According to the common view, conscientious objection is grounded in autonomy or in ‘freedom of conscience’ and is tolerated out of respect for the objector's autonomy. Emphasising freedom of conscience or autonomy as a central concept within the issue of conscientious objection implies that the conscientious objector should have an independent choice among alternative beliefs, positions or values. In this paper it is argued that: (a) it is not true that the typical conscientious objector has such a choice when they (...) decide to act upon their conscience and (b) it is not true that the typical conscientious objector exercises autonomy when developing or acquiring their conscience. Therefore, with regard to tolerating conscientious objection, we should apply the concept of autonomy with caution, as tolerating conscientious objection does not reflect respect for the conscientious objector’s right to choose but rather acknowledges their lack of real ability to choose their conscience and to refrain from acting upon their conscience. This has both normative and analytical implications for the treatment of conscientious objectors. (shrink)

The following is a transcript of the interview I (Yasuko Kitano) conducted with Neil Levy (The Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, CAPPE) on the 23rd in July 2009, while he was in Tokyo to give a series of lectures on neuroethics at The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy. I edited his words for publication with his approval.

This study analyzed the monitoring and evaluation of HIV/AIDS prevention programs in Southern Senatorial District of Cross River State, Nigeria. The study considered different levels of care/support and tested for locational variations in the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs. A descriptive survey research design was utilized. This study covered 596 public health employees (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and laboratory employees) in the study area. A sample of 239 respondents was chosen using the proportional stratified random sampling procedure. Data was collected using (...) a questionnaire constructed by the researchers and validated by specialists. Data gathered were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results indicated that HIV/AIDs programs have been successfully monitored/evaluated to a high extent. High rates of success in the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs are attributable to high rates of care/support provided to people living with HIV/AIDs. There was a significant variation in the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs based on the location of health facilities, with higher rates recorded for urban areas. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs in the Southern Senatorial District of Cross River State had recorded a significant level of success. The study recommended, among others, that there should be even distribution of medical facilities, resources and personnel to both urban and rural areas to promote equity and access to materials needed to contain or mitigate the spread of the pandemic across all locations. (shrink)

Recent work in neuroimaging suggests that some patients diagnosed as being in the persistent vegetative state are actually conscious. In this paper, we critically examine this new evidence. We argue that though it remains open to alternative interpretations, it strongly suggests the presence of consciousness in some patients. However, we argue that its ethical significance is less than many people seem to think. There are several different kinds of consciousness, and though all kinds of consciousness have some ethical significance, different (...) kinds underwrite different kinds of moral value. Demonstrating that patients have phenomenal consciousness — conscious states with some kind of qualitative feel to them — shows that they are moral patients, whose welfare must be taken into consideration. But only if they are subjects of a sophisticated kind of access consciousness — where access consciousness entails global availability of information to cognitive systems — are they persons, in the technical sense of the word employed by philosophers. In this sense, being a person is having the full moral status of ordinary human beings. We call for further research which might settle whether patients who manifest signs of consciousness possess the sophisticated kind of access consciousness required for personhood. (shrink)

Available reports provide an account of academic staff’s poor job performance in higher education institutions and universities in particular. Consequently, a growing body of research has been attracted to this area, including those seeking ways to understand the problem and others aimed at proffering solutions. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the influence of occupational stress on the job performance of academic staff in universities. Three null hypotheses directed the study in line with the quantitative ex-post facto research (...) design. A sample of 150 respondents was obtained using the systematic random sampling technique from a population of 400 lecturers in the Faculty of Education from two public universities in Nigeria. A 31-item questionnaire was used for data collection. The null hypotheses were tested at the .05 alpha level using simple linear regression analysis. It was revealed that remuneration is a significant positive predictor of academic staff job performance. The prediction of workload was negatively non-significant on the job performance of academics. The provision of institutional amenities has a positive but non-significant prediction on academic staff job performance in the two public universities. It was concluded that occupational stress significantly influences the job performance of lecturers in universities. The study recommended that the government constantly pay lecturers’ salaries as and when due. Institutional managers should reward lecturers with outstanding performance to boost their morale for effective service delivery. (shrink)

I distinguish three theses associated with the new mechanistic philosophy – concerning causation, explanation and scientific methodology. Advocates of each thesis are identified and relationships among them are outlined. I then look at some recent work on natural selection and mechanisms. There, attention to different kinds of New Mechanism significantly affects of what is at stake.

Despite the changes in human behaviour and interactions occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions are yet to adapt to the new normal fully. While some educational institutions switched entirely to e-learning to promote teaching and learning, others could not offer education due to physical and social restrictions. Previous studies in Africa have identified reasons for the poor ICT adoption for educational purposes. However, the degree to which these factors affect ICT utilisation is barely analysed. Using a quantitative approach, this (...) study assessed ICT deployment for teaching in the COVID-19 era by focusing on their availability and challenges. A sample of 344 respondents from a population of 2,867 academic staff at two Nigerian public universities participated in the study. After receiving face validity from experts, a structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Cronbach alpha reliability indices of the questionnaire ranged from 0.72 to 0.94. Descriptive statistics (simple percentages, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (one-way ANOVA) were used for data analysis. Findings generally revealed a moderate extent in the availability of ICT resources in public universities. The cost of data, computer literacy, and electricity supply are challenges that significantly affected ICT deployment in the COVID-19 era. Based on this finding, it was concluded that personal and institutional challenges affect how ICT resources are deployed in public universities. It was recommended, among other things, that the management of each tertiary institution should apportion proceeds from internally generated revenue to procure ICT resources specific to the need of the school. The study provides the ground for further research into students’ use of ICT for educational purposes. (shrink)

Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic agency justified? In order to answer this question we need a model or moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the foundations for such an account.

