In 2022 a group of researchers published an empirical study on population ethical intuitions, which remained largely unnoticed, but has the potential to revolutionize the hedonist account of global well-being. The study disclosed that – in valuing entire populations – the majority’s intuitions are asymmetric about happiness and suffering. If this asymmetry is applied to the life evaluations of the World Happiness Report, then the aggregated total turns negative.

The Asymmetry in procreative ethics consists of two claims. The first is that it is morally wrong to bring into existence a child who will have an abjectly miserable life; the second is that it is permissible not to bring into existence a child who will enjoy a very happy life. In this paper, I distinguish between two variations of the Asymmetry. The first is the Abstract Asymmetry, the idealized variation of the Asymmetry that many (...) philosophers have been trying to solve. The second is the Real-World Asymmetry, a non-idealized variation that applies explicitly to cases of ordinary human reproduction. I argue that the Real-World Asymmetry can be defended by properly acknowledging the general wrongness of causing someone else to suffer, the limits of what morality can reasonably demand of us, and the significance of respecting women’s autonomy. I then argue that the Abstract Asymmetry is indefensible. (shrink)

The Buddhist denial of the world seems hard to defend if it is confronted with empirical data. Surveys on subjective life satisfaction consistently report that the majority is satisfied with their lives. Is the desire to escape from the cycle of rebirth a sign of risk-aversion or even irrationality? How would an impartial observer evaluate the world? -/- An impartial view is achieved by interpreting the surveys on life satisfaction as probability distributions for life’s risks and chances. It turns out (...) that there is no indisputable metric for measuring risks and no reliable forecast. Given this uncertainty the denial of the world cannot easily be dismissed as being irrational. (shrink)

Various authors suggested that Buddhism may be a kind of negative utilitarianism. A closer examination of the corresponding intuitions leads to the following result: - Negative utilitarianism, understood as an umbrella term, models the asymmetry between suffering and happiness and therefore accords with the Buddhist intuition of universal compassion. - The Noble Truths of Buddhism accord with the negative utilitarian intuition that (global) suffering cannot be compensated by happiness. - Some forms of Buddhism and (...) negative utilitarianism share the intuition that non-existence is a perfect state. (shrink)

While it is commonly held that natural evil and suffering undermine religious belief, Kant and Kierkegaard both argue that religion and ethics presuppose discontentment, hardship, and uncertainty. Both argue that moral purity requiresthat this world be imperfect both in the sense of having restricted knowledgeand in the sense that virtue does not lead to happiness. Thus, both thinkersmake constitutive assumptions about the moral structure of the world on prac-tical grounds. But whereas Kant insists that there must be some (...) connection inthis world between morality and happiness, Kierkegaard tends to deny this, portraying this world either as amoral (in 1843–46) or as evil (in 1850–55). (shrink)

Benatar’s central argument for antinatalism develops an asymmetry between the pain and pleasure in a potential life. I am going to present an alternative route to the antinatalist conclusion. I argue that duties require victims and that as a result there is no duty to create the pleasures contained within a prospective life but a duty not to create any of its sufferings. My argument can supplement Benatar’s, but it also enjoys some advantages: it achieves a better fit (...) with our intuitions; it does not require us to acknowledge that life is a harm, or that a world devoid of life is a good thing; and it is easy to see why it does not have any pro-mortalist implications. (shrink)

The economy of Bangladesh mainly depends on agriculture. Any development can’t be possible because females and males are equally distributed in the country. Women can play a vital role if they properly participated in farm activities as well as in other income-generating activities outside the home. Rice mills are very much dependent on human labour, and almost 5 millions of unorganised workers are working in different rice mills, and more than 60 per cent of them is a female worker. But (...) the working environment suffers from different discrimination and harassment issues between male and female workers. The present study aimed to find out the socio-economic status of women labour at rice husking mill of Bangladesh. Discrimination between male and female workers and the factor affecting the standard of living of women’s household will be focused. The study was carried out in two districts namely Mymensingh and Sherpur. From each district, rice husking mill was selected by using a cluster sampling technique, and 70 male and 70 female labours were considered as a sample. The survey was conducted by direct interviews using a questionnaire. Data generated were analysed by using tabular and statistical techniques. The average family size of the respondents was 4.46, and 57.05% of the participants were females while 42.95% were males in the household and 65.71% of female had no education. 88% of the women’s main occupation was in the rice mill as a daily paid labour. Average wage rate of male and female worker was 184.31 Tk. And 135.95 Tk., respectively. Age, education, number of family member, total land, number of earning member, the wage of women labour and working time and experience were the factors influencing income and living standard of female labours. There were various social violence cases against female labours in the working environment of rice husking mills. In the study area, 93% of female workers get lower wages, 90% of them had no accommodation facility. Besides they did not have sanitation facility (80%), opportunity to take rest at the middle of work (64%) and meal support (71%). (shrink)

In the novel A Burnout-Out Case, Graham Greene argues for an intimate relationship between burnout and happiness. The novel claims that a life worth living is a continuous balancing between something painful, e.g. burnout and something desirable, e.g. happiness. In this essay, I try to make a case for the happiness of burnout. By examining the case story of a young artist, who suffered from burnout, I describe how such suffering might open up for (...) a necessary reevaluation of the values that actually make sense. Such creation of new values is what eventually leads to more happy moments, not happiness per se. This essay provides a philosophical reflection regarding the relationship between happiness and burnout in order to say something regarding which life is worth living. (shrink)

The current situation amidst the pandemic has caused such negativities to people, especially among students. It has affected thewell-being and happiness that everyone experiences. In, on the other hand, students who were enrolled amidst the pandemic were more likely to experience mental exhaustion such as anxiety and depression, as this current situation limits and affect their academic performances and the level of happiness they feel. This study investigates the relationship between happiness and depression among senior high (...) school students here in the Philippines. The findings revealed a significant correlation between happiness and depression (r=0.041). (shrink)

