with the Leibniz-Landgrave correspondence and the Landgrave’s still-unpublished essays. This reveals that the Protestant arguments Leibniz uses in the “Catholic” writings are the very ones that he himself used when writing to the Landgrave, and that the responses Leibniz gives to these arguments are the very ones that the Landgrave used. I also consider the context of the writings, suggesting they were crafted during a period of personal uncertainty for Leibniz and possibly aimed at securing a position under the Landgrave. (shrink)

Public discourse implicitly appeals to what we call the “Traumatic Untrustworthiness Argument” (TUA). To motivate, articulate, and assess the TUA, we appeal to Hawley’s (2019) commitment account of trust and trustworthiness. On Hawley’s account, being trustworthy consists in the successful avoidance of unfulfilled commitments and involves three components: the actual avoidance of unfulfilled commitments, sincerity in one’s taking on elective commitments, and competence in fulfilling commitments one has incurred. In contexts of testimony, what’s at issue is the speaker’s competence and (...) sincere intention to speak truthfully. The TUA targets trauma victims’ competence rather than their sincerity. According to the TUA, empirical evidence shows that trauma undermines victims’ trustworthiness with regard to speaking truthfully about their trauma by undermining their competence to remember the relevant event. We argue that what the evidence shows is rather that remembering traumatic events involves a distinct “mode of manifesting” the competence to remember particular events from the personal past. Trauma victims are competent to speak truthfully about their trauma and ought to be trusted at least with regard to the central details of the event. By suggesting otherwise, the TUA threatens an insidious form of epistemic injustice which Hawley’s account helps us locate. (shrink)

This paper explicates a conception of injury as right-violation, which allows us to distinguish between setbacks to interests that should, and should not, be the concern of theories of justice. It begins by introducing a hybrid theory of rights, grounded in (a) the mobilisation of our moral equality to (b) protect our most important interests, and shows how violations of rights are the concern of justice, while setbacks where one of the twin grounds of rights is defeated are not. It (...) then looks more closely at the substantive moral components of injury, namely harm—damage to one’s interests—and wrong—disrespect for one’s moral equality. It argues that, on the hybrid conception of rights, harm and wrong are individually necessary and jointly sufficient components of injury, and the disvalue of neither is reducible to the other—in particular, it is a mistake to construe the disrespect identified by wrong as another damaged interest. Finally, it distinguishes between the public and private dimensions of harm and wrong, and makes some preliminary suggestions as to whether the remedy for these different dimensions should lie in criminal, distributive, or corrective justice. (shrink)

This chapter examines the pioneering work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) on various number systems, in particular binary, which he independently invented in the mid-to-late 1670s, and hexadecimal, which he invented in 1679. The chapter begins with the oft-debated question of who may have influenced Leibniz’s invention of binary, though as none of the proposed candidates is plausible I suggest a different hypothesis, that Leibniz initially developed binary notation as a tool to assist his investigations in mathematical problems that were (...) exercising him at the time, namely those concerning the divisibility of composite numbers, primality, and perfect numbers. The chapter then explores Leibniz’s development of binary, his little-known work on binary fractions and expansions, his use of binary as a symbol for creation in his philosophical-theology, and his response to the suggestion that there was a correlation between binary numeration and the hexagrams of the ancient Chinese divinatory text, the Yijing. The chapter then focuses on Leibniz’s work on other number systems, in particular his invention and exploration of hexadecimal as well as his work on duodecimal. The chapter concludes by revealing a hitherto unknown practical application of binary that Leibniz devised in the last year of his life. (shrink)

