Informal political representation—the phenomenon of speaking or acting on behalf of others although one has not been elected or selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure—plays a crucial role in advancing the interests of groups. Sometimes, those who emerge as informal political representatives (IPRs) do so willingly (voluntary representatives). But, often, people end up being IPRs, either in their private lives or in more public political forums, over their own protests (unwilling representatives) or even (...) without their knowledge (unwitting representatives)—that is, they are conscripted. None of the few theories of informal political representation extant accommodate conscripted IPRs. The account detailed here introduces the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation and explains its place in a complete theory of informal political representation. Conscripted IPRs can, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have significant power to influence how various audiences regard those for whom the conscripted IPRs speak or act. Upon attaining such power to influence, conscripted IPRs, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have pro tanto duties to those they represent—duties that arise despite IPRs’ unwittingness or unwillingness. Understanding the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation allows us to surface essential normative questions about informal political representation that are otherwise occluded. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 429-455, December 2021.

Informal political representation can be a political lifeline, particularly for oppressed and marginalized groups. Such representation can give these groups some say, however mediate, partial, and imperfect, in how things go for them. Coeval with the political goods such representation offers these groups are its particular dangers to them. Mindful of these dangers, skeptics challenge the practice for being, inter alia, unaccountable, unauthorized, inegalitarian, and oppressive. These challenges provide strong pro tanto reasons to think the practice morally impermissible. This paper (...) considers the question: On what conditions is the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups permissible? By responding to skeptics’ challenges, I develop a systematic account of moral constraints that, if adopted, would make such representation permissible. The account that emerges shows that informal political representatives (IPRs) must aim to fulfill two sets of sometimes conflicting duties to the represented: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation. (shrink)

An underexamined insight of W. E. B. Du Bois’s John Brown is that John Brown worked for much of his life to cultivate democratic relationships with the Black Americans with and for whom he worked. Brown did so through practicing deference and deliberation, and by seeking authorization. However, Brown’s commitment to these practices faltered at a crucial moment in decision making: when he raided Harpers Ferry absent widespread support. Examining this aspect of John Brown brings into relief an overlooked tragic (...) choice Brown made: To act in accordance with his own substantive vision of what justice required, Brown eschewed democratic ideals and practices that grounded the distinctive relations of equality he had cultivated with the Black communities with and for whom he worked. (shrink)

Intellectual property law tends to be viewed as the only (or most significant) mechanism for achieving policy goals relating to innovation assets. Yet more creative and effective solutions are often available. When analysed from a transdisciplinary perspective, relying on the cooperative efforts of researchers from fields other than law, innovation governance is characterized not simply as the product of legal rules, but as a function of the interaction of legal rules, practices and institutions. When policy-makers seek to identify conditions under (...) which the creation, use and exchange of innovation assets flourishes, care should be taken to focus on this combination of factors. This article describes the development of an ontology—a computerized method of representing knowledge as concepts and relations between concepts—to convey such understanding. Policy makers (and researchers) are provided with an organized, accessible representation of innovation governance that enriches their understanding and improves their decision-making. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce and examine the novel concept of bench representation. Jurists and scholars have extensively examined whether judges are or ought to be considered symbolic representatives of abstract concepts (for instance, the law, equality, or justice), representatives of society as a whole, or descriptive representatives of the social groups from which they hail. However, little attention has been paid to the question whether judges act as representatives for the parties before them through their everyday work on the (...) bench. This article examines that question. Bench representation occurs when a judge, through statements or actions undertaken during the performance of official duties, speaks or acts for a party to the proceeding before them. I argue that serving as a bench representative is a common and valuable feature of what it is to be a judge and, despite appearances, usually undermines neither impartiality nor fairness. (shrink)

We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common (...) but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets’ having a phylogeny—an origin and complex evolutionary history—that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data. (shrink)

Trigger warnings captured national attention in 2014 when students from several U.S. universities called for inclusion of the warnings on course syllabi and in classrooms. Opinions spread through news outlets across the spectrum, and those weighing in were quick to pronounce trigger warnings as either unnecessary coddling and an affront to free speech, or as a responsible pedagogical practice that treats students with respect and minimizes harm. Put simply, the debate about trigger warnings has followed the trajectory of many debates (...) in the public sphere: The issue has largely been framed by highly committed opponents and proponents whose positions represent the extremes of the spectrum. Lost has been the nuance that an issue like trigger warnings necessarily requires. This article examines trigger warnings—particularly the call for trigger warnings on university campuses—from a pluralistic ethical perspective and addresses the question: When, if ever, are trigger warnings ethically appropriate? (shrink)

