Kants Musikästhetik wird weithin unterschätzt. Dabei bietet sie die entscheidenden Ansätze zur Befreiung der Musik aus den Fängen der Nachahmungsästhetik, wie sie vor allem E.T.A.Hoffman kongenial umgesetzt hat.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly adopted in society, creating numerous opportunities but at the same time posing ethical challenges. Many of these are familiar, such as issues of fairness, responsibility and privacy, but are presented in a new and challenging guise due to our limited ability to steer and predict the outputs of AI systems. This chapter first introduces these ethical challenges, stressing that overviews of values are a good starting point but frequently fail to suffice due to the context (...) sensitivity of ethical challenges. Frequently, additional (ethical) values emerge for specific applications, as e.g. challenges with fraud detection are very different from those around language technologies. Second, methods to tackle these challenges are discussed. Main ethical theories (virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology) are shown to provide a starting point, but often lack the details needed for actionable AI Ethics. Instead, mid-level philosophical theories coupled to design-approaches such as Design for Values, together with interdisciplinary working methods, offer the best way forwards. The chapter aims to show how these approaches can lead to an ethics of AI that is actionable and that can be proactively integrated in the design of AI systems. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Little is known about how hospitalized patients share decisions with physicians. METHODS: We conducted an observational study of patient-doctor communication on an inpatient medicine service among 18 hospitalized patients and 9 physicians. A research assistant (RA) approached newly hospitalized patients and their physicians before morning rounds and obtained consent. The RA audio recorded morning rounds, and then separately interviewed both patient and physician. Coding was done using integrated analysis. RESULTS: Most patients were white (61%) and half were female. Most (...) physicians were male (66%) and of Southeast Asian descent (66%). All physicians explained the plan of care to the patients; most believed that their patient understood. However, many patients did not. Physicians rarely asked the patient for their opinion. In all those cases, the decision had been made previously by the doctors. No decisions were made with the patient. Patients sometimes disagreed. CONCLUSIONS: Shared decision-making may not be the norm in hospital care. Although physicians do explain treatment plans, many hospitalized patients do not understand enough to share in decisions. When patients do assert their opinion, it can result in conflict. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Some hospitalized patients are interested in discussing treatment. Improving hospital communication can foster patient autonomy. (shrink)

The topic of this thesis is axiological uncertainty – the question of how you should evaluate your options if you are uncertain about which axiology is true. As an answer, I defend Expected Value Maximisation (EVM), the view that one option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. More precisely, I explore the axiomatic foundations of this view. I employ results from state-dependent utility theory, extend them in various ways and interpret (...) them accordingly, and thus provide axiomatisations of EVM as a theory of axiological uncertainty. (shrink)

According to Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, one is in a conscious mental state if and only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state via a suitable HOT. Several critics have argued that the possibility of so-called targetless HOTs?that is, HOTs that represent one as being in a state that does not exist?undermines the theory. Recently, Wilberg (2010) has argued that HOT theory can offer a straightforward account of such cases: since consciousness is a (...) property of mental state tokens, and since there are no states to exhibit consciousness, one is not in conscious states in virtue of targetless HOTs. In this paper, I argue that Wilberg's account is problematic and that Rosenthal's version of HOT theory, according to which a suitable HOT is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness, is to be preferred to Wilberg's account. I then argue that Rosenthal's account can comfortably accommodate targetless HOTs because consciousness is best understood as a property of individuals, not a property of states. (shrink)

The normative mechanics of promising seem complex. The strength and content of promissory obligations, and the residual duties they entail upon being violated, have various prima facie surprising features. We give an account to explain these features. Promises have a point. The point of a promise to φ is a promise-independent reason to φ for the promisee’s sake. A promise turns this reason into a duty. This explains the mechanics of promises. And it grounds a nuanced picture of immoral promises, (...) an argument against promissory bare wrongings, and a constraint on theories of why we have promissory obligations at all. (shrink)

I offer here a new hypothesis about the nature of implicit attitudes. Psy- chologists and philosophers alike often distinguish implicit from explicit attitudes by maintaining that we are aware of the latter, but not aware of the former. Recent experimental evidence, however, seems to challenge this account. It would seem, for example, that participants are frequently quite adept at predicting their own perfor- mances on measures of implicit attitudes. I propose here that most theorists in this area have nonetheless overlooked (...) a commonsense distinction regarding how we can be aware of attitudes, a difference that fundamentally distinguishes implicit and explicit attitudes. Along the way, I discuss the implications that this distinction may hold for future debates about and experimental investigations into the nature of implicit attitudes. (shrink)