Empirical evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias; another is future-bias. Philosophical theorising about these biases often proceeds on two assumptions. First, that the two biases are _independent_: that they are explained by different factors (the independence assumption). Second, that there is a normative asymmetry between the two biases: one is rationally impermissible (near-bias) and the other rationally permissible (future-bias). The former assumption at least partly feeds into the latter: if the two biases were not (...) explained by different factors, then it would be less plausible that their normative statuses differ. This paper investigates the independence assumption and finds it unwarranted. In light of this, we argue, there is reason to question the normative asymmetry assumption. (shrink)

Sometimes it is not one’s place to blame or forgive. This phenomenon is captured under the philosophical notion of standing. However, there is an asymmetry to be explained here. One can successfully blame, even if one lacks the standing to do so. Yet, one cannot successfully forgive if one lacks the standing to do so. In this article we explain this asymmetry. We argue that a complete explanation depends on not only a difference in the natures of the (...) standing to blame and forgive but also a difference in the natures of blame and forgiveness themselves. (shrink)

In some cases, there appears to be an asymmetry in the evidential value of statistical and more individualized evidence. For example, while I may accept that Alex is guilty based on eyewitness testimony that is 80% likely to be accurate, it does not seem permissible to do so based on the fact that 80% of a group that Alex is a member of are guilty. In this paper I suggest that rather than reflecting a deep defect in statistical evidence, (...) this asymmetry might arise from a general constraint on rational inquiry. Plausibly the degree of evidential support needed to justify taking a proposition to be true depends on the stakes of error. While relying on statistical evidence plausibly raises the stakes by introducing new kinds of risk to members of the reference class, paradigmatically `individualized' evidence---evidence tracing back to A's voluntary behavior---can lower the stakes. The net result explains the apparent evidential asymmetry without positing a deep difference in the brute justificatory power of different types of evidence. (shrink)

In an important and widely discussed series of studies, Jonathan Phillips and colleagues have suggested that the ordinary concept of happiness has a substantial moral component. For in- stance, two persons who enjoy the same extent of positive emotions and are equally satisfied with their lives are judged as happy to different degrees if one is less moral than the other. Considering that the relation between morality and happiness or self-interest has been one of the central questions (...) of moral philosophy since at least Plato, such a result would be of considerable philosophical interest. On closer examination of the original research and new studies, we suggest that the data point to a different conclusion: in the dominant folk understanding of happiness, morality has no fundamental role. Findings seeming to indicate a moralized concept are better explained, we suggest, by folk theories on which extreme moral turpitude indicates that an individual suffers from psychological dysfunction. (shrink)

While philosophers and scientists sometimes suggest (or take for granted) that consciousness is an essential condition for free will and moral responsibility, there is surprisingly little discussion of why consciousness (and what sorts of conscious experience) is important. We discuss some of the proposals that have been offered. We then discuss our studies using descriptions of humanoid robots to explore people’s attributions of free will and responsibility, of various kinds of conscious sensations and emotions, and of reasoning capacities, and examine (...) the relationships between these attributions. Our initial results suggest that people’s attributions of free will are strongly influenced by their attributions of conscious emotions, such as happiness and disappointment, including Strawsonian emotions, such as pride and regret. These results provide some support for an intriguing proposal: Free will requires the capacity to make decisions that really matter to the agent, and for anything to really matter to the agent, she must be able to consciously experience the good and bad effects of the decisions she makes—to suffer and regret, or to enjoy and feel proud of, their outcomes. (shrink)

One popular defence of moral omnivorism appeals to facts about the indirectness of the diner’s causal relationship to the suffering of farmed animals. Another appeals to the claim that farmed animals would not exist but for our farming practices. The import of these claims, I argue, has been misunderstood, and the standard arguments grounded in them fail. In this paper, I develop a better argument in defence of eating meat which combines resources from both of these strategies, together with (...) principles of population ethics, and discuss its implications for which sorts of meat it is permissible to eat. According to the diner’s defence, there is an asymmetry between producers and consumers of meat. Producers can prevent the suffering of animals without preventing their existence, but consumers cannot. This asymmetry grounds a defence against harm-based objections to eating meat which is available to the consumer alone, and which avoids the controversial commitments about moral status or the interests of nonhuman animals endemic to existing attempts to justify omnivorism. (shrink)

The standard versions of predicativism are committed to the following two theses: proper names are count nouns in all their occurrences, and names do not refer to objects but express name-bearing properties. The main motivation for predicativism is to provide a uniform explanation of referential names and predicative names. According to predicativism, predicative names are fundamental and referential names are explained by appealing to a null determiner functioning like “the” or “that.” This paper has two goals. The first is to (...) reject the predicativists’ explanation of the two types of names. I present three syntactic counterexamples to the predicativists’ account of referential names: incorporation, modification, and measure phrase uses. The second goal is to present a novel strategy to explain the two types of names. I propose that referential names are fundamental but that there are null morphemes available for transforming a name into a count noun (and possibly into other syntactic categories). (shrink)

As a contribution to a critical yet responsive materialist ethics of environments and animals, I reexamine the significance of nature and animals in the critical social theory of Theodor Adorno. In response to the anthropocentric primacy of intersubjective discourse and recognition in recent figures associated with the Frankfurt School, such as Habermas and Honneth, I argue for the ecological import of the aporetic dialectic of nature and society diagnosed in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Adorno’s later works. Adorno’s (...) continuing confrontation with the “domination of nature” traces the tensions between the ideological construction and resistance of “nature” as well as the instrumentalization and implicit disruptive promise of sensuous life. It indicates the material and bodily bonds between human and animal happiness and suffering, the ambiguous role of mimesis in domination and emancipation, and the critical prospect of an unforced and non-coercive freedom toward the object and answerability toward socially and historically mediated yet non-identical natural life. (shrink)

Persons care about their future selves. They reason about their future selves’ interests; they plan for their future selves’ happiness and they worry about their future selves’ suffering. This paper is interested in the interplay between diachronic prudential reason and certain accounts of the metaphysics of personal identity that fall under the broad umbrella ‘conventionalist’. Some conventionalists conclude that under certain conditions there are intractable decisions for there is no fact of the matter regarding whether a person-stage (...) ought (prudentially) to ϕ. This paper will suggest otherwise. These decisions are not intractable if we allow that it is sometimes rational for a person-stage to discount the utility of certain future person-stages. The paper then goes on to explore an alternative position that conventionalists might occupy which does not involve any such discounting: prudential relativism. According to prudential relativism it is impossible to offer a single, correct, answer to the question: should person-stage, P, ϕ at t? For according to prudential relativism there is no stage-independent stance from which to evaluate whether a person-stage ought to ϕ. Yet it is not, for all that, intractable, from P’s perspective, whether or not to ϕ. (shrink)