Many have the intuition that human persons are both extremely and equally valuable. This seeming extremity and equality of vale is puzzling: if overall value is the sum of one’s final value and instrumental value, how could it be that persons share the same extreme value? One way that we can solve the Value Puzzle is by following Andrew Bailey and Josh Rasmussen. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 103, 264–277 (2020) and accepting that persons have infinite final value. But there are (...) some significant downsides to their way of thinking about values, which relies on the extended real numbers. We offer a different approach: if we model values using the hyperreal numbers, we can capture many of our intuitions about the extremity and relative equality of human value without incurring the substantial theoretical costs of using the extended real numbers. We also examine other ways of modeling the infinite value of persons and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these other accounts compared to ours. (shrink)

Some philosophers of science – the present author included – appeal to fiction as an interpretation of the practice of modeling. This raises the specter of an incompatibility with realism, since fiction-making is essentially non-truth-regulated. I argue that the prima facie conflict can be resolved in two ways, each involving a distinct notion of fiction and a corresponding formulation of realism. The main goal of the paper is to describe these two packages. Toward the end I comment on how to (...) choose among them. (shrink)

In this Article, I will argue that a person may be deserving of criminal punishment even in certain situations where she is not necessarily morally responsible for her criminal act. What these situations share in common are two things: the psychological factors that motivate the individual’s behavior are environmentally determined and her crime is serious, making her less eligible for sympathy and therefore less likely to be acquitted. -/- To get to this conclusion, I will proceed in four steps. In (...) Part II, I will offer the first two of these steps. First, I will argue that our foundational assumption that moral responsibility is necessary for just blame and punishment is not self-evident and is actually rather difficult to explain and justify. Second, I will offer an explanation and justification that appeals to our moral psychology. Specifically, I will argue that we subscribe to this assumption ultimately because we sympathize with agents who lack responsibility for their actions. -/- Third, in Part IV, I aim to show that even if moral responsibility is not conceptually — only “emotionally” — necessary for just blame and punishment, the traditionally recognized criminal excuses are not at risk because, contrary to popular wisdom, they do not really rely on this assumption to begin with. Instead, they stand less for the metaphysical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing the non-responsible and more for the normative/ethical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing those whom we cannot reasonably expect to have acted better. I will further argue that the latter proposition does not necessarily reduce to the former. -/- Fourth, once I have defended my account of the excuses, I will question in Parts V and VI the increasingly popular notion that we should add certain conditions or circumstances to the list of recognized excuses. I will focus on one in particular — the psychological theory of “situationism” — and will argue that, despite its initial plausibility, it should be kept off the list. While situationism arguably does negate moral responsibility, it does not negate criminal responsibility. -/- Of course, this is a controversial point. Criminal responsibility is almost universally thought to require moral responsibility. But in a previous article, "Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject to Criminal Punishment And to Preventive Detention," 48 San Diego L. Rev. 1299, I used personality psychology to drive a wedge between the two. In this article, I will use the opposite end of the psychological spectrum — social psychology — to drive the same important wedge. (shrink)

Most philosophers believe that wrongdoers sometimes deserve to be punished by long prison sentences. They also believe that such punishments are justified by their consequences: they deter crime and incapacitate potential offenders. In this article, I argue that both these claims are false. No one deserves to be punished, I argue, because our actions are shot through with direct or indirect luck. I also argue that there are good reasons to think that punishing fewer people and much less harshly will (...) have better social consequences, at a reduced overall cost, then the long prison sentences that are usually seen as required for social protection. (shrink)

A number of concerns have been raised about the possible future use of pharmaceuticals designed to enhance cognitive, affective, and motivational processes, particularly where the aim is to produce morally better decisions or behavior. In this article, we draw attention to what is arguably a more worrying possibility: that pharmaceuticals currently in widespread therapeutic use are already having unintended effects on these processes, and thus on moral decision making and morally significant behavior. We review current evidence on the moral effects (...) of three widely used drugs or drug types: propranolol, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and drugs that effect oxytocin physiology. This evidence suggests that the alterations to moral decision making and behavior caused by these agents may have important and difficult-to-evaluate consequences, at least at the population level. We argue that the moral effects of these and other widely used pharmaceuticals warrant further empirical research and ethical analysis. (shrink)