Equal Justice explores the role of the idea of equality in liberal theories of justice. The title indicates the book’s two-part thesis: first, I claim that justice is the central moral category in the socio-political domain; second, I argue for a specific conceptual and normative connection between the ideas of justice and equality. This pertains to the age-old question concerning the normative significance of equality in a theory of justice. The book develops an independent, systematic, and comprehensive theory of equality (...) and egalitarianism. The principal question is about the importance of equality in a theory of justice. More precisely, we should pose questions in four contracting circles: 1. Is justice the supreme value guiding our setup of the basic structure of society, or are there other, equally important values, such as recognition, care, communal belonging? 2. If justice is the highest guiding principle, which competing ideals—especially equality and freedom—ought to have precedence in a policy oriented toward justice? What status does the ideal of equality have in that framework? 3. If equality is a basic ideal of just policy, how should it be practically realized? What sort of equality (equal opportunity, equality of welfare, resource equality) should be demanded? 4. What patterned distribution of which specific goods does the ideal of equality demand? Which principles of distribution can be justified according to our justice ideal? To conclude and summarize: 5. What is the essential core of an egalitarian theory of justice, as opposed to an inegalitarian theory? These five questions structure the work’s order of argumentation. Part A elaborates the conceptual foundations and basic moral principles of justice and equality. Chapter I sets out to install justice as the central moral category in the socio-political domain. At the beginning of the first chapter, the conceptual foundations of justice are clarified. While not eliminating the classical distinctions between different forms of justice, I argue that the distributive paradigm is of primary importance. The primacy of justice in the socio-political domain is developed out of a confrontation with alternative positions, those which maintain either that justice generally, or distributive justice in particular, are subsidiary virtues. At the end of Chapter I, the first of the questions mentioned above is answered in a way that establishes justice as the guiding normative concept for the foundation and evaluation of any social order. To clarify the role of equality in a theory of justice, Chapter II separates the idea of equality into four different principles. They are organized in a way that begins with the most general and uncontroversial principle of equality, and progresses towards increasingly detailed and contested principles. There are two theses that articulate and defend the significance of equality for justice: First there is a conceptual connection between justice and equality, in that principles of formal and proportional equality are necessary in order to explicate the concept of justice. These two principles establish an unbreakable bond between justice and equality. Justice can only be explained—or so I argue—by reference to these and other (normative) principles of equality. The second thesis posits a normative relationship between justice and equality, which is disclosed by three substantive principles of equality: moral equality, the presumption of equality, and the principle of responsibility. I argue that the normative core of an egalitarian theory of justice is expressed by the latter two principles, which are themselves based on the first principle, that of moral equality. When we view one another as persons, what form of equality or equal treatment is normatively demanded? I argue that the answer to this question is given by the procedural principle of the presumption of equality: regardless of their apparent differences, all persons deserve strictly equal treatment, unless certain kinds of differences have whatever particular relevance would justify, on generally acceptable grounds, unequal treatment or unequal distribution. The justification of the presumption of equality is central to this work and has considerable importance. If the presumption principle’s validity can be justified by enlisting the principle of general justification, then the primacy of equality, and the essential argument for an egalitarian theory of justice, is established. This would likewise provide a procedure for the construction of a material theory of justice. The second question is answered thereby at the end of Chapter II: Equality should have primacy over competing ideals within a justice-oriented policy. The presumption of equality establishes this primacy and, at the same time, offers an appropriate metric and guideline for the construction of a material theory of distributive justice. The presumption of equality in Part B offers an elegant procedure for the development of a theory of distributive justice. Chapter III clearly sets out the necessary prerequisites that a theory of distribution must satisfy in order to determine a liberal-egalitarian distributional framework. We need to specify in which situation the distribution takes place; which goods are and are not to be distributed; in which respect the presumptive equality is to be produced; and by and to whom, and for what period, the relevant goods are to be distributed. The distribution is based on resources understood as general-purpose means. It is necessary to divide goods into different categories, since the justification for unequal treatment in one domain will not carry over into another. This makes presumptive equality necessarily complex. To that end, four spheres of justice are distinguished: (1) the political sphere, which involves allocating rights through the distribution of civil liberties; (2) the democratic sphere, in which political power and the rights of political participation are regulated; (3) the economic sphere, in which income and property are distributed; (4) the social sphere, in which social positions and opportunities are distributed. This framework of distributive justice answers the third of our guiding questions, about the nature of equality, in terms of equality of resources. Chapters IV and V set out the egalitarian distributive criteria for each sphere. I argue that the generally accepted, fundamental rights of classical liberalism are more effectively reconstructed by reference to the equal resource distribution presumptively required in those spheres. Chapter IV shows that when it comes to the first two spheres, those involving basic rights and freedoms and entitlement political participation, there can be no justified exceptions to the equal distribution of the relevant goods. That section argues, contrary to what we commonly find in theories of freedom or popular sovereignty, that the value of freedom and self-determination as the political basis of autonomy is best realized through the presumption of equal distribution. Chapter V deals with the other two spheres, those of economic goods and social positions, and argues for justified exceptions to equal distribution. In the economic sphere we find one principal reason favouring unequal distribution of resources, and three restrictions and compensations limiting that inequality. The basic exception to equal economic distribution arises from the unequal consequences of personal responsibility. From a suitably egalitarian standpoint, the principle of responsibility is the normative principle that determines which reasons justify economic inequality. Here the basic idea is that unequal shares of social goods are fair if they result from the choices and deliberate actions of the relevant parties. That individuals have to bear the costs of their own choices is a condition of autonomy. However, benefits or disadvantages arising from arbitrary and unmerited differences in social circumstances or natural endowments is unfair. The unequal consequences of independent decision-making and action must therefore be limited by compensating first for preferences, secondly for disadvantages, and thirdly by redistributing wealth in aid of the worse-off. I situations of emergency, compensating for disadvantages has priority over all other claims, owing to the urgency of the situation. Social inequalities go beyond the permissible limit if it is possible to improve the long-term social or economic situation of the worse-off by redistributing wealth to them. These exceptions lead to a complex system of free economic action within a framework of compensatory tax and transfer mechanisms. Finally, in the social sphere, the distribution of social positions, offices and opportunities must be structured to ensure that equally talented and motivated citizens have roughly equal chances of obtaining those offices or positions, irrespective of their economic or social class backgrounds. This compromise is permissible for reasons of freedom and prudence, and it makes a certain measure of inequality acceptable. The fourth of our guiding questions is answered accordingly. There are five principles of justice for the basic structure of society, and five legal principles that govern the special distribution of goods in the respective spheres—all are ranked according to their most defensible grounds of priority, ensuring that everyone is accorded equal justice. Chapter VI recapitulates the initial question of equality’s value. The conception of equal justice developed in this work postulates five principles of equality and five principles of law; these constitute an egalitarian framework because they support and promote social justice. Equality has value with respect to them, but is not given any independent, intrinsic value. That is why I call the account developed here a form of constitutive egalitarianism: justice is realized through the realization of equality, itself accomplished by applying the five postulates of equality and five distributive principles of law. This is an egalitarianism on two levels. The first level is involves the claim that morality or justice is conceptually connected with equality. The second level gives equality a substantial weight in what is conceptually validated at the first level, namely the presumption of equality, and constructs an appropriate interpretation and conception of distributive justice through principles of distribution for the individual spheres. The weight and importance of equality is shown by the distributive criteria applied to those spheres. This answers our final guiding question about the nature of an egalitarian theory. (shrink)