Wars are large-scale conflicts between organized groups of belligerents, which involve suffering, devastation, and brutality unlike almost anything else in human experience. Whatever one’s other beliefs about morality, all should agree that the horrors of war are all but unconscionable, and that warfare can be justified only if we have some compel- ling account of what is worth fighting for, which can justify contributing, as individu- als and as groups, to this calamitous endeavour. Although this question should obviously be central (...) to both philosophical and politi- cal discussion about war, it is at the forefront of neither. In recent years, philosophical discussion of warfare has bloomed, but the debate has focused on whom we may kill, on the assumption that our aims are justified.1 Political debate, meanwhile, is more concerned with matters of prudence, international law, and public justification, than with reassessing what is worth fighting for. For wars of intervention to halt or prevent massive humanitarian crises, this gap is not so troubling. When warfare is the only means to prevent the mass killing or enslavement of the innocent, the purposes of military force are clear enough (though undoubtedly many other problems remain). The problem is more pressing, how- ever, for the justification of national defence.3 Although common-sense morality and international law view national defence as the paradigm case of justified warfare, grounding this consensus is surprisingly difficult.4 We typically believe that any state is justified in using lethal force to protect its territory against any form of uninvited military incursion by any other state. And yet we lack a good argument to explain why this should be so. In this chapter, I explain why one familiar and otherwise plausible approach to the justification of killing in war cannot adequately ground common-sense views of permissible national defence.5 Reductionists believe that justified warfare reduces to an aggregation of acts that are justified under ordinary principles of interpersonal morality.6 The standard form of reductionism focuses on the principles governing killing in ordinary life, specifically those that justify intentional killing in self- and other-defence, and unintended but foreseen (for short, collateral) killing as a lesser evil. Justified warfare, on this view, is no more than the coextension of multiple acts justified under these two principles. Reductionism is the default philosophical approach to thinking through the ethics of killing in war. It makes perfect sense to ask what principles govern permissible kill- ing in general, before applying them to the particular context of war. If it cannot deliver a plausible set of conclusions about when national defence is permitted, then we must either revise our beliefs about which conclusions count as plausible, or else face the significant challenge of developing a different theoretical model for justifying war- fare—an exceptionalist model, which views war as an exception to the regular moral landscape, to which principles apply which apply to nothing else but war.7 We must show, in other words, that there is something worth fighting for in wars of national defence, which is not engaged when we use force in any other context. The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2.2 sets out the argument against reduc- tionism.8 Section 2.3 considers and rebuts one common response to the argument, which has often been thought sufficient grounds to disregard its conclusion. Section 2.4 then asks whether a modified reductionism would survive unscathed by the argu- ment. Finally, section 2.5 sets out some desiderata on a plausible exceptionalist alterna- tive. Section 2.6 concludes. (shrink)

My contribution to this Symposium focuses on the links between sexuality and reproduction from the evolutionary point of view.' The relation between women's sexuality and reproduction is particularly importantb ecause of a vital intersectionb etweenp olitics and biology feminists have noticed, for more than a century, that women's identity is often defined in terms of her reproductive capacity. More recently, in the second wave of the feminist movement in the United States, debates about women'si dentityh ave explicitlyi ncludeds exuality;m uch (...) feminist argument in the late 1960's and early 1970's involved an attempt to separate out an autonomous female sexuality from women's reproductive functions. It is especially relevant, then, to examine biological arguments, particularlye volutionarya rgumentst, o see what they say about whether and how women's sexuality is related to reproduction. We shall find that many evolutionarya rgumentss eem to supportt he direct linkingo f female sexualitya nd reproductionY. et I will argue that this supporti s not well-groundedI. n fact, I think evolutionarye xplanationso f female sexuality exemplify how social beliefs and social agendas can influence very basic biological explanations of fundamental physiological processes. In this paper, I shall spend some time spelling out a few examples in which assumptions about the close link between reproduction and sexuality yield misleading results, then I shall conclude with a discussion of the consequences of this case study for issues in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen contends that free will is a mystery. Here I present an argument in the spirit of van Inwagen's. According to the Assimilation Argument, libertarians cannot plausibly distinguish causally undetermined actions, the ones they take to be exercises of free will, from overtly randomized outcomes of the sort nobody would count as exercises of free will. I contend that the Assimilation Argument improves on related arguments in locating the crucial issues between van Inwagen and libertarians who hope to (...) demystify free will, while avoiding objections these arguments have faced. (shrink)

Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the origins of contemporary traditionalist just war theory in Michael (...) Walzer's work to the revisionist critique of Walzer and the subsequent revival of traditionalism. I discuss central questions of methodology, as well as consider the morality of resorting to war and the morality of conduct in war. I show that although the revisionists exposed philosophical shortcomings in Walzer's arguments, their radical conclusions should prompt us not to reject the broad contemporary consensus, but instead to seek better arguments to underpin it. (shrink)

A fresh translation and in-depth commentary of Leibniz's seminal text, the Monadology. -/- Written in 1714, the Monadology is widely considered to be the classic statement of Leibniz's mature philosophy. In the space of 90 numbered paragraphs, totalling little more than 6000 words, Leibniz outlines - and argues for - the core features of his philosophical system. Although rightly regarded as a masterpiece, it is also a very condensed work that generations of students have struggled to understand. -/- Lloyd (...) Strickland presents a new translation of the Monadology, alongside key parts of the Theodicy, and an in-depth, section-by-section commentary that explains in detail not just what Leibniz is saying in the text but also why he says it. The sharp focus on the various arguments and other justifications Leibniz puts forward makes possible a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of his doctrines. (shrink)