Philosophical orthodoxy has it that intentional action consists in one’s intention appropriately causing a motion of one’s body, placing the latter as (conceptually and/or metaphysically) prior to the former. Here I argue that this standard schema should be reversed: acting intentionally is at least conceptually prior to intending. The argument is modelled on a Williamsonian argument for the priority of knowledge developed by Jenifer Nagel. She argues that children acquire the concept KNOWS before they acquire BELIEVES, building on this alleged (...) developmental priority of knowledge to establish its conceptual priority. I start by taking a closer look at Nagel’s argument, canvassing extant objections to do both with the empirical adequacy of her claims and their philosophical implications. Doing so allows me in the second part of the paper to draw lessons that inform the construction of a revamped parallel argument for the priority of ACTS INTENTIONALLY. (shrink)

Many scientists and philosophers of science think that beauty should play a role in theory selection. Physicists like Paul Dirac and Steven Weinberg explicitly claim that the ultimate explanations of the physical world must be beautiful. And philosophers of science like Peter Lipton say that we should expect the loveliest theory to also be the most likely. In this paper, I contend that these arguments from loveliness bear a striking similarity to Thomas Aquinas’ arguments from fittingness; both seem to presume (...) that the most beautiful theory is also the most probable. To do this, I first explain the explanatory virtues that are commonly thought to be constitutive of a lovely theory. Second, I elucidate Aquinas’ arguments from fittingness and show how they work in light of his account of beauty. Lastly, I connect the two kinds of aesthetic arguments and show the extent to which they overlap. (shrink)

How does valuing something for its own sake differ from valuing an entity for the sake of other things? Although numerous answers come to mind, many of them rule out substantive views about what is valuable for its own sake. I therefore seek to provide a more neutral way to distinguish the two valuing attitudes. Drawing from existing accounts of valuing, I argue that the two can be distinguished in terms of a conative-volitional feature. Focusing first on “non-final valuing”—i.e. valuing_ (...) x_ for the sake of something else—I argue that it involves adopting certain reasons on account of a desire for _x_ to contribute to other things. I then show how this contrasts final valuing. The result, I argue, is a plausible account of how the two modes of valuing differ that leaves open substantive views about what all can be valued for its own sake. This is helpful because it develops a popular methodology used to explore the value of a wide range of things, including natural entities, family heirlooms, and artworks, as well as, more broadly, entities that might have “extrinsic final value.”. (shrink)

Prof. Cohen and I answer six questions: (1) Why do we lock people up? (2) How can involuntary civil commitment be reconciled with people's constitutional right to liberty? (3) Why don't we treat homicide as a public health threat? (4) What is the difference between legal and medical approaches to mental illness? (5) Why is mental illness required for involuntary commitment? (6) Where are we in our efforts to understand the causes of mental illness?

Mind wandering has been a target of a fast-expanding area of research in cognitive science and philosophy. One of the central puzzles that researchers have been grappling with is whether this mental process should be thought of as passive or active in nature. Intuitively, a wandering mind seems passive but mounting empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Irving (2021) defends a prominent account of mind wandering as unguided attention, which aims inter alia to resolve the puzzle. However, I present counterexamples that reveal (...) Irving’s account to be both too weak and too strong. I then develop the alternative proposal that (stated roughly) mind wandering consists in voluntarily passive attention. After unpacking and defending this idea, I show how it helps to eliminate the conflicting appearance of mind wandering as both passive and active. (shrink)

The principle of epistemic closure is the claim that what is known to follow from knowledge is known to be true. This intuitively plausible idea is endorsed by a vast majority of knowledge theorists. There are significant problems, however, that have to be addressed if epistemic closure – closed knowledge – is endorsed. The present essay locates the problem for closed knowledge in the separation it imposes between knowledge and evidence. Although it might appear that all that stands between knowing (...) the truth of the premises of a valid inference and knowledge of its conclusion is inferring it from the premises, the evidence for each of the premises may jointly count against the conclusion. The intuitive view regarding inferred knowledge says one thing, the evidence says another. One epistemological framework that seems to have the resources to resolve this tension endorses the view that knowledge always requires conclusive evidence. A second framework resolves the tension by limiting the scope of the closure principle. Only inferences drawn directly from propositions contained in the scope of a single knowledge operator are considered closed. The aim of the present essay is to revive the unpopular third option, the idea that knowledge is open. The essay proceeds by arguing that in different ways the two former frameworks only succeed in relocating the problem, not in resolving it. The first framework, the infallibilist view, relocates the problem to a sharp separation between knowledge of the occurrences of events from knowledge of their chance of occurring, a separation leading to several significant additional problems. The fallibilist view, the second framework, in endorsing closure neglects to take into full account the ways in which evidence fails to be transitive. For instance, evidence can count in favor of a conjunction while counting against each of its conjuncts. This fact, which is argued for in the essay on probabilistic as well as non-probabilistic grounds, is used as the foundation of an argument against closed knowledge that can be used as a way to understand several of the most fundamental challenges of epistemology. Not only can an open knowledge view that is based on open evidence resolve all these problems in a simple and natural way, it can also respond to formidable challenges that significantly hinder other open knowledge views. There are good reasons, then, to view both knowledge and evidence as open. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue for three theses: (1) we lack the power to form beliefs at will (i.e., directly); at very least, we lack the power to form at will beliefs of the kind that proponents of doxastic voluntarism have in mind; but (2) we possess a propensity to form beliefs for non-epistemic reasons; and (3) these propensities—once we come to know we have them—entail that we have obligations similar to those we would have were doxastic voluntarism true. Specifically, (...) we will argue that we have obligations to avoid triggering these propensities to form beliefs that are unwarranted or even immoral. (shrink)