In the following paper we provide a personal definition of the existential philosophy and the existential subject. Before that we explore other historical definitions of existentialism. We were mainly interested in the relation between existentialism and nihilism, the focus of existential philosophy on the individual and the situation of the studied philosophical trend on the 1950's zeitgeist. The definition of existentialism as a form of trans-rationalism and its capacity to become a practical alternative to contemporary academic philosophy were also emphasized.

The pivotal role of the relation part-of in the description of living organisms is widely acknowledged. Organisms are open systems, which means that in contradistinction to mechanical artifacts they are characterized by a continuous flow and exchange of matter. A closer analysis of the spatial relations in biological organisms reveals that the decision as to whether a given particular is part-of a second particular or whether it is only contained-in the second particular is often controversial. We here propose a rule-based (...) approach which allows us to decide on the basis of well-defined criteria which of the two relations holds between two anatomical objects, given that one spatially includes the other. We discuss the advantages and limitations of this approach, using concrete examples from human anatomy. (shrink)

How ought you to evaluate your options if you're uncertain about what's fundamentally valuable? A prominent response is Expected Value Maximisation (EVM)—the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. But the expected value of an option depends on quantitative probability and value facts, and in particular on value comparisons across axiologies. We need to explain what it is for such facts to hold. Also, EVM (...) is by no means self-evident. We need an argument to defend that it’s true. This book introduces an axiomatic approach to answer these worries. It provides an explication of what EVM means by use of representation theorems: intertheoretic comparisons can be understood in terms of facts about which options are better than which, and mutatis mutandis for intratheoretic comparisons and axiological probabilities. And it provides a systematic argument to the effect that EVM is true: the theory can be vindicated through simple axioms. The result is a formally cogent and philosophically compelling extension of standard decision theory, and original take on the problem of axiological or normative uncertainty. (shrink)

I motivate and defend a previously underdeveloped functionalist account of the metaphysics of color, a view that I call ‘quality-space functionalism’ about color. Although other theorists have proposed varieties of color functionalism, this view differs from such accounts insofar as it identifies and individuates colors by their relative locations within a particular kind of so-called ‘quality space’ that reflects creatures’ capacities to discriminate visually among stimuli. My arguments for this view of color are abductive: I propose that quality-space functionalism best (...) captures our commonsense conception of color, fits with many experimental findings, coheres with the phenomenology of color experience, and avoids many issues for standard theories of color such as color physicalism and color relationalism. (shrink)

Need considerations play an important role in empirically informed theories of distributive justice. We propose a concept of need-based justice that is related to social participation and provide an ethical measurement of need-based justice. The β-ε-index satisfies the need-principle, monotonicity, sensitivity, transfer and several »technical« axioms. A numerical example is given.