This paper defends and develops the capacity view against insightful critiques from Matt McGrath, Adam Pautz, and Ram Neta. In response to Matt McGrath, I show why capacities are essential and cannot simply be replaced with representational content. I argue moreover, that the asymmetry between the employment of perceptual capacities in the good and the bad case is sufficient to account for the epistemic force of perceptual states yielded by the employment of such capacities. In response to Adam (...) Pautz, I show why a perceiver’s belief is better justified than the belief of someone who suffers a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination. I show, moreover, why the capacity view is compatible with standard Bayesian principles and how it accounts for degrees of justification. In response to Ram Neta, I discuss the relationship between evidence and rational confidence, as well as the notion of evidence in light of an externalism about perceptual content. (shrink)

The extended dual-aspect monism framework of consciousness, based on neuroscience, consists of five components: (1) dual-aspect primal entities; (2) neural-Darwinism: co-evolution and co-development of subjective experiences (SEs) and associated neural-nets from the mental aspect (that carries the SEs/proto-experiences (PEs) in superposed and unexpressed form) and the material aspect (mass, charge, spin and space-time) of fundamental entities (elementary particles), respectively and co-tuning via sensorimotor interaction; (3) matching and selection processes: interaction of two modes, namely, (a) the non-tilde mode that is the (...) material and mental aspect of cognition (memory and attention) related feedback signals in a neural-network, which is the cognitive nearest past approaching towards present; and (b) the tilde mode that is the material and mental aspect of the feed forward signals due to external environmental input and internal endogenous input, which is the nearest future approaching towards present and is a entropy-reversed representation of non-tilde mode; (4) the segregation and integration of information, and (5) the necessary ingredients of SEs (such as wakefulness, attention, re-entry, working memory, stimulus at or above threshold level, and neural-net PEs). This framework leads to structural and functional coherence between the mind and the brain, bridges the explanatory gap (the gap between SEs and their neural-correlates), and leads to our mundane subjective experiences. This extended dual-aspect monism (eDAM) framework (Vimal, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015a, 2015b) could be the fundamental basis of various religions and philosophies. This is a Western perspective. On the other hand, Eastern perspectives emphasize the practical methods for achieving altered experience at samadhi state. An important corollary of these methods (such as yogic method) is the sublimation of negative aspects of seven groups of self-protective energy system (desire, anger, ego, greed, attachment, jealousy, and selfish-love) into their positive aspects. Their negative aspects create war and suffering, whereas their positive aspects advance science and technology, family values, peace, and happiness. Here, the Western perspective framework is extended to include the concepts of the sublimation process to encompass Eastern perspectives. The four elements (war, suffering, peace, and happiness) are ubiquitous in both space and time because they are essential contributors to the variations for natural selection in our evolutionary system. The sublimation process optimizes the system: minimizes war and suffering, maximizes peace and happiness, and enhances family values and individual progress. This is consistent with both Eastern and Western perspectives. (shrink)

Suppose someone (P1) does something that is wrongful only in virtue of the risk that it will enable another person (P2) to commit a wrongdoing. Suppose further that P1’s conduct does indeed turn out to enable P2’s wrongdoing. The resulting wrong is agentially mediated: P1 is an enabling agent and P2 is an intervening agent. Whereas the literature on intervening agency focuses on whether P2’s status as an intervening agent makes P1’s conduct less bad, I turn this issue on its (...) head by investigating whether P1’s status as an enabling agent makes P2’s conduct more bad. I argue that it does: P2 wrongs not just the victims of ϕ but P1 as well, by acting in a way that wrongfully makes P1 accountable for ϕ. This has serious implications for compensatory and defensive liability in cases of agentially mediated wrongs. (shrink)

Recent results from the neurosciences demonstrate that pleasure and pain are not two symmetrical poles of a single scale of experience but in fact two different types of experiences altogether, with dramatically different contributions to well-being. These differences between pleasure and pain and the general finding that “the bad is stronger than the good” have important implications for our treatment of nonhuman animals. In particular, whereas animal experimentation that causes suffering might be justified if it leads to the (...) prevention of more suffering, it can never by justified merely by leading to increased levels of happiness. (shrink)

In episode 6 of the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, the Republic of Gilead welcomes a trade delegation of the United Mexican States. Offred’s hope that the ensuing trade agreement between Gilead and Mexico would eventually bring the sexual exploitation she and the other handmaids suffer to public are quickly dashed. During a chance encounter at the house of Offred’s master, the Mexican ambassador Mrs Castillo confides in Offred that Mexico is suffering a fertility crisis just like (...) Gilead. Her country is seriously considering trading with Gilead in handmaids. My article will use this episode as a starting point to reflect on the correlation between women’s social and economic status. I will illustrate how The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates that markets are socially embedded and thereby reproduce and amplify social and political inequalities. This series thereby also functions as a powerful validation of the asymmetry thesis concerning markets in reproductive labour. (shrink)

In this chapter, I highlight the differences between the two goods of happiness and meaningfulness. Specifically, I contrast happiness and meaning with respect to six value-theoretic factors, among them: what the bearers of these values are, how luck can play a role in their realization, which attitudes are appropriate in response to them, and when they are to be preferred in a life. I aim not only to show that there are several respects in which happiness (...) and meaning differ as categories of value, but also to bring out some of the logical relationships between the differences, for example, to note that the value’s bearer affects its susceptibility to luck. (shrink)

Imagine you find yourself in heaven after death, only to discover that the soul of your dearest love is suffering in hell. Would your bliss be marred by the suffering of your loved one? The “argument from love” challenges the traditional Christian conception of heaven and hell as places of perfect bliss and terrible suffering, respectively, on the grounds that no lover in heaven could be very happy if she were aware that her beloved was suffering (...) in hell. Love requires concern for the well-being of one’s beloved, thus apparently rendering heavenly bliss impossible for those who love an unreformed sinner. Here I defend a traditional conception of heaven and hell against the perplexing mismatch between the blessed souls’ love for the damned and apparent indifference to their plight. (shrink)