There is a tension for those who want to simultaneously hold that Abraham’s disposition to sacrifice Isaac is epistemically justified and yet hold that a contemporary father would not be justified in believing that God is commanding him to sacrifice his son. This paper attempts to resolve that tension. While some commentators have correctly pointed out that one must take Abraham’s long relationship with God into account when considering Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son, they do not entertain the possibility (...) that his hearing this commandment is evidence against the hypothesis that Abraham is speaking to God. I grant this possibility. But I argue that when God commands Abraham to do the unthinkable, Abraham’s previously acquired evidence could still be sufficient to justify his belief that he is speaking with God. And in making this argument, I attempt to show what differentiates Abraham from the contemporary father who thinks that God is commanding him to sacrifice his son. (shrink)

My article concerns constitutional interpretation and substantive due process, issues that played a central role in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), one of the two same-sex marriage cases. (The other same-sex marriage case was United States v. Windsor (2013).) -/- The late Justice Scalia consistently maintained that the Court “invented” substantive due process and continues to apply this legal “fiction” not because the Constitution supports it but simply because the justices like it. Two theories underlay his cynical conclusion. First is the (...) theory of “Constitutional Textualism”—or just plain “Textualism”—which says that the meaning of the Constitution lies entirely within the “four corners” of the document. Second is the theory of “Originalism,” which says that this meaning was fixed at the time of ratification. (Likewise, the meanings of the amendments were fixed at the time of their ratification.) -/- While Justice Scalia helped to inspire a Textualist/Originalist (and anti-substantive-due-process) movement, his Originalism has received far more attention than his Textualism. Since Judge Robert Bork first introduced Originalism to the general public during his Supreme Court nomination hearings in 1987, this theory has ignited passions on all sides and effectively re-framed the entire debate about how to interpret the Constitution. Constitutional scholars, left and right, now define themselves as either for or against Originalism. Meanwhile, Textualism has merely retreated into the background. -/- Part of the reason for this disparate treatment is that many who reject Originalism still consider themselves to be Textualists. They agree with Justice Scalia (and Judge Bork) that the text is all-important. They disagree, however, that its meaning was fixed for eternity at ratification. Instead, they maintain that either the meaning of the text or applications of this meaning to new cases can change as society changes. -/- In this Article, I bring Textualism out of Originalism’s shadow and into broad daylight. I argue that once we dig just a little deeper into the proposition that all of the meaning in the Constitution inheres in its words, we find that this theory simply cannot work. In order to interpret the nation’s foundational document, we must resort to assumptions that it does not explicitly state. (Indeed, even Textualism itself is a theory that the Constitution does not explicitly endorse.) And the notion that “extra-textual” assumptions necessarily inform our interpretations of the Constitution poses a direct and insurmountable threat to Textualism. -/- The Constitution actually requires each judge, when faced with a case concerning the right to privacy, not merely to consider the text but also to anticipate and evaluate the moral, social, and political consequences of both possible decisions before choosing between them. While this position may initially sound counterintuitive, it turns out to be a much more realistic theory of constitutional interpretation than Textualism (and Originalism). -/- I ultimately conclude that, contrary to Justice Scalia, the Constitution most certainly does protect a right to privacy. For what it’s worth, the Obergefell majority agree with me (and oppose Justice Scalia). I aim to show exactly why they are correct. (shrink)

The Blockage Argument is designed to improve upon Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities by removing the counterfactual intervener altogether. If the argument worked, then it would prove in a way that Frankfurt’s argument does not that moral responsibility does not require any alternative possibilities whatsoever, not even the weakest “flicker of freedom”. -/- Some philosophers have rejected the Blockage Argument solely on the basis of their intuition that the inability to do otherwise is incompatible with (...) moral responsibility. I will argue, however, that it is not merely the inability to do otherwise by itself but rather the inability to do otherwise in combination with the absence of a counterfactual intervener that is incompatible with moral responsibility. If I cannot do otherwise and it is not because of a counterfactual intervener, then it must be the case that I am being forced to choose and therefore act as I do, in which case I cannot be morally responsible for this action. -/- Because the Blockage Argument fails, and because it was really the only way to establish that moral responsibility does not require any alternative possibilities whatsoever, it follows that moral responsibility does indeed require at least one alternative possibility in any given situation. But it turns out that this conclusion does not tip the balance in favor of incompatibilism over compatibilism. It would have if blockage and determinism were equivalent. But they are not. Unlike blockage, determinism is compatible with certain counterfactuals that compatibilists traditionally believed the ability to do otherwise reduces to. So even though moral responsibility is incompatible with blockage, it does not necessarily follow that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism. (shrink)