According to the standard account of forgiveness, you forgive your wrongdoer by overcoming your resentment towards them. But how exactly must you do so? And when is such overcoming fitting? The aim of this paper is to introduce a novel version of the standard account to answer these questions. Its core idea is that the reactive attitudes are a fitting response not just to someone’s blameworthiness, but to their blameworthiness being significant for you, or worthy of your caring, in virtue (...) of your relationship to it. Someone’s blameworthiness is significant for you to the extent you’re bound up with what grounds it––e.g. with the wrongdoer’s being a participant in human relationships, with their attitudes, or with the victim’s being a source of demands. So you may fittingly not care about someone’s blameworthiness if it’s sufficiently insignificant for you in this manner––e.g. if their wrong happened far off in place and time. And forgiveness revolves around this. You forgive your wrongdoer if and only if, partly out of goodwill towards them, you cease to care about their blameworthiness––a bit as if their wrong had happened far off. If I’m right, this agent-relativity-based account can resolve the apparent ‘paradoxy of forgiveness’, satisfies a number of desiderata, and is plausible on an intuitive level. (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value either (...) when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)

The desideratum of semantic interoperability has been intensively discussed in medical informatics circles in recent years. Originally, experts assumed that this issue could be sufficiently addressed by insisting simply on the application of shared clinical terminologies or clinical information models. However, the use of the term ‘ontology’ has been steadily increasing more recently. We discuss criteria for distinguishing clinical ontologies from clinical terminologies and information models. Then, we briefly present the role clinical ontologies play in two multicentric research projects. Finally, (...) we discuss the interactions between these different kinds of knowledge representation artifacts and the stakeholders involved in developing interoperational real-world clinical applications. We provide ontology engineering examples from two EU-funded projects. (shrink)

I discuss here the nature of nonconscious mental states and the ways in which they may differ from their conscious counterparts. I first survey reasons to think that mental states can and often do occur without being conscious. Then, insofar as the nature of nonconscious mentality depends on how we understand the nature of consciousness, I review some of the major theories of consciousness and explore what restrictions they may place on the kinds of states that can occur nonconsciously. I (...) close with a discussion of what makes a state mental, if consciousness is not the mark of the mental. (shrink)

This article develops an objection to Kant’s proof of freedom from the Critique of Practical Reason. In his proof — the fact of reason argument — Kant deduces the reality of freedom, understood as the ability to act independently of all inclinations, from our consciousness of the unconditional validity of morality. He calls this consciousness the "fact of reason". After a systematic reconstruction of the argument, I develop an objection that relies on three points: (i) the cultural embeddedness of human (...) beings ("fact of culture"), (ii) an "external" perspective on human deliberative processes, and (iii) an alternative interpretation of the unconditional validity of morality that appears in practical deliberation. Contrary to Kant’s claims, I argue that the reality of freedom cannot be deductively derived from the fact of reason. I then discuss two objections to my argument. The first objection claims that my considerations regarding the "external" perspective misunderstand Kant's methodology. The second objection states that, based on my considerations, the fact of reason ultimately turns out to be an illusion. I discuss both objections and refute them. My ultimate conclusion is that Kant's fact of reason argument is not convincing. (shrink)

According to a traditional view, perceptual experiences are composites of distinct sensory and cognitive components. This dual-component theory has many benefits; in particular, it purports to offer a way forward in the debate over what kinds of properties perceptual experiences represent. On this kind of view, the issue reduces to the questions of what the sensory and cognitive components respectively represent. Here, I focus on the former topic. I propose a theory of the contents of the sensory aspects of perceptual (...) experience that provides clear criteria for identifying what kinds of properties they represent. (shrink)

Relationalism holds that perceptual experiences are relations between subjects and perceived objects. But much evidence suggests that perceptual states can be unconscious. We argue here that unconscious perception raises difficulties for relationalism. Relationalists would seem to have three options. First, they may deny that there is unconscious perception or question whether we have sufficient evidence to posit it. Second, they may allow for unconscious perception but deny that the relationalist analysis applies to it. Third, they may offer a relationalist explanation (...) of unconscious perception. We argue that each of these strategies is questionable. (shrink)

One of the most promising theories of consciousness currently available is higher-order thought (“HOT”) theory, according to which consciousness consists in having suitable HOTs regarding one’s mental life. But critiques of HOT theory abound. We explore here three recent objections to the theory, which we argue at bottom founder for the same reason. While many theorists today assume that consciousness is a feature of the actually existing mental states in virtue of which one has experiences, this assumption is in tension (...) with the underlying motivations for HOT theory and arguably false. We urge that these objections, though sophisticated, trade on this questionable conception of consciousness, thereby begging the question against HOT theory. We then explain how HOT theory might instead understand consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a solution to a challenge formulated by Judith Jarvis Thomson: We have to explain why the moral asymmetry between doing and allowing harm is a deep feature of our moral thinking. In a nutshell, my solution is this: It could not be otherwise. Accepting the asymmetry is indispensable for the construction and maintenance of stable moral communities. -/- My argument centrally involves mental resource management. Moral communities depend on their members’ commitment to moral norms. And, (...) I argue, community members can only be committed to these norms in the required ways without overextending their mental resources if morality contains the doing/allowing asymmetry. -/- This has two noteworthy implications. Firstly, we can and should stop discussing the asymmetry in normative ethics and, instead, regard it as “moral axiom” we cannot but accept. Secondly, even consequentialists have to accept the asymmetry but, by doing so, their view loses part of its intuitive appeal. Lastly, I turn to an objection. One might think that my indispensability argument confuses issues in moral psychology with issues in normative ethics. I reject the objection on broadly pragmatist grounds. (shrink)