This paper examines the connection between happiness and the meaning of life, where life is meant in terms of both its potentiality and its fragility, as incorporating both health and disease. Fundamentally, the problem at hand is an ethical or axiological one since it concerns the value of life and people’s judgments about the value of their own lives and existence—people who more or less share a world with others and who, consequently, must respect certain universal values. These (...) values can come into conflict with individual values or with individual value preferences. At times, respecting universal values and universal goods seems to demand the sacrifices of one’s own feelings, above all with what one considers one’s own happiness and individual good. The issue of happiness and the meaning of life or existence has received various treatments in the history of philosophy. In the current literature, the prevailing interpretations of this question are largely deontological, eudaimonic or hedonic in character. This paper deals with this problem from a phenomenological perspective, and in particular from a Schelerian one. Within this framework, “good in itself” does not necessarily conflict with “good for someone”. I will argue that happiness and the meaning of life (in the case of the deepest happiness or bliss) are co-originally grounded in an act of love; when an individual achieves it, she reveals herself in her personal unitariness and unicity. Recognizing that life (including the life of the mind) can involve suffering, this essay considers this problem from a psychopathological point of view as well, making use (and revealing the value of) the dialogue between Scheler and the Dutch psychiatrist Henricus Cornelius Rümke. In the first part of this essay, I consider the specific context of interaction between philosophy and psychiatry. I then describe the general traits of the Schelerian vocational ethic, focusing above all on Scheler’s theory of the stratification of emotional life—particularly on his interpretation of bliss—and on his concept of motivational efficay. In this context, I discuss the connection between happiness and the meaning of existence. In the second part of this essay, assuming as a leitmotiv the both Schelerian and psychological concept of a motiv, I concentrate on Rümkean phenomenology, his clinical psychiatric analysis of the feeling of happiness, and his clinical observations on the happiness syndrome within a pathological framework. Rümke’s clinical work presupposes (and at the same time empirically confirms) Scheler’s theory of the stratification of emotional life. Both in normal cases of happiness and in the pathological states observed by Rümke, the deepest feeling of happiness appears in itself as a genuine, non-pathological sentiment. Within this context, I also point out the limits within which it is possible to speak of the meaning of an existence. (shrink)

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is a philosophical exposition of violence informed by two theoretical positions which confront complexity as a phenomenon. These positions are complexity theory and deconstruction. Both develop systemsbased understandings of complex phenomena in which relations of difference are constitutive of the meaning of those phenomena. There has been no focused investigation of the implications of complexity for the conceptualisation of violence thus far. In response to this theoretical gap, this thesis begins by distinguishing complexity theory as a (...) general, trans-disciplinary field of study from critical complexity theory. The latter is used to develop a critique and criticism of epistemological foundationalism, emphasising the limits to knowledge and the normative and ethical dimension of knowledge and understanding. The epistemological break implied by this critique reiterates the epistemological shift permeating the work of, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. In this context, critical complexity theory begins to articulate the idea of violence on two levels: first, as an empirical, ethical problem in the system; and, secondly, as asymmetry and antagonism. Violence in this second sense is implicated in the dynamic relations of difference through which structure and meaning are generated in complex organisation. The sensitivity to difference and violence shared by critical complexity theory and deconstruction allows for the parallel reading of these philosophical perspectives; and for the supplementation and opening of critical complexity theory by deconstruction within the architecture of this thesis. This supplementation seeks to preserve the singularity of each perspective, while exploring the potential of their points of affinity and tension in the production of a coherent philosophical analysis of violence. Deconstruction offers a more developed understanding of violence and a wealth of related motifs: différance, framing, law, singularity, aesthetics and others. These motifs necessitate the inclusion of other philosophical voices, notably, that of Nietzsche, Arendt, Kant, Levinas, and Benjamin. In conversation with these authors, this thesis links violence to meaning, to its possibility, to its production and to the process by which meaning comes to change. Given these links, violence is conceptualised in relation to the notion of difference on three distinct levels. The first is the difference between elements in a complex system of meaning; the second is the notion of difference between systems or texts around which boundaries or frames can be drawn; and the third is the notion of difference between meaning and the absence of meaning. This discussion examines the relationship between this violence implicated in the constitution of meaning and the more colloquial understanding of violence as atrocity, as rape, murder and other socially, politically and ethically problematic expressions thereof. It is to empirical violence, following Derrida and Levinas, that we are called to respond and to intervene in the suffering of the other. The ethical and political necessity of response anchors this discussion of violence. And, it is towards the possibility of an adequate response – the possibility of an ethics sensitive to its own violence and a politics that is directed at the eradication of empirical violence – which this discussion navigates. (shrink)

For Kant, any authentic moral demands are wholly distinct from the demands of prudence. This has led critics to complain that Kantian moral demands are incompatible with our human nature as happiness-seekers. Kant’s defenders have pointed out, correctly, that Kant can and does assert that it is permissible, at least in principle, to pursue our own happiness. But this response does not eliminate the worry that a life organized around the pursuit of virtue might turn out to be (...) one from which we cannot expect any of this (permissible) happiness. To address this worry, Kant would need to establish that there is a kind of harmony between virtue and our own happiness that can give us confidence that aiming at morality does not require us to abandon our hope for happiness in this life. This paper aims to show that Kant—building on insights from Rousseau that Kant identifies with Cynicism—does offer an account of such a harmony between virtue and worldly happiness. (shrink)

This is the Amsterdam Colloquium version of a paper in which I develop a lexical solution to some important puzzles recently discovered by Dilip Ninan, which highlight striking asymmetries between future- and past-directed talk. A central component of the solution is the idea that lexical meanings of predicates ought to include features that determine the type of evidence that is admissible for standard predications.