Objective We reviewed human–robot interaction (HRI) participatory design (PD) research with older adults. The goal was to identify methods used, determine their value for design of robots with older adults, and provide guidance for best practices. Background Assistive robots may promote aging-in-place and quality of life for older adults. However, the robots must be designed to meet older adults’ specific needs and preferences. PD and other user-centered methods may be used to engage older adults in the robot development process to (...) accommodate their needs and preferences and to assure usability of emergent assistive robots. Method This targeted review of HRI PD studies with older adults draws on a detailed review of 26 articles. Our assessment focused on the HRI methods and their utility for use with older adults who have a range of needs and capabilities. Results Our review highlighted the importance of using mixed methods and including multiple stakeholders throughout the design process. These approaches can encourage mutual learning (to improve design by developers and to increase acceptance by users). We identified key phases used in HRI PD workshops (e.g., initial interview phase, series of focus groups phase, and presentation phase). These approaches can provide inspiration for future efforts. Conclusion HRI PD strategies can support designers in developing assistive robots that meet older adults’ needs, capabilities, and preferences to promote acceptance. More HRI research is needed to understand potential implications for aging-in-place. PD methods provide a promising approach. (shrink)

Recently a number of scientists have proposed substantial changes to the practice of climate modeling, though they disagree over what those changes should be. We provide an overview and critical examination of three leading proposals: the unified approach, the hierarchy approach and the pluralist approach. The unified approach calls for an accelerated development of high-resolution models within a seamless prediction framework. The hierarchy approach calls for more attention to the development and systematic study of hierarchies of related models, with the (...) aim of advancing understanding. The pluralist approach calls for greater diversity in modeling efforts, including, on some of its variants, more attention to empirical modeling. After identifying some of the scientific and institutional challenges faced by these proposals, we consider their expected gains and costs, relative to a business-as-usual modeling scenario.We find the proposals to be complementary, having valuable synergies. But since resource limitations make it unlikely that all three will be pursued, we offer some reflections on more limited changes in climate modeling that seem well within reach and that can be expected to yield substantial benefits. (shrink)

Trustworthiness is typically regarded as a desirable feature of national identification systems (NISs); but the variegated nature of the trustor communities associated with such systems makes it difficult to see how a single system could be equally trustworthy to all actual and potential trustors. This worry is accentuated by common theoretical accounts of trustworthiness. According to such accounts, trustworthiness is relativized to particular individuals and particular areas of activity, such that one can be trustworthy with regard to some individuals in (...) respect of certain matters, but not trustworthy with regard to all trustors in respect of every matter. The present article challenges this relativistic approach to trustworthiness by outlining a new account of trustworthiness, dubbed the expectation-oriented account. This account allows for the possibility of an absolutist (or one-place) approach to trustworthiness. Such an account, we suggest, is the approach that best supports the effort to develop NISs. To be trustworthy, we suggest, is to minimize the error associated with trustor expectations in situations of social dependency (commonly referred to as trust situations), and to be trustworthy in an absolute sense is to assign equal value to all expectation-related errors in all trust situations. In addition to outlining the features of the expectation-oriented account, we describe some of the implications of this account for the design, development, and management of trustworthy NISs. (shrink)

The theoretical foundations of climate science have received little attention from philosophers thus far, despite a number of outstanding issues. We provide a brief, non-technical overview of several of these issues – related to theorizing about climates, climate change, internal variability and more – and attempt to make preliminary progress in addressing some of them. In doing so, we hope to open a new thread of discussion in the emerging area of philosophy of climate science, focused on theoretical foundations.