Statements about the behavior of biochemical entities (e.g., about the interaction between two proteins) abound in the literature on molecular biology and are increasingly becoming the targets of information extraction and text mining techniques. We show that an accurate analysis of the semantics of such statements reveals a number of ambiguities that have to be taken into account in the practice of biomedical ontology engineering: Such statements can not only be understood as event reporting statements, but also as ascriptions of (...) dispositions or tendencies that may or may not refer to collectives of interacting molecules or even to collectives of interaction events. (shrink)

Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co-evolutionary framework for explaining transposon-host interactions. This (...) review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole-genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology. (shrink)

In their paper Nothing but the Truth Andreas Pietz and Umberto Rivieccio present Exactly True Logic, an interesting variation upon the four-valued logic for first-degree entailment FDE that was given by Belnap and Dunn in the 1970s. Pietz & Rivieccio provide this logic with a Hilbert-style axiomatisation and write that finding a nice sequent calculus for the logic will presumably not be easy. But a sequent calculus can be given and in this paper we will show that a calculus for (...) the Belnap-Dunn logic we have defined earlier can in fact be reused for the purpose of characterising ETL, provided a small alteration is made—initial assignments of signs to the sentences of a sequent to be proved must be different from those used for characterising FDE. While Pietz & Rivieccio define ETL on the language of classical propositional logic we also study its consequence relation on an extension of this language that is functionally complete for the underlying four truth values. On this extension the calculus gets a multiple-tree character—two proof trees may be needed to establish one proof. (shrink)

According to an increasingly popular view among philosophers of science, both causal and non-causal explanations can be accounted for by a single theory: the counterfactual theory of explanation. A kind of non-causal explanation that has gained much attention recently but that this theory seems unable to account for are grounding explanations. Reutlinger :239-256, 2017) has argued that, despite these appearances to the contrary, such explanations are covered by his version of the counterfactual theory. His idea is supported by recent work (...) on grounding by Schaffer and Wilson who claim there to be a tight connection between grounding and counterfactual dependence. The present paper evaluates the prospects of the idea. We show that there is only a weak sense in which grounding explanations convey information about counterfactual dependencies, and that this fact cannot plausibly be taken to reveal a distinctive feature that grounding explanations share with other kinds of explanations. (shrink)

In this chapter we deal with the challenge to the existence of free will and moral responsibility that is raised by the threat of determinism from a Wittgensteinian perspective. Our argument starts by briefly recapitulating Wittgenstein’s analysis of the practice of doubt in On Certainty. We subsequently turn to the problem of free will. We argue that the existence of free will is a basic certainty and that the thesis of determinism fails to cast doubt on it. We thereby make (...) use of – but also try to go beyond – Wittgenstein’s own remarks in his “Lectures on Freedom of the Will”. In the final section we focus more explicitly on moral responsibility. Inspired by P.F. Strawson’s work on free will and moral responsibility, which we take to be deeply Wittgensteinian, we argue that our practices of holding each other responsible manifest basic human certainties which cannot be meaningfully challenged by invoking the thesis of determinism. (shrink)

There are several conceptions of man in the history of philosophy. However, two considerable tendencies are recurring throughout modern history. A human being can be perceived as a complex mechanism or as a living organism. The response to the query has essential consequences in different areas. The article aims to provide a view of humankind that builds upon an organic conception of life, nature, and human beings, especially as elaborated by A. N. Whitehead and some of his followers. The article (...) also briefly examines the emergence and development of a mechanistic view. The historical overview exposes the close relationship between the worldview of a given era and the understanding of man. Finally, the article argues that the organic conceptions of life developed in the first half of the 20th century provide an essential alternative to mechanistic views and could help us to deal with several problems we are currently encountering. (shrink)

The standard argument for longtermism assumes that we should care as much about far future people as about our contemporaries. I challenge this assumption. I first consider existing interpretations of ‘temporal discounting’, and argue that such discounting seems either unwarranted or insufficient to block the argument. I then offer two alternative reasons to care less about far future people: caring as much about them as about our contemporaries would make our lives less authentic and less meaningful. If I’m right, this (...) undermines at least the strongest versions of longtermism. Plausibly, we should do much more for the far future than we’re currently doing. Still, we often ought to act for contemporaries’ sakes, even if longtermist actions would expectably do more good. (shrink)