The external world sceptic tells some familiar narratives involving massive deception. Perhaps we are brains in vats. Perhaps we are the victim of a deceitful demon. You know the drill. The sceptic proceeds by observing first that victims of such deceptions know nothing about their external environment and that second, since we cannot rule out being a victim of such deceptions our- selves, our own external world beliefs fail to attain the status of knowledge. Discussions of global external world scepticism (...) tend to focus on the second step, where a number of well-known lines of resistance have been offered. But there has been little attention to the first, seemingly innocuous step. That will be the focus of this paper. Part one – sections 1, 2, and 3 – will explain why these standard narratives are not convincing examples of cases where there is no knowledge of the external world. In part two – section 4 – we shall undertake a useful case study. David Lewis’s ‘Elusive Knowledge’ is often thought of as presenting an epistemological vision that is somewhat friendly to external world scepticism: as Lewis himself presents things, there are contexts where external world knowledge ascriptions are uniformly false, and where true knowledge ascriptions are limited to either axiomatic truths or truths about our inner life. We examine his discussion in the light of the preceding reflections and show that the framework he presents is not so concessionary to global external world scepticism after all. (shrink)

At a House hearing on December 5, 2023, the presidents of three universities—Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania—refused to state that certain kinds of hate speech, specifically calls for genocide of Jews, are prohibited on their campuses. The backlash against two of them, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill, was swift and devastating; both of them were successfully pressured to resign. Still, while Professors Gay’s and Magill’s responses were widely criticized as tone-deaf, they were legally correct. At many (...) private, and all public, colleges and universities, even the worst hate speech is generally protected unless it is accompanied by aggressive, threatening, or violent conduct. -/- These “demotions” augur even worse consequences, including termination, for less powerful faculty who say the “wrong” thing, in particular statements in support of Trumpism, an increasingly mainstream ideology that stitches together white supremacy, misogyny, a preference for autocracy over democracy, and several phobias—homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia. The question I address in this paper is whether these consequences are constitutional at public schools. Whose right is stronger—a public-school teacher’s First Amendment right to express pro-Trumpist sentiments or a public school’s right to maintain a fair, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment? In this article, I argue that the public school has the upper hand here, that it is indeed constitutionally permitted to prohibit political hate speech that contributes to a hostile learning environment. Still, I narrowly limit this prohibition to dehumanizing speech—that is, speech explicitly suggesting that some human beings are “lesser”, intrinsically less valuable, than other human beings. -/- One objection to this position is that public schools may not prohibit any speech, no matter how dehumanizing, because such prohibition amounts to constitutionally impermissible viewpoint discrimination. I argue, however, that viewpoint discrimination is an integral part of education and therefore constitutionally permissible. Education necessarily involves promoting some values over others. These values fall into seven categories: constitutional principles, the humanist virtues, successful character traits and behaviors, knowledge and truth, art and beauty, health (both mental and physical), and social goods (such as justice, peace, and rule of law). (shrink)

I argue that Descartes' Second Causal Proof of God in the Third Meditation evidences, and commits him to, the belief that time is "strongly discontinuous" -- that is, that there is actually a gap between each consecutive moment of time. Much of my article attempts to reconcile this interpretation, the "received view," with Descartes' statements about time, space, and matter in his other writings, including his correspondence with various philosophers.

People are often offended by beliefs, expect apologies for beliefs, apologize for their own beliefs. In many mundane cases, people are morally criticized for their beliefs. Intuitively, then, beliefs seem to sometimes wrong people. Recently, the philosophical literature has picked up on this theme, and has started to discuss it under the heading of doxastic wrongdoing. In this paper we argue that despite the strength of such initial intuitions, at the end of the day they have to be rejected. If (...) it can be ever truthfully asserted that beliefs wrong, this is always derivative – beliefs wrong only in virtue of other things (like evidence-gathering actions) wronging. We distinguish between modest and ambitious doxastic wrongdoing theories (the former deny, while the latter accept, the possibility of a morally wrong yet epistemically permissible belief); we argue that each of these options faces insurmountable problems; and we offer partly debunking explanations of the intuitions purportedly supporting doxastic wrongdoing. (shrink)

This paper explores some consequences of Lewis’s (Australas J Philos 74(4):549–567, 1996) understanding of how knowledge is compartmentalized. It argues, first, that he underestimates how badly it impacts his view. When knowledge is compartmentalized, it lacks at least one of two essential features of Lewis’s account: (a) Elusiveness—familiar skeptical possibilities, when relevant, are incompatible with everyday knowledge. (b) Knowledge is a modality—when a thinker knows that p, there is no relevant possibility where p is false. Lewis proposes compartmentalized knowledge to (...) keep treating knowledge as a modality while mitigating one of its unrealistic epistemological implications: In normal modal epistemic logic (and standard possible world semantics), a thinker always counts as knowing the strongest proposition that follows from the set of all the individual propositions that this thinker knows. Lewis’s compartmentalization proposal is that thinkers merely know the conjunctions of propositions that are known in each of, but not across, their compartments. The irony is that in avoiding overblown knowledge the view now allows for thinkers to attend to skeptical error possibilities and yet knowledge is present. The account avoids inflation of knowledge in one sense only to acquire another type of knowledge the view denies subjects can have. This problem motivates an inspection of knowledge accounts whose intra-compartment closure principles are weaker than those that are valid in normal modal-logic. The conclusion is that some formulations of closure can avoid the challenge Lewis’s view faces. Nevertheless, even these closure principles pose a barrier—perhaps an implausible barrier—for knowledge of ignorance. Even when the reasoning supporting the lack of knowledge is sound, a subject cannot always know she doesn’t know. Interestingly, this obstacle is one that knowledge of knowledge doesn’t seem to face. (shrink)