Arguments for extended cognition and the extended mind are typically directed at human-centred forms of cognitive extension—forms of cognitive extension in which the cognitive/mental states/processes of a given human individual are subject to a form of extended or wide realization. The same is true of debates and discussions pertaining to the possibility of Web-extended minds and Internet-based forms of cognitive extension. In this case, the focus of attention concerns the extent to which the informational and technological elements of the online (...) environment form part of the machinery of the (individual) human mind. In this paper, we direct attention to a somewhat different form of cognitive extension. In particular, we suggest that the Web allows human individuals to be incorporated into the computational/cognitive routines of online systems. These forms of computational/cognitive extension highlight the potential of the Web and Internet to support bidirectional forms of computational/cognitive incorporation. The analysis of such bidirectional forms of incorporation broadens the scope of philosophical debates in this area, with potentially important implications for our understanding of the foundational notions of extended cognition and the extended mind. (shrink)

Like all human activities, scientific research is infused with values. Scientific discovery can, for example, be valued as an end in itself. The phrase ethical values is an umbrella term for much of what people care about aside from knowledge for its own sake. Ethical values encompass reasons for caring about the harms caused by climate impacts or the injustice of how those harms are distributed. The closer that research gets to informing real-world actions, the more the design of that (...) research can be examined from the perspective of ethical values. Which societal challenges does the research aim to inform? From whose perspective does a policy analysis view potential outcomes? In this chapter we use a series of examples to illustrate how researchers’ choices regarding the treatment of uncertainties can have important consequences from the perspective of ethical values. Our aims in this chapter are: to familiarize readers with the key concept of coupled ethical–epistemic choices; to build capacity for recognizing such choices within the treatment of uncertainties; to encourage engagement with ethical values as a part of climate change research; and to offer some guidance on how to start doing so. (shrink)

Forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are already being deployed into clinical settings and research into its future healthcare uses is accelerating. Despite this trajectory, more research is needed regarding the impacts on patients of increasing AI decision making. In particular, the impersonal nature of AI means that its deployment in highly sensitive contexts-of-use, such as in healthcare, raises issues associated with patients’ perceptions of (un) dignified treatment. We explore this issue through an experimental vignette study comparing individuals’ perceptions of being (...) treated in a dignified and respectful way in various healthcare decision contexts. Participants were subject to a 2 (human or AI decision maker) x 2 (positive or negative decision outcome) x 2 (diagnostic or resource allocation healthcare scenario) factorial design. We found evidence of a “human bias” (i.e., a preference for human over AI decision makers) and an “outcome bias” (i.e., a preference for positive over negative outcomes). However, we found that for perceptions of respectful and dignified interpersonal treatment, it matters more who makes the decisions in diagnostic cases and it matters more what the outcomes are for resource allocation cases. We also found that humans were consistently viewed as appropriate decision makers and AI was viewed as dehumanizing, and that participants perceived they were treated better when subject to diagnostic as opposed to resource allocation decisions. Thematic coding of open-ended text responses supported these results. We also outline the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (shrink)

Serendipity is fundamental to science. This quirky and intriguing phenomenon permeates across scientific disciplines, including the medical sciences, psychological sciences, management and organizational sciences, innovation science, philosophy and library and information sciences. Why is it so ubiquitous? Because of what it facilitates and catalyzes: scientific discoveries from velcro to Viagra, innovation of all forms, unexpected encounters of useful information, novel and important ideas, and deep reflection on how we, as individuals, organizations, communities and societies can take leaps forwards by seizing (...) unexpected opportunities and ‘making our own luck.’. (shrink)

Human beings are social animals, not solitary ones. Morality is an instinct we have because it helps us socialize, live together harmoniously. This paper reviews how the evolution of morality and other mental functions associated with our survival and sociality gave rise to cultural behavior among the small groups of humans during the Palaeolithic period when the tribe was personified as a supernatural identity and guardian, a totem, an ancestor and ultimately a god. Loyalty to the tribe required loyalty to (...) the tribal god representing the tribe. Preservation of the tribe meant mistrust of other tribes and their gods. The merging of small groups rendered obsolete the tribal, locally cultural conception of religion, but it persisted as monotheism in the imperial stage of society from about 2000 BC, becoming the world religions. Today’s empires are global, and a belief system modelled on local tribes in competition is naïve divisive. Out-group hatred is more of a threat than any in-group moral benefits, and they too are disappearing with the failure to preserve small group coherence, and justice and fairness in capitalist society. The moral failure of imperial religion on the urban and global scale is the “Death of God”. Humans now cannot afford the moral laziness of constantly appealing to a supernatural totem in an otherwise do-nothing religion. Imperial religion was and still is a tool of the political right, used to manipulate us. Yet Christ offered an ethical scheme that is essentially a practical morality of mutual lovingkindness which does not require a supernatural God. It is Secular Christianity, a world view any scientist and atheist could adopt without compromise, and most Christians should. (shrink)