We argue for asymmetries between positive and negative partiality. Specifically, we defend four claims: i) there are forms of negative partiality that do not have positive counterparts; ii) the directionality of personal relationships has distinct effects on positive and negative partiality; iii) the extent of the interactions within a relationship affects positive and negative partiality differently; and iv) positive and negative partiality have different scope restrictions. We argue that these asymmetries point to a more fundamental moral principle, which we (...) call Morality’s Harmonious Propensity. According to this principle, morality has a propensity toward preserving positive relationships and dissolving negative ones. (shrink)

Physicists routinely claim that the fundamental laws of physics are 'time symmetric' or 'time reversal invariant' or 'reversible'. In particular, it is claimed that the theory of quantum mechanics is time symmetric. But it is shown in this paper that the orthodox analysis suffers from a fatal conceptual error, because the logical criterion for judging the time symmetry of probabilistic theories has been incorrectly formulated. The correct criterion requires symmetry between future-directed laws and past-directed laws. This criterion is formulated (...) and proved in detail. The orthodox claim that quantum mechanics is reversible is re-evaluated. The property demonstrated in the orthodox analysis is shown to be quite distinct from time reversal invariance. The view of Satosi Watanabe that quantum mechanics is time asymmetric is verified, as well as his view that this feature does not merely show a de facto or 'contingent' asymmetry, as commonly supposed, but implies a genuine failure of time reversal invariance of the laws of quantum mechanics. The laws of quantum mechanics would be incompatible with a time-reversed version of our universe. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of utilitarianism for social justice, considering different cases of the trolley problems. Utilitarianism comprises a cluster of ethical theses, which have political and legal implications. In general, utilitarianism is assumed to augment the common good, such as pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, and utility, or to reduce pain, suffering, dissatisfaction, and disutility. The article investigates a key problem whether utilitarianism brings about social justice as a moral theory. In recent literature, many moral philosophers have developed (...) several thought experiments, known as trolley problems, that help understand the utilitarian applications to social justice. Philippa Foot and others formulated several thought experiments to help explain the utilitarian difference between the maximum good and the minimum loss. Considering different cases of the trolley problem, I argue that utilitarianism does not do egalitarian justice to all people because it does not eliminate unjust inequalities in society. I hold that utilitarianism is an ethical theory without an egalitarian morality. John Rawls posited a landmark theory of social justice in contrast to the utilitarian notion of social justice. Utilitarianism does not provide social justice to the few, the minority, or the weak in the social world. So, utilitarianism is an inadequate moral theory for acquiring social justice. In qualitative research methodology, I adopt a method of an empirically informed philosophical analysis to examine documentary resources, including journal papers, academic books, and conferences and congresses. (shrink)

Seeking for Happiness in Islamic Philosophy and its goal, it can be seen a literal and unanimous answer in philosopher words which reflects combination of worldly(secular) and otherworldly(sacred) happiness that it can prepare temporal and eschatological happiness. But in a deeper investigation we can ask: what is the main purpose? mortal or final dimension of happiness? As a result of the text, it seems that from Al- Kendi to Al- Rāzī the otherworldly happiness is considered (...) as a result of worldly happiness. After Al- Farabi to Al- Tusi the flow of thinking tends to combine worldly and otherworldly happiness. After Al- Tusi and under the influence of him in Nasirian Ethics (Akhlaq-i Nasiri), the changed version of philosophical Islamic Ethics supports eschatological happiness and supposes the worldly happiness as a primary and elementary level which must be considered as healing of mortal life. Matching with this view, it seems that worldly happiness is Abolished, because it changes the balance between and worldly and otherworldly happiness, and also it week the social development instead of increasing individual happiness. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that a certain kind of envy is not only morally permissible, but also, sometimes, more fitting and productive than admiration. Envy and admiration are part of our emotional palette, our toolbox of evolutionary adaptations, and they play complementary roles. I start by introducing my original taxonomy of envy, which allows me to present emulative envy, a species of envy sometimes confused with admiration. After reviewing how the two emotions differ from a psychological perspective, I focus (...) in particular on the distinct and complementary roles they play in the ethical and political domains. (shrink)

According to one of the most influential views in the philosophy of self-knowledge each person enjoys some special cognitive access to his or her own current mental states and episodes. This view faces two fundamental tasks. First, it must elucidate the general conceptual structure of apparent asymmetries between beliefs about one’s own mind and beliefs about other minds. Second, it must demarcate the mental territory for which first-person-special-access claims can plausibly be maintained. Traditional candidates include sensations, experiences (of various (...) kinds), thoughts, beliefs, desires, and also affective states such as emotions. I reconstruct five prominent privileged access claims that have traditionally been maintained for emotions and discuss logical relations among them. I then argue that none of these claims stands up to scrutiny. The truth is that we often suffer from affective ignorance, and that third-person ascriptions of emotional states should often be credited with more rather than less authority than corresponding self-ascriptions. I conclude by considering, and rejecting, five potential objections to my argument. (shrink)

The contrast between Kant’s moral philosophy and Feder’s is not less crucial than the controversy caused by the Göttingen review of the first Critique. One of main targets of Kant’s moral philosophy was Feder’s view, which can be regarded as Kant's main competitor in the contemporary debate. I thus argue that the background provided by the conflict with Feder shows significant distinctive traits of Kant's view, with regard to three fundamental issues. First, I examine how the project of a (...) pure moral philosophy opposes Feder’s empirical investigation into the will, which is in fact one of the targets of Kant's criticism against universal practical philosophy. Second, a central element of Kant’s anti-eudaemonism, the contrast between happiness and self-contentment, is a rejection of the strongly moralized view of happiness that underlies Feder’s eudaemonism. Finally, I examine Tittel's objection that Kant had provided "only a new formula" of morality and Kant's response, which display a fundamental contrast between Kant’s understanding of the aims of moral theory with Feder’s common-sense conception. (shrink)