Working memory, an important posit in cognitive science, allows one to temporarily store and manipulate information in the service of ongoing tasks. Working memory has been traditionally classified as an explicit memory system – that is, as operating on and maintaining only consciously perceived information. Recently, however, several studies have questioned this assumption, purporting to provide evidence for unconscious working memory. In this paper, we focus on visual working memory and critically examine these studies as well as studies of unconscious (...) perception that seem to provide indirect evidence for unconscious working memory. Our analysis indicates that current evidence does not support an unconscious working memory store, though we offer independent reasons to think that working memory may operate on unconsciously perceived information. (shrink)

In order to at least begin addressing the extensive the problem of moral clarity in aiding the deprived to some degree, I first argue that the duty to aid the deprived is not merely a charitable one, dependent on the discretion, or the arbitrary will, of the giver (1). Then, before further analysing the individual duty to aid, I critically examine whether deprivation is better alleviated or remedied through the duties of corrective justice. I argue that the perspective of corrective (...) justice is important, but not sufficient when it comes to dealing with deprivation (2). I then argue that non-domination cannot serve as a first-order principle of justice. It is too minimalistic, since it would not require duties of justice where deprivation exists, but dominating relations and institutions do not. (3). Going back to the individual duty to help, I argue that the duties to aid the needy must be assessed according to the situation at hand (4). In order to avoid meaninglessness and morality’s excessive demands, one should be able to identify the responsible agents by constructing a shared and, in the last resort, institution-based duty to help (5). The institutional approach in this paper argues that we should create and reform institutions in order to realize the pre-existing requirement to alleviate global deprivation. This is a form of “global political justice” that does not start with politics, but ends with global political institutions. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Nate Sharadin and Rob van Someren Greve pull into doubt a seemingly platitudinous idea: deontic evaluation is capable of guiding action (“Capable”). After discussing several arguments for it, the authors conclude that, to the extent to which Capable can be defended, it cannot produce interesting results about the nature of the deontic. My goal is to argue that the authors’ skeptical endeavors are unconvincing. I aim to show that they rely on an implausibly broad understanding of (...) “actual guidance”. I propose an alternative understanding and show that, with it, “functionalist” arguments of the above kind can produce interesting results. If I am right, Sharadin’s and van Someren Greve’s considerations do not get off the ground. Instead, optimism seems warranted: We can learn something interesting about the nature of the deontic by assuming that actual guidance is the function of deontic evaluation. (shrink)

It is often assumed that perceptual experience provides evidence about the external world. But much perception can occur unconsciously, as in cases of masked priming or blindsight. Does unconscious perception provide evidence as well? Many theorists maintain that it cannot, holding that perceptual experience provides evidence in virtue of its conscious character. Against such views, I challenge here both the necessity and, perhaps more controversially, the sufficiency of consciousness for perception to provide evidence about the external world. In addition to (...) motivating and defending the idea that unconscious perception can and does often provide evidence, I observe that whether or not perceptual phenomenology is relevant to the evidentiary status of perception depends on the nature of consciousness. And I argue that a well-supported theory of consciousness—higher-order thought theory—invites a striking conclusion: that perceptual phenomenology is not on its own sufficient to provide for evidence of the external world. (shrink)

Many have claimed that epistemic rationality sometimes requires us to have imprecise credal states (i.e. credal states representable only by sets of credence functions) rather than precise ones (i.e. credal states representable by single credence functions). Some writers have recently argued that this claim conflicts with accuracy-centered epistemology, i.e., the project of justifying epistemic norms by appealing solely to the overall accuracy of the doxastic states they recommend. But these arguments are far from decisive. In this essay, we prove some (...) new results, which show that there is little hope for reconciling the rationality of credal imprecision with accuracy-centered epistemology. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences justify beliefs. A perceptual experience of a dog justifies the belief that there is a dog present. But there is much evidence that perceptual states can occur without being conscious, as in experiments involving masked priming. Do unconscious perceptual states provide justification as well? The answer depends on one’s theory of justification. While most varieties of externalism seem compatible with unconscious perceptual justification, several theories have recently afforded to consciousness a special role in perceptual justification. We argue that (...) such views face a dilemma: either consciousness should be understood in functionalist terms, in which case our best current theories of consciousness do not seem to imbue consciousness with any special epistemic features, or it should not, in which case it is mysterious why only conscious states are justificatory. We conclude that unconscious perceptual justification is quite plausible. (shrink)

Agent-based models have played a prominent role in recent debates about the merits of democracy. In particular, the formal model of Lu Hong and Scott Page and the associated “diversity trumps ability” result has typically been seen to support the epistemic virtues of democracy over epistocracy (i.e., governance by experts). In this paper we first identify the modeling choices embodied in the original formal model and then critique the application of the Hong-Page results to philosophical debates on the relative merits (...) of democracy. In particular we argue that the “best-performing agents” in Hong-Page model should not be interpreted as experts. We next explore a closely related model in which best-performing agents are more plausibly seen as experts and show that the diversity trumps ability result fails to hold. However, with changes in other parameters (such as the deliberation dynamic) the diversity trumps ability result is restored. The sensitivity of this result to parameter choices illustrates the complexity of the link between formal modeling and more general philosophical claims; we use this debate as a platform for a more general discussion of when and how agent-based models can contribute to philosophical discussions. (shrink)