Widespread global interest and adoption of deliberative democracy approaches to reinvigorate citizenship and policy making in an era of democratic crisis/decline has been mirrored by increasing interest in deliberation in schools, both as an approach to pedagogy and student empowerment, and as a training ground for deliberative citizenship. In school deliberation, as in other settings, a key and sometimes neglected element of high-quality deliberation is facilitation. Facilitation can help to establish and maintain deliberative norms, as well as assisting participants to (...) deliberate productively and achieve collective goals. This article draws on our experience as scholar/practitioners running a Deliberation in Schools program in Australia to explore challenges and strategies for deliberative facilitation. The challenges we discuss are power, inequality, diversity and boundaries, disagreement and integration and these are discussed in the general context of inclusiveness. We highlight two facets of deliberative facilitation – technique and design – which are important for dealing with these challenges and increasing inclusion in school deliberation and in democratic deliberation more generally. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making frameworks assist in identifying the issues at stake in a particular setting and thinking through, in a methodical manner, the ethical issues that require consideration as well as the values that need to be considered and promoted. Decisions made about the use, sharing, and re-use of big data are complex and laden with values. This paper sets out an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research developed by a working group convened by the Science, Health and (...) Policy-relevant Ethics in Singapore Initiative. It presents the aim and rationale for this framework supported by the underlying ethical concerns that relate to all health and research contexts. It also describes a set of substantive and procedural values that can be weighed up in addressing these concerns, and a step-by-step process for identifying, considering, and resolving the ethical issues arising from big data uses in health and research. This Framework is subsequently applied in the papers published in this Special Issue. These papers each address one of six domains where big data is currently employed: openness in big data and data repositories, precision medicine and big data, real-world data to generate evidence about healthcare interventions, AI-assisted decision-making in healthcare, public-private partnerships in healthcare and research, and cross-sectoral big data. (shrink)

Widespread global interest and adoption of deliberative democracy approaches to reinvigorate citi- zenship and policymaking in an era of democratic crisis/decline has been mirrored by increasing interest in deliberation in schools, both as an approach to pedagogy and student empowerment and as a training ground for deliberative citizenship. In school deliberation, as in other settings, a key and sometimes neglected element of high-quality deliberation is facilitation. Facilitation can help to establish and maintain deliberative norms, assist participants to deliberate productively, and (...) enable collective goals. By participating in facilitated deliberation, students can develop awareness, skills, and voice that empower them to engage with democracy, in school and beyond. This article draws on our experience as scholar/practitioners running a Deliberation in Schools program in Australia to explore challenges and strategies for deliberative facilitation. The challenges we discuss are power, inequality, diversity of expression and knowledge, and disagreement and these are discussed in the general context of inclusiveness. We highlight two facets of deliberative facilitation—technique and design—that are important for dealing with these challenges and increasing inclusion in school delib- eration and in democratic deliberation more generally. (shrink)

With a diverse sample (N = 231 paired responses) of employees from various organizations in Pakistan, the authors tested for the main effects of perceived organizational politics and psychological capital on turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and supervisor-rated job performance. They also examined the moderating influence of psychological capital in the politics–outcomes relationships. Results provided good support for the proposed hypotheses. While perceived organizational politics was associated with all outcomes, psychological capital had a significant relationship with job satisfaction and supervisor-rated performance (...) only. As hypothesized, the negative relationship of perceived organizational politics with job satisfaction and supervisor-rated performance was weaker when psychological capital was high. However, the result for turnover intentions was counter to expectations where the politics–turnover intention relationship was stronger when psychological capital was high. (shrink)

Despite the effort educators put into developing in students the critical writing and thinking skills needed to compose effective arguments, undergraduate college students are often accused of churning out essays lacking in creative and critical thought, arguments too obviously formulated and with sides too sharply drawn. Theories abound as to why these deficiencies are rampant. Some blame students’ immature cognitive and emotional development for these lacks. Others put the blame of lackadaisical output on the assigning of shopworn writing subjects, assigned (...) topics such as on American laws and attitudes about capital punishment and abortion. Although these factors might contribute to faulty written output in some cases, the prevailing hindrance is our very pedagogy, a system in which students are rewarded for composing the very type of argument we wish to avoid — the eristic, in which the goal is not truth seeking, but successfully disputing another’s argument. Certainly the eristic argument is the intended solution in cases when a clear‑cut outcome is needed, such as in legal battles and political campaigns when there can only be one winner. However, teaching mainly or exclusively the eristic, as is done in most composition classrooms today, halts the advancement of these higher‑order inquiry skills we try developing in our students. (shrink)