Response to commentary. We are grateful to Crockett and Craigie for their interesting remarks on our paper. We accept Crockett’s claim that there is a need for caution in drawing inferences about patient groups from work on healthy volunteers in the laboratory. However, we believe that the evidence we cited established a strong presumption that many of the patients who are routinely taking a medication, including many people properly prescribed the medication for a medical condition, have morally significant aspects of (...) their cognition and behavior modified in a way that is unintended and may sometimes be unwelcome. Crockett notes that in some cases the effects of long-term drug use may differ, sometimes markedly, from the effects of short-term use. However, if acute use of a drug affects a neural system involved in mediating moral cognition or behavior, this nevertheless provides some evidence that chronic use of the drug may affect that same system and thus have morally significant effects. It is also plausible, in some cases, that an acute moral effect would give rise to a chronic moral effect via cognitive mechanisms. ... (shrink)

Peter Baumann uses the Monty Hall game to demonstrate that probabilities cannot be meaningfully applied to individual games. Baumann draws from this first conclusion a second: in a single game, it is not necessarily rational to switch from the door that I have initially chosen to the door that Monty Hall did not open. After challenging Baumann's particular arguments for these conclusions, I argue that there is a deeper problem with his position: it rests on the false assumption that what (...) justifies the switching strategy is its leading me to win a greater percentage of the time. In fact, what justifies the switching strategy is not any statistical result over the long run but rather the "causal structure" intrinsic to each individual game itself. Finally, I argue that an argument by Hilary Putnam will not help to save Baumann's second conclusion above. (shrink)

Statistical evidence—say, that 95% of your co-workers badmouth each other—can never render resenting your colleague appropriate, in the way that other evidence (say, the testimony of a reliable friend) can. The problem of statistical resentment is to explain why. We put the problem of statistical resentment in several wider contexts: The context of the problem of statistical evidence in legal theory; the epistemological context—with problems like the lottery paradox for knowledge, epistemic impurism and doxastic wrongdoing; and the context of a (...) wider set of examples of responses and attitudes that seem not to be appropriately groundable in statistical evidence. Regrettably, we do not come up with a fully general, fully adequate, fully unified account of all the phenomena discussed. But we give reasons to believe that no such account is forthcoming, and we sketch a somewhat messier account that may be the best that can be had here. (shrink)

To a large extent, the evidential base of claims in the philosophy of science has switched from thought experiments to case studies. We argue that abandoning thought experiments was a wrong turn, since they can effectively complement case studies. We make our argument via an analogy with the relationship between experiments and observations within science. Just as experiments and ‘natural’ observations can together evidence claims in science, each mitigating the downsides of the other, so too can thought experiments and case (...) studies be mutually supporting. After presenting the main argument, we look at potential concerns about thought experiments, suggesting that a judiciously applied mixed-methods approach can overcome them. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn a recent paper, Michael Pardo argues that the epistemic property that is legally relevant is the one called Safety, rather than Sensitivity. In the process, he argues against our Sensitivity-related account of statistical evidence. Here we revisit these issues, partly in order to respond to Pardo, and partly in order to make general claims about legal epistemology. We clarify our account, we show how it adequately deals with counterexamples and other worries, we raise suspicions about Safety's value here, and (...) we revisit our general skepticism about the role that epistemological considerations should play in determining legal policy. (shrink)

Science and fiction seem to lie at opposite ends of the cognitive-epistemic spectrum. The former is typically seen as the study of hard, real-world facts in a rigorous manner. The latter is treated as an instrument of play and recreation, dealing in figments of the imagination. Initial appearances notwithstanding, several central features of scientific modeling in fact suggest a close connection with the imagination and recent philosophers have developed detailed accounts of models that treat them, in one way or another, (...) as akin to fictions. This chapter will critically discuss the fictions approach as an epistemology of scientific modeling. (shrink)

Gregory Kavka's 'Toxin Puzzle' suggests that I cannot intend to perform a counter-preferential action A even if I have a strong self-interested reason to form this intention. The 'Rationalist Solution,' however, suggests that I can form this intention. For even though it is counter-preferential, A-ing is actually rational given that the intention behind it is rational. Two arguments are offered for this proposition that the rationality of the intention to A transfers to A-ing itself: the 'Self-Promise Argument' and David Gauthier's (...) 'Rational Self-Interest Argument.' But both arguments – and therefore the Rationalist Solution – fail. The Self-Promise Argument fails because my intention to A does not constitute a promise to myself that I am obligated to honor. And Gauthier's Rational Self-Interest Argument fails to rule out the possibility of rational irrationality. (shrink)