Kant wird oft als einer derjenigen großen Philosophen angesehen, dessen Werk wesentlich zum jetzigen Verständnis der Menschenrechte und Menschenwürde beigetragen hat. Kant scheint, wenn man in seine Schriften schaut, jedoch keine Theorie der Menschenrechte im modernen Sinne gehabt zu haben. Bei näherem Hinsehen zeigt sich folgender Grund: Kant unterscheidet zwischen dem bloß privaten Recht, das dem positiven Recht untergeordnet ist, und dem öffentlichen Recht, das die begrifflichen Bedingungen einer jeden legitimen, legalen Ordnung darstellt. Der Inhalt des öffentlichen Rechts wird bei (...) ihm weder direkt aus einer freistehenden Moraltheorie abgeleitet, noch aus vertraglichen Übereinkünften oder dem positiven Recht. Stattdessen soll es aus den Ermöglichungsbedingungen einer rechtmäßigen Verfassung expliziert werden, unter der allein Ansprüchen auf (ein) „Recht“ irgendeine verbindliche Autorität zukommt. Wenn man diesen Ansatz ernst nimmt, kann man kaum eine Lesart bei Kant finden, die sich mit der modernen Auffassung von Menschenrechten vereinbaren lässt. Warum aber denken dann manche, dass Kant etwas zum modernen Verständnis der Menschenrechte beizutragen hätte? So lauten denn die Leitfragen der Erörterung: Welche Auffassungen in Kants Werk kommen einem zeitgenössischen Verständnis von Menschenrechten am nächsten? Warum jedoch können diese menschrechtlich vielleicht ähnlich klingenden Auffassungen Kants den heutigen Befürwortern der Menschenrechte doch keine Quelle oder Stütze bieten? (shrink)

“De jure naturae multa fabulamur” — after 450 years, Luther's statement has lost none of its original validity. After a brief pseudo-renaissance following WWII, one now hears far less in legal theory about natural law, which appears finally to have fallen victim to what Weber early in the century characterized as “a progressive decomposition and relativization of all meta-legal axioms” — a destruction resulting partly “from legal rationalism itself,” and partly “from the skepticism which characterizes modern intellectual life generally.” Law (...) today, wrote Weber, “is all too tangibly (in the great majority of its determinations, and especially in many which are particularly important in terms of principle) revealed to be both the product and the technical medium of a compromise of interests,”. (shrink)

Neo-Russellians like Salmon and Braun hold that: the semantic contents of sentences are structured propositions whose basic components are objects and properties, names are directly referential terms, and a sentence of the form ‘n believes that S’ is true in a context c iff the referent of the name n in c believes the proposition expressed by S in c. This is sometimes referred to as ‘the Naive Russellian theory’. In this talk, I will discuss the Naive Russellian theory primarily (...) in connection with a problem known as Schiffer’s puzzle. Schiffer first presented the puzzle as an argument against the Naive Russellian theory. Schiffer’s argument proceeds in two steps. In step one, Schiffer argues that the Naive Russellian theory is committed to two principles regarding de re belief; the special-case consequence and Frege’s constraint. Then, in step two, Schiffer argues that the special-case consequence is not consistent with Frege’s constraint. Salmon and Braun reply to Schiffer’s argument that although the Naive Russellian theory is committed to Frege’s constraint, it is not committed to the special-case consequence. However, in this paper, I will argue with a new Schiffer-case that even if the Naive Russellian theory is not committed to the special-case consequence, it is still not consistent with Frege’s constraint. Concluding, I will discuss the possibility to reject Frege’s constraint within the Naive Russellian theory. (shrink)