1. The most original discovery in Beauvoir’s book is one more Columbus’s egg, namely that it is far from evident that a woman is a woman. That is, she discovers that a woman is the result of a process that made so that she is like she is. The paper discusses two aspects of the so-to-say ‘ideology’ inspiring the work. The first is its ideology in the proper, Marxian sense. My claim is that the work still pays a heavy price (...) to the dominating ideology. It leaves still too much unquestionedof what was assumed at the time to be obvious, necessary, and unchanging. This ballast depends firstly on the inherited prevailing climate of opinion, corresponding to a situation of alienation, producing two distorted views of the male and female gender. On the other hand, it depends on an unquestioned legacy from the modern episteme (in Foucault’s sense of the word) carrying presupposed Cartesian dualism. The other side of the work’s ideology, that is, the positive program presented or better the utopia it formulates is less innovative than it could be, In a few passages, where she seems to make use of suggestions from Merleau-Ponty, she points at a view where the bodily and emotional dimension is rescued from its negation in the male-dominated Capitalist society. Still, these suggestions are forgotten in the bulk of the work. -/- 2. The making of a philosophical work does not depend just on the kind of philosophical influences behind it. A book is also the product of an author with a story living in one society at a given time of social history. In this case, the book was written in the afterwar time when women were pushed back home again from the wartime labor market and when several of the goals reached by the first phase of feminist movements had gone lost in several European countries under Fascist or semi-fascist regimes and were being eroded in America by the reactionary climate of McCarthyism. It was a book written by an intellectual young woman in almost total isolation. These circumstances account for some more naïve suggestions from work: for ex., the idea that the alternative to the strategy once adopted by nineteenth-century emancipationist movements should be an individual inner process of transformation confined within the boundaries of one woman’s consciousness, or also, the idea that the goal of women’s liberation should be to bring all women to a condition similar of Simone de Beauvoir herself who, as an educated woman, earning her life by her work, and living in an allegedly equal state with an enlightened man (Jean-Paul Sartre!) in a relationship free from constraints (an unmarried couple!), was already exemplifying what a liberated woman’s life would be. -/- 3. The reconstruction of the idea of femininity is still the most fruitful part of the work. It rejects the notion of femininity as an essence depending on biology or other factors and explores the making of this image as a result of a condition made of the social and economic state of affairs but as revived and actively mirrored through and by the consciousness of the very subjects suffering an oppressive situation. And the main novelty is the ‘discovery’ of asymmetry between the self-image of the male and the (self)-image of the woman, an asymmetry depending on the fact that the woman sees herself through the other’s eyes. -/- 4. Later feminist writers such as Shulamit Firestone remarked that 'The Second Sex' heavily depended on several key-ideas from Sartre existential ontology. One crucial aspect is accepting the mind-body dualistic framework without any suspicion that such dualism could have been itself a projection of the basic experience of the male-female duality. I suggest that the philosophical legacy inherited from Sartre is on occasion an asset for Beauvoir’s innovative existential analysis of the feminine ‘condition,’ but on several occasions, it creates unnecessary obstacles for her project of a new comprehension of the feminine ‘situation,’ aimed at rescuing women from an 'inauthentic' self-definition. -/- 5. The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things,’ thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions, and culture. -/- 6. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as dialectics without synthesis. This is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts, in so far as it accounts for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. But it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any kind of relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. -/- 7. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach of positive value of the bodily dimension as such, and hence of the feminine body, are evoked here and there but never fully spelled out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies de-empathizing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Besides, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that biological differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such a step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation.The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things’, thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions and culture. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as a dialectic without a synthesis. This view of dialectics is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts. It may account for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. However, it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach would tend to admit that the bodily dimension as such has a positive value, and hence the feminine bodily dimension is not just indifferent, but instead gives women a point of view on the world different from the male point of view. These suggestions, yet, are evoked here and there but never fully spelt out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies understressing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Furthermore, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that physical differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation. -/- . (shrink)

The Cyrenaics assert that (1) particular pleasure is the highest good, and happiness is valued not for its own sake, but only for the sake of the particular pleasures that compose it; (2) we should not forego present pleasures for the sake of obtaining greater pleasure in the future. Their anti-eudaimonism and lack of future-concern do not follow from their hedonism. So why do they assert (1) and (2)? After reviewing and criticizing the proposals put forward by Annas, Irwin (...) and Tsouna, I offer two possible reconstructions. In the first reconstruction, I explain claim (1) as follows: happiness has no value above and beyond the value of the particular pleasures that compose it. Also, there is no "structure" to happiness. The Cyrenaics are targeting the thesis that happiness involves having the activities of one's life forming an organized whole, the value of which cannot be reduced to the value of the experiences within that life. I explain claim (2) as follows: a maximally pleasant life is valuable, but the best way to achieve it is to concentrate heedlessly on the present. In the second reconstruction, the good is radically relativized to one's present preferences. The Cyrenaics assert that we desire some particular pleasure, e.g., the pleasure that results from having this drink now. Thus, our telos -- which is based upon our desires -- is this particular pleasure, not (generic) 'pleasure' or the maximization of pleasure over our lifetime. As our desires change, so does our telos. I conclude that the scanty texts we have do not allow us to decide conclusively between these reconstructions, but I give some reasons to support the second over the first. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the connection between happiness and reason in the work of Herder, Kant, and Hegel. First, I consider Herder’s integration of satisfaction and rationality and Kant’s complete separation of rational imperatives from particular experience. I discuss Kant’s critique of Herder as arbitrary and overly reliant on analogy. I then turn to Hegel’s response to this debate. I argue that Hegel’s Phenomenology provides an integration of happiness and reason that is not subject to the (...) same pitfalls as Herder’s solution. I examine two examples of rational critique in the Phenomenology and conclude with brief remarks about happiness and the rational society in Hegel’s work. (shrink)

This book provides a critical and innovative reassessment of contemporary debate on the human-animal relationship. Starting with a critique of the “official philosophical narration” of animal studies, and then a reassessment of Descartes' animal-machine paradigm, Simone Ghelli tracks down the conceptual coordinates of what he calls “the paradigm of the suffering animal.” The suffering animal is a materialist thesis on the condition of the living, which, while contesting the metaphysical and anthropocentric structure of western axiology, eventually redefines and (...) re-establishes ethics on the experience of suffering, that is on the mutual compassion sentient beings feel before the unjust sight of their finitude. The suffering animal paradigm shows how, within our philosophical tradition, the animal question has been always intertwined with the questions of atheism and of materialism. The ultimate aim of this research is to define the “ethical equilibrium” between aspects of the living, such as weakness and power, joy and suffering, life and death, which our philosophical tradition largely tends to consider as mutually excluding. To overcome such oppositions means avoiding opposing, in our ethical and political discourse, the defense of the vulnerability of the weak and the freedom of the powerful. (shrink)