The Luck Objection is an influential family of challenges to libertarianism. In recent years, discussions of the Luck Objection have reached an impasse of sorts. On one hand, existing responses to the objection have failed to satisfy libertarianism’s many critics. On the other hand, a growing number of libertarians seem unimpressed by existing formulations of the objection. To break the impasse, I present a two-stage version of the objection. The first stage has the limited objective of showing that supposed exercises (...) of free will resemble certain nonactions in being truly random outcomes. The second stage seeks to show that we aren’t morally responsible for supposed exercises of free will if they are truly random outcomes. The leading idea is that such actions, qua truly random outcomes of our prior mental states, don’t meet a plausible guidance requirement for morally responsible agency. (shrink)

The first collection of Leibniz's key writings on the binary system, newly translated, with many previously unpublished in any language. -/- The polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is known for his independent invention of the calculus in 1675. Another major—although less studied—mathematical contribution by Leibniz is his invention of binary arithmetic, the representational basis for today's digital computing. This book offers the first collection of Leibniz's most important writings on the binary system, all newly translated by the authors with many (...) previously unpublished in any language. Taken together, these thirty-two texts tell the story of binary as Leibniz conceived it, from his first youthful writings on the subject to the mature development and publication of the binary system. -/- As befits a scholarly edition, Strickland and Lewis have not only returned to Leibniz's original manuscripts in preparing their translations, but also provided full critical apparatus. In addition to extensive annotations, each text is accompanied by a detailed introductory “headnote” that explains the context and content. Additional mathematical commentaries offer readers deep dives into Leibniz's mathematical thinking. The texts are prefaced by a lengthy and detailed introductory essay, in which Strickland and Lewis trace Leibniz's development of binary, place it in its historical context, and chart its posthumous influence, most notably on shaping our own computer age. (shrink)

New AI technologies have the potential to cause unintended harms in diverse domains including warfare, judicial sentencing, biomedicine and governance. One strategy for realising the benefits of AI whilst avoiding its potential dangers is to ensure that new AIs are properly ‘aligned’ with some form of ‘alignment target.’ One danger of this strategy is that – dependent on the alignment target chosen – our AIs might optimise for objectives that reflect the values only of a certain subset of society, and (...) that do not take into account alternative views about what constitutes desirable and safe behaviour for AI agents. In response to this problem, several AI ethicists have suggested alignment targets that are designed to be sensitive to widespread normative disagreement amongst the relevant stakeholders. Authors inspired by voting theory have suggested that AIs should be aligned with the verdicts of actual or simulated ‘moral parliaments’ whose members represent the normative views of the relevant stakeholders. Other authors inspired by decision theory and the philosophical literature on moral uncertainty have suggested that AIs should maximise socially expected choiceworthiness. In this paper, I argue that both of these proposals face several important problems. In particular, they fail to select attractive ‘compromise options’ in cases where such options are available. I go on to propose and defend an alternative, bargaining-theoretic alignment target, which avoids the problems associated with the voting- and decision-theoretic approaches. (shrink)

In the context of his highly influential defence of compatibilism, P. F. Strawson 1962 introduced the terms "reactive attitude" and "objective attitude" to the free-will lexicon. He argued, in effect, that relinquishing such reactive attitudes as resentment and moral indignation isn't a real possibility for us, since doing so would commit us to exclusive objectivity, a stance incompatible with ordinary interpersonal relationships. While most commentators have challenged Strawson's link between personal relationships and the reactive attitudes, Tamler Sommers 2007 has taken (...) up Strawson's claim that exclusive objectivity would preclude meaningful relationships. Here I set out a defence of this claim by identifying a kind of interpersonal caring that is plausibly both required for such relationships and excluded by the objective attitude. I then argue that this defence helps to support Strawson's more controversial claim about personal relationships and the reactive attitudes. (shrink)

I propose a distinct type of robustness, which I suggest can support a confirmatory role in scientific reasoning, contrary to the usual philosophical claims. In model robustness, repeated production of the empirically successful model prediction or retrodiction against a background of independentlysupported and varying model constructions, within a group of models containing a shared causal factor, may suggest how confident we can be in the causal factor and predictions/retrodictions, especially once supported by a variety of evidence framework. I present climate (...) models of greenhouse gas global warming of the 20th Century as an example, and emphasize climate scientists’ discussions of robust models and causal aspects. The account is intended as applicable to a broad array of sciences that use complex modeling techniques. (shrink)

Many of us think we have agent-centred options to act suboptimally. Some of these involve favouring our own interests. Others involve sacrificing them. In this paper, I explore three different ways to accommodate agent-centred options in a criterion of objective permissibility. I argue against satisficing and rational pluralism, and in favour of a principle built around sensitivity to personal cost.