Social machines are a prominent focus of attention for those who work in the field of Web and Internet science. Although a number of online systems have been described as social machines, there is, as yet, little consensus as to the precise meaning of the term “social machine.” This presents a problem for the scientific study of social machines, especially when it comes to the provision of a theoretical framework that directs, informs, and explicates the scientific and engineering activities of (...) the social machine community. The present paper outlines an approach to understanding social machines that draws on recent work in the philosophy of science, especially work in so-called mechanical philosophy. This is what might be called a mechanistic view of social machines. According to this view, social machines are systems whose phenomena are explained via an appeal to socio-technical mechanisms. We show how this account is able to accommodate a number of existing attempts to define the social machine concept, thereby yielding an important opportunity for theoretical integration. (shrink)

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

This discussion revises and extends Jonny Anomaly's ‘public goods’ account of public health ethics in light of recent criticism from Richard Dees. Public goods are goods that are both non-rival and non-excludable. What is significant about such goods is that they are not always provided efficiently by the market. Indeed, the state can sometimes realize efficiency gains either by supplying such goods directly or by compelling private purchase. But public goods are not the only goods that the market may fail (...) to provide efficiently. This point to a way of broadening the public goods account of public health to accommodate Dees' counterexamples, without abandoning its distinctive appeal. On the market failures approach to public health ethics, the role of public health is to correct public health-related market failures of all kinds, so far as possible. The underlying moral commitment is to economic efficiency in the sense of Pareto: if we can re-allocate resources in the economy so as to raise the welfare of some without lowering the welfare of any other, we ought to do so. (shrink)

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking (...) prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your future selves. (shrink)

Philosophers of experiment have acknowledged that experiments are often more than mere hypothesis-tests, once thought to be an experiment's exclusive calling. Drawing on examples from contemporary biology, I make an additional amendment to our understanding of experiment by examining the way that `wide' instrumentation can, for reasons of efficiency, lead scientists away from traditional hypothesis-directed methods of experimentation and towards exploratory methods.

If you utter sentence (1) ‘Obama was born in 1961’ now, you say something true about the past. Since the past will always be such that the year 1961 has the property of being a time in which Obama was born, it seems impossible that could ever be false in a future context of utterance. We shall consider the case of a sentence about the past exactly like (1), but which was true when uttered a few years ago and is (...) no longer true now. On this basis, we shall conclude that the past has changed. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 165-189, May 2022. It is generally acknowledged that a certain amount of state intervention in health and health care is needed to address the significant market failures in these sectors; however, it is also thought that the primary rationale for state involvement in health must lie elsewhere, for example in an egalitarian commitment to equalizing access to health care for all citizens. This paper argues that a complete theory of justice in (...) health can be derived from a commitment to correcting market failure, or in other words promoting Pareto-efficiency, in the domain of health. This approach can address familiar problems around access to care, as well as problems related to resource allocation and rationing, the control of health care costs, and the foundations of public health. Egalitarian theories of justice in health cannot make sense of the depth and pervasiveness of state involvement in health and health care; only a theory rooted in the need to correct market failure can. (shrink)

Recently Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux have attacked the core of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition: its commitment to the finitude of human understanding. If accurate, this critique threatens to render the whole tradition a topic of merely historical interest. Given the depth of the criticism, this essay aims to establish a provisional defense of hermeneutics. After briefly reviewing each critique, it is argued that Badiou and Meillassoux themselves face rather intractable difficulties. These difficulties, then, open the space for a hermeneutic (...) response, which is accomplished largely by drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur. We close with a suggested program for hermeneutic thought. (shrink)