What is the relationship between negative experience, artistic production, and prudential value? If it were true that (for some people) artistic creativity must be purchased at the price of negative experience (to be clear: currently no one knows whether this is true), what should we conclude about the value of such experiences? Are they worth it for the sake of art? The first part of this essay considers general questions about how to establish the positive extrinsic value of something (...) intrinsically negative. The second part emphasizes the importance of various distinctions within the realm of the negative. We must distinguish between adversity (which is non-mental) and negative mental states, and between negative thoughts (or attitudes) and negative affect. Within the realm of negative affect, we must distinguish between negative emotions and moods, on the one hand, and negative affective perspectives on the other, and then between mildly negative affective perspectives and severely negative ones (for which I reserve the term ‘suffering’). These distinctions matter greatly, since different types of negative experience have very different degrees of prudential disvalue. Although many types of negative experience may be “worth it”—because their positive extrinsic value outweighs their negative value—this is rarely true of severe suffering. (shrink)

This paper treats of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness or eudaimonia in five parts. In the first part, we argue that phenomenology of happiness is an important albeit relatively neglected area of research, and we show that Husserl engages in it. In the second part, we examine the relationship between phenomenological ethics and virtue ethics. In the third part, we identify and clarify essential aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness, namely, the nature of the question concerning (...) class='Hi'>happiness and the possibility of a phenomenological answer, the power of the will, the role of vocation, the place of obligation, the significance of habituation, the necessity of selfreflection and self-criticism, the importance of sociability and solidarity, the impact of chance and destiny, and the specter of regret. In the fourth part, we establish the inextricable linkage between Husserl’s metaethics and his metaphysics. In the fi ft h part, we provide a provisional exploration of his conception of the connection between happiness and blessedness. We acknowledge that there is an extensive literature on Husserl’s phenomenological ethics, and our study has benefitted greatly from it, but we also suggest that our holistic approach critically clarifies his description of happiness, virtue, and blessedness by fully recognizing that his phenomenological metaethics is embedded in his phenomenological metaphysics. (shrink)

This article brings out ethical aspects arising in Plato’s classical critique of narrative and imitative art in The Republic, especially when it comes to reading stories about the past. Socrates’s and Glaucon’s most important suggestion, I argue, is to cultivate an ethical consciousness where one ought to see the distinctions between how the real and the imaginary in narratives are to be conceived, and what that insight ethically demands of the reader. Taken as an ethical insight for the reader (...) when engaging in narrative understanding, this should be to resist the temptation to think that past suffering and misery as told in a story can be read analogously to narratives having a tragic plot. The article clarifies the meaning of Plato’s critique through the ideas of Simone Weil, Emmanuel Lévinas and Iris Murdoch. These existential moral philosophers work towards having an ethical consciousness in one’s personal relationship with stories of our lifeworld. (shrink)

Is normative uncertainty like factual uncertainty? Should it have the same effects on our actions? Some have thought not. Those who defend an asymmetry between normative and factual uncertainty typically do so as part of the claim that our moral beliefs in general are irrelevant to both the moral value and the moral worth of our actions. Here I use the consideration of Jackson cases to challenge this view, arguing that we can explain away the apparent asymmetries (...) class='Hi'>between normative and factual uncertainty by considering the particular features of the cases in greater detail. Such consideration shows that, in fact, normative and factual uncertainty are equally relevant to moral assessment. (shrink)

The contemporary view of the relationship between conscious and unconscious intentionality consists in two claims: unconscious propositional attitudes represent the world the same way conscious ones do, and both sets of attitudes represent by having determinate propositional content. Crane has challenged both claims, proposing instead that unconscious propositional attitudes differ from conscious ones in being less determinate in nature. This paper aims to evaluate Crane's proposal. In particular, I make explicit and critique certain assumptions Crane makes in support of (...) his asymmetry, and argue for a conditional claim: if Crane is right that unconscious intentional states are indeterminate, this suggests that conscious intentional states are indeterminate in a similar fashion as well. (shrink)

Researchers have converged on the idea that a pragmatic understanding of communication can shed important light on the evolution of language. Accordingly, animal communication scientists have been keen to adopt insights from pragmatics research. Some authors couple their appeal to pragmatic aspects of communication with the claim that there are fundamental asymmetries between signalers and receivers in non-human animals. For example, in the case of primate vocal calls, signalers are said to produce signals unintentionally and mindlessly, whereas receivers are (...) thought to engage in contextual interpretation to derive the significance of signals. We argue that claims about signaler-receiver asymmetries are often confused. This is partly because their authors conflate two conceptions of pragmatics, which generate different accounts of the explanatory target for accounts of the evolution of language. Here we distinguish these conceptions, in order to help specify more precisely the proper explanatory target for language evolution research. (shrink)

Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and developmentally early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work suggests that generics display a unique asymmetry between the prevalence levels required to accept them and the prevalence levels typically implied by their use. This asymmetry effect is thought to have serious social consequences: if speakers use socially problematic generics based on prevalence levels that are systematically lower than what is typically inferred by their recipients, then (...) using generics will likely exacerbate social stereotypes and biases. This paper presents evidence against the popular hypothesis that this asymmetry effect is unique to generics. Correcting for various shortcomings of previous studies, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics and various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’). In addition, to better understand the conditions under which generalized asymmetry effects may exacerbate biases, we examine whether speakers choose generalizing sentences based simply on their acceptance conditions, or are systematically sensitive to the implications likely drawn by their typical recipients. In support of the latter view, we found that, in neutral or cooperative scenarios, speakers reliably choose generalizing sentences whose implied prevalence levels closely match the actual ones. In non-cooperative scenarios, speakers exploit asymmetry effects to further their own goals by choosing generalizing sentences that are strictly true but likely to mislead their recipients. These results refine our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and the conditions under which they may introduce biased beliefs into social networks. (shrink)