This article discusses various dangers that accompany the supposedly benign methods in behavioral evoltutionary biology and evolutionary psychology that fall under the framework of "methodological adaptationism." A "Logic of Research Questions" is proposed that aids in clarifying the reasoning problems that arise due to the framework under critique. The live, and widely practiced, " evolutionary factors" framework is offered as the key comparison and alternative. The article goes beyond the traditional critique of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, to (...) present problems such as the disappearance of evidence, the mishandling of the null hypothesis, and failures in scientific reasoning, exemplified by a case from human behavioral ecology. In conclusion the paper shows that "methodological adaptationism" does not deserve its benign reputation. (shrink)

Philosophers, psychologists, economists and other social scientists continue to debate the nature of human well-being. We argue that this debate centers around five main conceptualizations of well-being: hedonic well-being, life satisfaction, desire fulfillment, eudaimonia, and non-eudaimonic objective-list well-being. Each type of well-being is conceptually different, but are they empirically distinguishable? To address this question, we first developed and validated a measure of desire fulfillment, as no measure existed, and then examined associations between this new measure and several other well-being measures. (...) In addition, we explored associations among all five types of well-being. We found high correlations among all measures of well-being, but generally correlations did not approach unity, even when correcting for unreliability. Furthermore, correlations between well-being and related constructs (e.g., demographics, personality) depended on the type of well-being measured. We conclude that empirical findings based on one type of well-being measure may not generalize to all types of well-being. (shrink)

If we were required to sacrifice our own interests whenever doing so was best overall, or prohibited from doing so unless it was optimal, then we would be mere sites for the realisation of value. Our interests, not ourselves, would wholly determine what we ought to do. We are not mere sites for the realisation of value — instead we, ourselves, matter unconditionally. So we have options to act suboptimally. These options have limits, grounded in the very same considerations. Though (...) not merely such sites, you and I are also sites for the realisation of value, and our interests (and ourselves) must therefore sometimes determine what others ought to do, in particular requiring them to bear reasonable costs for our sake. Likewise, just as my moral status grounds a requirement that others show me appropriate respect, so must I do to myself. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Leibniz's doctrine of “universal rational religion,” i.e. a religion derived from reason and hence accessible to all, Christians and non-Christians alike, by virtue of the universality of reason. In this paper I shall identify some of the key theological truths and doctrines that Leibniz believed could be reached via reason, and as such would be accessible to non-Christians. While Leibniz held that there were a number of theological truths and doctrines that were potentially available to (...) all, he also acknowledged that non-Christians had enjoyed very limited success in reaching them. I end the paper by identifying Leibniz’s explanation for this. (shrink)

Benardete here interprets and, for the first time, pairs two important Platonic dialogues, the Gorgias and the Phaedrus . In linking these dialogues, he places Socrates' notion of rhetoric in a new light and illuminates the way in which Plato gives morality and eros a place in the human soul.

Recent philosophical attention to climate models has highlighted their weaknesses and uncertainties. Here I address the ways that models gain support through observational data. I review examples of model fit, variety of evidence, and independent support for aspects of the models, contrasting my analysis with that of other philosophers. I also investigate model robustness, which often emerges when comparing climate models simulating the same time period or set of conditions. Starting from Michael Weisberg’s analysis of robustness, I conclude that his (...) approach involves a version of reasoning from variety of evidence, enabling this robustness to be a confirmatory virtue.. (shrink)

Suppose that you are trying to pursue a morally worthy goal, but cannot do so without incurring some moral costs. At the outset, you believed that achieving your goal was worth no more than a given moral cost. And suppose that, time having passed, you have wrought only harm and injustice, without advancing your cause. You can now reflect on whether to continue. Your goal is within reach. What's more, you believe you can achieve it by incurring—from this point forward—no (...) more cost than it warranted at the outset. If you now succeed, the total cost will exceed the upper bound marked at the beginning. But the additional cost from this point is below that upper bound. And the good you will achieve is undiminished. How do the moral costs you have already inflicted bear upon your decision now? (shrink)

I discuss two types of evidential problems with the most widely touted experiments in evolutionary psychology, those performed by Leda Cosmides and interpreted by Cosmides and John Tooby. First, and despite Cosmides and Tooby's claims to the contrary, these experiments don't fulfil the standards of evidence of evolutionary biology. Second Cosmides and Tooby claim to have performed a crucial experiment, and to have eliminated rival approaches. Though they claim that their results are consistent with their theory but contradictory to the (...) leading non-evolutionary alternative, Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas theory, I argue that this claim is unsupported. In addition, some of Cosmides and Tooby's interpretations arise from misguided and simplistic understandings of evolutionary biology. While I endorse the incorporation of evolutionary approaches into psychology, I reject the claims of Cosmides and Tooby that a modular approach is the only one supported by evolutionary biology. Lewontin's critical examinations of the applications of adaptationist thinking provide a background of evidentiary standards against which to view the currently fashionable claims of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)