The self can be understood in objective metaphysical terms as a bundle of properties, as a substance, or as some other kind of entity on our metaphysical list of what there is. Such an approach explores the metaphysical nature of the self when regarded from a suitably impersonal, ontological perspective. It explores the nature and structure of the self in objective reality, that is, the nature and structure of the self from without. This is the objective self. I am taking (...) a different approach. In addition to objective reality, which is usually understood and explored from an impersonal, quasi-observational and metaphysically realist perspective, we can also explore the nature and structure of subjective reality. The nature and structure of subjective reality is defined by the nature and structure of first-personal, conscious experience. Subjective reality is as real as objective reality, and a metaphysical realist such as myself can endorse the existence of both kinds of ontology. The mental states that, as experienced from the first-personal or subjective perspective, capture the nature and structure of subjective reality, are included in objective reality. The questions to explore in a subjective ontology of the self concern the nature and structure of the self from the first-personal or subjective perspective, that is, the nature and structure of the self from within. This is the subjective self. (shrink)

Several prominent voices have called for a democratization of science through deliberative processes that include a diverse range of perspectives and values. We bring these scholars into conversation with extant research on democratic deliberation in political theory and the social sciences. In doing so, we identify systematic barriers to the effectiveness of inclusive deliberation in both scientific and political settings. We are particularly interested in what we call misidentified dissent, where deliberations are starkly framed at the outset in terms of (...) dissenting positions without properly distinguishing the kinds of difference and disagreement motivating dissent. (shrink)

Two problems are considered here. One relates to who has moral status, and the other relates to who has moral responsibility. The criteria for mattering morally have long been disputed, and many humans and nonhuman animals have been considered “marginal cases,” on the contested edges of moral considerability and concern. The marginalization of humans and other species is frequently the pretext for denying their rights, including the rights to health care, to reproductive freedom, and to bodily autonomy. There is broad (...) agreement across cultural and philosophical traditions about the capacities and responsibilities of moral agents. I propose an inclusive and expansive way of thinking about moral status, situating it not in the characteristics or capacities of individuals, but in the responsibilities and obligations of moral agents. Moral agents, under this view, are not privileged or entitled to special treatment but rather have responsibilities. I approach this by considering some African communitarian conceptions of moral status and moral agency. I propose that moral agency can also be more expansive and include not just individual moral agents but collective entities that have some of the traits of moral agents: power, freedom, and the capacity to recognize and act on the demands of morality and acknowledge and respect the rights of others. Expanding who and what is a moral agent correspondingly extends moral responsibility for respecting rights and fostering the conditions for the health and well-being of humans and animals onto the collective entities who uniquely have the capacity to attend to global-scale health threats such as pandemics and human-caused climate change. (shrink)

Many hold that distributing healthcare according to medical need is a requirement of equality. Most egalitarians believe, however, that people ought to be equal on the whole, by some overall measure of well-being or life-prospects; it would be a massive coincidence if distributing healthcare according to medical need turned out to be an effective way of promoting equality overall. I argue that distributing healthcare according to medical need is important for reducing individuals' uncertainty surrounding their future medical needs. In other (...) words, distributing healthcare according to medical need is a natural feature of healthcare insurance; it is about indemnity, not equality. (shrink)

The tripartite account of propositional, fallibilist knowledge that p as justified true belief can become adequate only if it can solve the Gettier Problem. However, the latter can be solved only if the problem of a successful coordination of the resources (at least truth and justification) necessary and sufficient to deliver propositional, fallibilist knowledge that p can be solved. In this paper, the coordination problem is proved to be insolvable by showing that it is equivalent to the ''''coordinated attack'''' problem, (...) which is demonstrably insolvable in epistemic logic. It follows that the tripartite account is not merely inadequate as it stands, as proved by Gettier-type counterexamples, but demonstrably irreparable in principle, so that efforts to improve it can never succeed. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of species have focused on multicellular, sexual animals and have often neglected to consider unicellular organisms like bacteria. This article begins to fill this gap by considering what species concepts, if any, apply neatly to the bacterial world. First, I argue that the biological species concept cannot be applied to bacteria because of the variable rates of genetic transfer between populations, depending in part on which gene type is prioritized. Second, I present a critique of phylogenetic bacterial species, (...) arguing that phylogenetic bacterial classification requires a questionable metaphysical commitment to the existence of essential genes. I conclude by considering how microbiologists have dealt with these biological complexities by using more pragmatic and not exclusively evolutionary accounts of species. I argue that this pragmatism is not borne of laziness but rather of the substantial conceptual problems in classifying bacteria based on any evolutionary standard. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil: moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, (...) a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics. It is argued that this goes some way towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE’s concerns; and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent’s action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil but conversely to ‘receive’ or ‘suffer from’ it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively, in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics is proposed for that theory. It is argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