I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer from (...) this conclusion that they must also lack criminal responsibility and therefore that our continuing to punish psychopaths for their crimes is unjust. My response is that this inference is entirely fallacious. -/- Criminal responsibility turns out to be quite distinct from moral responsibility. The two kinds of responsibility require very different conditions to be satisfied. In particular, criminal responsibility, unlike moral responsibility, does not require an agent be able to grasp and follow moral reasons; it requires only that the individual be able to grasp and follow criminal laws. Once this point is recognized, it becomes much easier to accept my thesis: while the subset of psychopaths who commit crimes are not morally responsible for their criminal behavior because they cannot understand moral reasons, they are still criminally responsible because they can understand what the consequences will be if they get caught. For this reason, even though I concede that psychopaths are not morally responsible for the crimes that they commit, our practice of punishing them for these crimes is still just. -/- Second, I argue that psychopathy is a mental illness and should be recognized as such. One reason that it should be recognized as a mental illness is simply because it is; it satisfies the main criteria for inclusion in the DSM-IV, the “bible” of mental disorders. The other reason is more practical than conceptual. It starts with two facts: the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the preventive detention of any individual who is not a criminal suspect is not constitutional unless the individual is not only dangerous but also mentally ill; and psychopathy is not currently considered to be a mental illness. So, as things now stand, we cannot preventively commit dangerous psychopaths – that is, psychopaths who have clearly indicated that they will be committing serious crimes. Instead, we must wait for them to commit the crimes before we can lock them up. Unfortunately, this incarceration always comes too late for the victims. It would therefore be better if we could lock them up before they actually inflict any harm. Once again, then, I propose that the legal and psychological communities classify psychopathy as a mental illness. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) have attracted extensive attention in meta-ethics, as they pose an important challenge to moral realism. Mogensen (2015) suggests that EDAs contain a fallacy, by confusing two distinct forms of biological explanation – ultimate and proximate. If correct, the point is of considerable importance: evolutionary genealogies of human morality are simply irrelevant for debunking. But we argue that the actual situation is subtler: while ultimate claims do not strictly entail proximate ones, there are important evidential connections between (...) the two. Attending to these connections clears ground for a new and improved EDA. However, it also brings into view some possible problems with EDAs that have been largely neglected so far. (shrink)

It is well known that the nature of consciousness is elusive, and that attempts to understand it generate problems in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, psychology, and neuroscience. Less appreciated are the important – even if still elusive – connections between consciousness and issues in ethics. In this chapter we consider three such connections. First, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding an entity’s moral status. Second, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding moral responsibility for action. (...) Third, we consider the relevance of consciousness for the acquisition of moral knowledge. (shrink)

Thought experiments play a role in science and in some central parts of contemporary philosophy. They used to play a larger role in philosophy of science, but have been largely abandoned as part of the field’s “practice turn”. This chapter discusses possible roles for thought experimentation within a practice-oriented philosophy of science. Some of these roles are uncontroversial, such as exemplification and aiding discovery. A more controversial role is the reliance on thought experiments to justify philosophical claims. It is proposed (...) that if we adopt an underlying empiricist view of concepts, then thought experiments can be seen as affording us contact with scientific practice, despite their seemingly a priori character. The advantages and drawbacks of thought experiments are discussed via comparison with case studies, on the one, and simulations on the other hand. The chapter closes with some remarks on how to combine thought experiments with other methods. (shrink)

-/- INTRODUCTION: Many higher education students indulge in risky eating behaviours which tend to affect their physical, psychological and academic health. Previous studies have tried to understand the trend in students’ eating patterns without paying adequate attention to contributing factors. -/- PURPOSE: This study evaluated the influence of selected psychological variables on the consumption of balanced diets among students in two public universities in Calabar Metropolis, Nigeria. -/- METHODOLOGY: A research question was posed, and a formulated hypothesis to guide the (...) study. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. A total of 12,530 faculty of education students spread across two public universities in Calabar Metropolis constituted the population of this study. A sample of 125 students was randomly selected through the stratified technique. A four-point questionnaire was used for data collection after validation by experts. Descriptive statistical measures such as mean, standard deviation, and percentages answered the research question. The null hypothesis was tested at the .05 level of significance using the one-sample t-test analysis. -/- RESULTS: Findings revealed that the influence of psychological variables (such as stress, emotions, and mental state) on students’ consumption of balanced diets is not significantly low. -/- RECOMMENDATIONS/CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS: Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that students cultivate the habit of always eating quality meals rich in nutrients, irrespective of their psychological state, to maintain a healthy life. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta a maneira pela qual atualmente compreendo um dos pontos mais controverso: da doutrina cartesiana, a saber, sua concepção de liberdade. Meu interesse nas concepções cartesianas de vontade e de liberdade é exclusivamente epistêmico, e não prático; ou melhor, trata-se de pensar esses conceitos, bem como sua relação a partir do ponto de vista estrito do problema do conhecimento, embora - aparentemente - o próprio Descartes não acreditasse que tal separação fosse possível. Através da análise das relações entre (...) entendimento, vontade e liberdade, procuro mostrar que a razão que leva Descartes a enfatizar a distinção entre antes e durante o momento da decisão da vontade na carta de 9 de fevereiro de 1645 ao Padre Mesland reside precisamente na consideração de que a concepção da liberdade humana deve associar às condições de aplicação do conceito formal de liberdade as condições específicas de seu exercício no caso do espírito humano, enquanto substância finita criada inserida na temporalidade. A análise das condições do exercício da liberdade humana, por sua vez, pode explicar a introdução de um tipo peculiar de necessidade epistêmica associada à percepção de conteúdos fictícios e que gera o problema do qual trata a Quinta Meditação, e cujo exame conduziu-me a investigar concepção cartesiana de liberdade. (shrink)