In the 89th letter to Lucilius Seneca divides philosophy into three parts, namely ethics, physics, and logic. As philosophy in general he also divides its ethical parts into three parts: the first one has to do with value judgments, the second with impulses, and the third with actions. But instead of characterizing each of these parts and giving an overview of their contents he rather describes an ideal action: first, one makes a correct value judgment, then, one initiates a regulated (...) and ordered impulse, and finally, one brings this impulse into harmony with one’s external action by paying attention to the circumstances under which one intends to act. If each of these action moments has the mentioned character, one is consistent with oneself—an important step towards reaching full self-consistency, i.e., virtue. If those moments do not have the mentioned character, as for example in a passion, one cannot be consistent with oneself. As a result, one diverges from the goal of full self-consistency and thus from virtue. The thesis of my book takes up the parallel Seneca is drawing between ethics and its parts on the one hand and an action and its moments on the other hand. I argue that his ethics is based on an action theory that has as its main moments a judgment, an impulse and an external action. Within this theoretical framework, Seneca gives an answer to the question of what one should do in order to reach full self-consistency, i.e., virtue, which for a Stoic like him is a necessary and sufficient condition for happiness. My book, correspondingly, has two major parts: first, I am working out Seneca’s action theory and its philosophical origins, then, I am concerned with his ethics. In the first main chapter, I further argue that his action theory stems for the most part from the early Stoics, but that unlike them he has a concept of will. This concept, as I want to show in the second part, plays an important role in his ethics, too. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize the most prevalent positive argument for ethical nonnaturalism, the argument from ethical phenomenology. According to it, nonnatural entities are part of the best explanation of the phenomenology of ethical deliberation; therefore, nonnaturalism is true. -/- The argument from ethical phenomenology blinds out the external, empirically informed perspective on ethical deliberation. I argue that this is unwarranted for general methodological reasons: When starting to investigate any mental process — such as ethical deliberation — it is reasonable (...) to take into account, and try to reconcile, both the internal and the external perspective on the process. This renders the argument from ethical phenomenology methodologically flawed. The problem could be avoided if we already knew, somehow, that external evidence is irrelevant for the nature of ethical entities. Many nonnaturalists believe in this irrelevance because they take ethics to be "autonomous", "just too different", or the like. But the autonomy of ethics must itself be justified in a way that does not solely rely on internal insights — or else we are going in circles. I conclude that solely phenomenology-based arguments for nonnaturalism fail for methodological reasons. Consequently, nonnaturalists need to change their strategies and actively embrace the external perspective. (shrink)

Against Thomas Mormann's argument that differential topology does not support Carnap's conventionalism in geometry we show their compatibility. However, Mormann's emphasis on the entanglement that characterizes topology and its associated metrics is not misplaced. It poses questions about limits of empirical inquiry. For Carnap, to pose a question is to give a statement with the task of deciding its truth. Mormann's point forces us to introduce more clarity to what it means to specify the task that decides between competing hypotheses (...) and in what way such a task may be both in practice and/or in principle impossible to carry out. (shrink)

Representationalism holds that a perceptual experience's qualitative character is identical with certain of its representational properties. To date, most representationalists endorse atomistic theories of perceptual content, according to which an experience's content, and thus character, does not depend on its relations to other experiences. David Rosenthal, by contrast, proposes a view that is naturally construed as a version of representationalism on which experiences’ relations to one another determine their contents and characters. I offer here a new defense of this holistic (...) representationalism, arguing that some objections to atomistic views are best interpreted as supporting it. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s texts contain a puzzle about the role of vulnerability in the creation of intimacy and its function on behalf of human flourishing. I describe the interpretive puzzle and its prima facie paradoxical aspects. On the one hand, there are texts in which Nietzsche expresses a longing for intimacy and other texts where he furnishes details about the possibility of intimacy between equals. On the other hand, Nietzsche is severely critical of certain types of intimacy and advocates for a pathos (...) of distance in human relationships. I claim that Nietzschean intimacy is not an inherently paradoxical concept. A proper understanding of Nietzsche’s anti-humanism provides the resources to resolve the paradox and to use the solution of the puzzle to illuminate Nietzsche’s insights about human psychology. (shrink)

When beliefs are quantified as credences, they are related to each other in terms of closeness and accuracy. The “accuracy first” approach in formal epistemology wants to establish a normative account for credences based entirely on the alethic properties of the credence: how close it is to the truth. To pull off this project, there is a need for a scoring rule. There is widespread agreement about some constraints on this scoring rule, but not whether a unique scoring rule stands (...) above the rest. The Brier score equips credences with a structure similar to metric space and induces a “geometry of reason.” It enjoys great popularity in the current debate. I point out many of its weaknesses in this article. An alternative approach is to reject the geometry of reason and accept information theory in its stead. Information theory comes fully equipped with an axiomatic approach which covers probabilism, standard conditioning, and Jeffrey conditioning. It is not based on an underlying topology of a metric space, but uses a non-commutative divergence instead of a symmetric distance measure. I show that information theory, despite initial promise, also fails to accommodate basic epistemic intuitions; and speculate on its remediation. (shrink)

In analytic philosophy, the concept of trust is often considered primarily to be a three-place relation between trustor, trustee, and the domain of trust. The analysis of trust is unsatisfactory, however, if such a relationship is derivative of other forms of trust, and consequently the analysis has only succeeded in explaining a particular branch of trust rather than explaining the root. Annette Baier considers a climate of trust, with all the moral perils of intimacy, explanatorily superior to contract-based, rational trust (...) between non-intimate equals in modern Western philosophy and thus provides an example of how the traditional analytic model is problematic. In this paper, I propose another account on which the conventional three-place trust relationship investigated in analytic philosophy is derivative. Based on Heidegger's fundamental ontology, humans are constitutively hermeneutic. If Heidegger's fundamental ontology or a similar hermeneutic anthropology is accepted, then trust relationships between humans are explanatorily subordinated to trust relationships between readers and texts rather than the other way around, as traditional accounts suggest. This reversal has a significant impact not only on our analysis of trust, but also on moral theory, personal identity, and scientific method. My paper details both the reversal in explanatory primacy and the implications for these philosophical disciplines. (shrink)