Citizens in wealthy liberal democracies are typically expected to see to basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter out of their own income, and those without the means to do so usually receive assistance in the form of cash transfers. Things are different with health care. Most liberal societies provide their citizens with health care or health care insurance in kind, either directly from the state or through private insurance companies that are regulated like public utilities. Except perhaps for small (...) co-pays or deductibles, citizens are not expected to see to their health needs out-of-pocket, at least for some basic level of care. Instead, when a citizen gets sick, the state or her insurance company foots the... (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish two conceptions of solidarity, which I call solidarity as beneficence and solidarity as mutual advantage. I argue that only the latter is capable of providing a complete foundation for national universal health care programs. On the mutual advantage account, the rationale for universal insurance is parallel to the rationale for a labor union’s “closed shop” policy. In both cases, mandatory participation is necessary in order to stop individuals free-riding on an ongoing system of mutually advantageous (...) cooperation. (shrink)

The present article aims to make good on Roland Barthe’s unfulfilled promise to provide an eidetic phenomenology for the photograph. Though the matter deserves consideration simply because no relevant account has yet been provided, the consequences of adumbrating eight eidetic features, we hope to show, bear directly on the phenomenology of time, the possibility of technological events, and the status of truth as what Heidegger called alētheia . Finally, and most importantly for the enterprise of phenomenological reflection, if we are (...) successful in this endeavor, we shall have established a new way to use eidetic phenomenologies: not for Husserl’s original aim of executing a rigorous science, but in a more Derridian spirit as a way to destabilize consensus. (shrink)

Commentary on Walsh, E. 2020. Cognitive transformation, dementia, and the moral weight of advance directives. The American Journal of Bioethics. 20(8): 54–64.

This Essay presents law’s evolution as a paradoxical union of the finite and the infinite. At any given point in time, law is a finite body of norms, which can be identified. At the same time, law’s evolution is infinite because rule-mutations that alter those norms are indeterminable. In modern legal systems, law’s evolution occurs under the constraining influence of master texts, which provide normative durability by enshrining the fundamental norms of a legal system and fortifying them against change. Despite (...) this stabilizing role, however, master texts are themselves open to mutations. Therefore, law’s evolution under the constraints of a master text mediates the paradoxical union of law’s finite and infinite nature. (shrink)

This article explores the philosophical concept of akrasia, also known as weakness of will, and demonstrates its relevance to clinical practice. In particular, it challenges an implicit notion of control over one’s actions that might impede recovery from substance misuse. Reflecting on three fictional case vignettes, we show how philosophical work on akrasia helps avoid this potentially harmful notion of control by supporting a holistic engagement with people for whom substance misuse is a problem. We argue that such engagement enhances (...) their prospects of recovery by focusing on agency over time, as opposed to individual lapses. (shrink)

Le but de ce texte est de mettre en évidence les équi­valences entre la façon dont le concept de conatus résout, dans l'Éthique, le problème de l'unité modale complexe. en rendant consis­tant le concept de chose singulière en tant que celle-ci doit être consi­dérée comme un légitime sujet d'attribution d'états, et la façon dont ce même concept dessine le rapport cognitif de l'esprit avec lui-même, rapport par lequel l'esprit se saisit comme sujet de ses états et qui ca­ractérise la notion (...) moderne de subjectivité. Ainsi, en éclairant cet as­pect du concept spinoziste de chose singulière. on comprendra aussi, de façon indirecte, l'une des conditions par lesquelles les choses peuvent, dans la doctrine spinoziste, devenir des objets ou des signes pour la connaissance humaine. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept and scope of public health and to argue that particularly in low-income contexts, where social injustice and poverty often impact significantly on the overall health of the population, the link between public health and social justice should be a very firm one. Furthermore, social justice in these contexts must be understood as not simply a matter for local communities and nation-states, but in so far as public health is concerned, as (...) a matter of global concern and responsibility. The interpretation of the scope of public health by any particular nation is I believe contingent on the current socio-political context and the conception of social or distributive justice that underpins this context. Furthermore I will argue here that the link between public health and social justice ought to be founded on a conception of social justice that adequately addresses issues of social injustice, and patterns of systematic disadvantage, that contribute to ill health and that so commonly prevail in many low- and middle-income social contexts. (shrink)