In the wake of the spectacular success of Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice, philosophers have paid a great deal of attention to testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when recipients of testimony discount it in virtue of its source: usually, their social identity. The remedy for epistemic injustice is almost always listening better and giving greater weight to the testimony we hear, on most philosophers' implicit or explicit view. But Fricker identifies another kind of epistemic injustice: hermeneutical injustice. This kind of injustice (...) occurs when someone can't articulate their own experience or understand their situation for lack of the hermeneutical tools. There is a possible tension between these kinds of injustice, we suggest: sincere testimony may be misleading (may fail to identify significant harms the testfier is subject, or may fail to register its magnitude, or to categorize it as the kind of harm it is) in virtue of a lack of hermeneutical resources. This tension raises the possibility that there are situations in which experts - those who possess hermeneutical tools - may be able to correct the testimony of those who experience harms in virtue of their identity. In this paper, we identify possible cases in which epistemic injustice might be reduced through such correction: in which an increase in testimonial injustice might serve to decrease it in the longer run, for example. We also suggest how the obvious dangers of a too great readiness to see testimony as in need of expert correction might be mitigated, and how the expert might suggest corrections without ceasing to listen. (shrink)

I defend an interpretation of the first Critique’s category of totality based on Kant’s analysis of totality in the third Critique’s Analytic of the mathematical sublime. I show, firstly, that in the latter Kant delineates the category of totality — however general it may be — in relation to the essentially singular standpoint of the subject. Despite the fact that sublime and categorial totality have a significantly different scope and function, they do share such a singular baseline. Secondly, I argue (...) that Kant’s note (in the first Critique’s metaphysical deduction) that deriving the category of totality requires a special act of the understanding can be seen as a ‘mark’ of that singular baseline. This way, my aesthetical ‘detour’ has the potential of revealing how the subjective aspects of object-constitution might be accounted for in the very system of the categories (of quantity) itself. (shrink)

Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos, em seu texto sobre "Leibniz e a questão dos futuros contingentes”, argumenta em favor de seu diagnóstico segundo o qual, no fundo, a principal diferença entre as doutrinas de Espinosa e Leibniz reside no fato de que o primeiro, diferentemente do segundo, não sabia lógica. Este texto procura objetar à sua posição, respondendo às críticas do autor à posição de Espinosa quanto à liberdade divina. Procurarei mostrar que, sob o aspecto preciso da articulação aí estabelecida (...) entre a distinção vontade/entendimento e a questão dos possíveis jamais realizados, ela não poderia estar disponível para a metafísica de Espinosa, não por ele ter ignorado um princípio básico da lógica modal, como alega o autor, mas porque ele compreende diferentemente o estatuto ontológico da unidade das coisas individuais e, portanto, dos agentes humanos. (shrink)

This Article falls into three general parts. The first part starts with an important question: is the insanity defense constitutionally required? The United States Supreme Court will finally try to answer this question next term in the case of Kahler v. Kansas. -/- I say “finally” because the Court refused to answer this question in 2012 when it denied certiorari to an appeal brought by John Joseph Delling, a severely mentally ill defendant who was sentenced to life in prison three (...) years earlier for two murders. Delling never had the opportunity to plead the insanity defense because his home state, Idaho, had abolished it in 1982. -/- By depriving Delling of the right to plead insanity, Idaho violated Delling’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and his Eighth Amendment right against “cruel and unusual” punishment. Naturally, the same is true for many other mentally ill and disabled defendants who have been prosecuted in Idaho and in the other three states that have abolished the insanity defense: Kansas, Montana, and Utah. -/- The second general part of this Article notes an insight that I stumbled upon in the course of researching the first part: the insanity defense and the mistake of law defense both require ignorance of the law, what I refer to as “normative ignorance.” Indeed, normative ignorance is what makes both of these defenses exculpatory in the first place. -/- Given this critical connection, there is a way for Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah to resume compliance with the Constitution. Instead of reinstating the insanity defense per se, which might be politically unpopular, they should just broaden their mistake of law defense to include normative ignorance caused by cognitive incapacity that is itself caused by mental illness or disability. -/- Still, this Article is not merely directed at these four western states. It is directed at the other forty-six states as well. Because they already have an insanity defense, they need not incorporate it into their mistake of law defense. But in the third general part, I will argue that they should still expand their mistake of law defense to cover defendants who either lack a reasonable opportunity to learn the law or reasonably but mistakenly infer from widely accepted norms or ethics that their conduct is lawful. (shrink)