Some contemporary semantic views defend an asymmetry thesis concerning defi-nite descriptions and indexicals. Semantically, indexicals are devices of singular refer-ence; they contribute objects to the contents of the speech acts made with utterances including them. Definite descriptions, on the other hand, are generalized quantifiers, behaving roughly the way Russell envisaged in “On Denoting”. The asymmetry thesis depends on the existence of a sufficiently clear-cut distinction between semantics and pragmatics, because indexicals and descriptions are often used in ways (...) that apparently contradict the asymmetry thesis; the semantics/pragmatics distinction is invoked to see behind the appearances. The paper critically examines arguments by Schiffer against the asymmetry thesis, based on referential uses of incomplete descriptions. (shrink)

Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work found that generics display a unique asymmetry between their acceptance conditions and the implications that are typically drawn from them. This paper presents evidence against the hypothesis that only generics display an asymmetry. Correcting for limitations of previous designs, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics, various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’), (...) and variations in types of predicated properties (striking vs. neutral). We discuss implications of these results for our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and whether and in which ways these effects might introduce biased beliefs into social networks. (shrink)

The statement everyone wants to live a fulfilled and happy life may seem simple, self-evident, and even trivial at first glance. However, upon closer philosophical analysis, can we unequivocally assert that people are truly focused on well-being? Assuming they are, the question becomes: what guidelines should be followed and how should one behave in order to achieve true well-being and attain their goals? One popular viewpoint is that cultivating moral virtues and personal qualities is essential for a life of "true" (...) well-being, rather than mere pleasure. This perspective is not particularly original, as it was advocated quite clearly by Aristotle. However, we must ask: what guarantees that virtue will lead to well-being? Can we really ignore the common-sense doubt that virtue (and moral life), as Kant points out, may not be rewarded with any form of well-being or "happiness" in the broadest sense during our earthly existence? How might we address this doubt? If questions about the relationship between happiness and virtue have been asked since ancient times, why don't we have definitive answers yet? Perhaps there is something wrong with the questions themselves, as is often the case in philosophy. Views on this relationship have influenced the modification of theories that philosophers have put forth in order to provide satisfactory answers. One such theory is the renewed and modernized ethics of virtue, which places the greatest emphasis on building an individual's moral character, assuming that Aristotelian character virtues such as courage, honesty, generosity, prudence, self-control, and compassion will enable us to lead a happy and fulfilling life. "Virtues" refer to a wide range of "excellences" or activities that individuals can use to perfect themselves. For example, an ordinary person might accept that courage can make their life more fulfilling, but it's important to recognize that virtues cannot be acquired overnight. Furthermore, many people believe that virtues are innate qualities that one either possesses or lacks. In contrast, ethics of virtue provides guidance and instructions for developing virtues over extended periods of time, as well as for continuously "practicing" the development of moral characteristics that will make us better individuals. The central and most significant concept in ethics of virtue is the golden mean, which can be interpreted in various ways. Essentially, ethics of virtue offers a path to a life filled with pleasure, harmony, and virtuous action. However, this collection of essays, Virtues and Vices: Between Ethics and Epistemology, is not exclusively concerned with virtues or ethics. Knowledge, as well as the processes of belief formation and justification of those beliefs, are also essential to ethics of virtue. Going back to the systematic Greek philosopher and his teacher, we can emphasize that virtues and knowledge are inseparable. Without the epistemology of virtues, even a thematic collection like this one would be incomplete. The Epistemology of Virtue is a relatively new branch of philosophy that has emerged as a response to questions about the value-neutrality of science. For a long time, the separation of values and scientific inquiry has been viewed as the correct methodological approach. However, it is clear that every scientist is also a human being with their own virtues and flaws. It is naive to assume that a scientist can leave their values and moral qualities outside the laboratory and treat their colleagues in the team differently than they would treat other people in their everyday life. Taking this into account, we can notice that Epistemology of Virtue is a theory that examines the influence of virtues on the processes of acquiring knowledge. Epistemic virtues refer to qualities that enable individuals to acquire knowledge and make reliable judgments. These virtues include traits such as openness to diverse testimonies and arguments, critical thinking, a tendency to question one's own assumptions, and the ability to identify errors in one's own thought processes. Just like in virtue ethics, the Epistemology of Virtue raises the question of how we can cultivate the necessary virtues and how these virtues can have a positive impact on both individuals and society. The field also explores how epistemic virtues can be put into practice, such as in educational settings, scientific research, and various social activities. Finally, we turn to a topic that is often overlooked in philosophy - human flaws. While ethics typically views flaws as the opposite of virtues, requiring correction both individually and socially, the Epistemology of Virtue questions what happens when flaws occur in knowledge-related qualities. Do these flaws also need to be eliminated, or are they an inherent part of the process of acquiring knowledge and making judgments? At first glance, prejudices, stereotypes, dogmatism, conformism, closed-mindedness towards arguments and evidence, as well as uncritical acceptance of authority, can all hinder our ability to acquire knowledge. Epistemologists view these qualities as vices, rather than flaws like ethicists do. The Epistemology of Vices is the newest of the three branches of philosophy covered in this thematic collection, and it examines the ways in which false and untrue beliefs develop and persist in society. This area of study seeks to answer questions about how people form delusions and whether it is possible to overcome them. On the other hand, the Epistemology of Virtue is like the "older brother" that supervises these vices. It contributes to the investigation and overcoming of vices by developing virtues that enable individuals to more accurately assess the truthfulness of their beliefs. However, even though vices can have a destructive impact on knowledge acquisition, the question remains: are vices always detrimental in every context? Conversely, can virtues be detrimental? For example, does a virtue like solidarity sometimes hinder the efficient formation of true beliefs in time-sensitive situations such as finding a vaccine to combat a virus pandemic? Can vices be useful? Can stubbornness and uncooperativeness sometimes help a research team by allowing two sides to reach the same goal through different paths? Within this collection, some of these questions will receive answers, some of which may confirm existing impressions, while others may surprise readers. The thematic collection, Virtues and Vices: Between Ethics and Epistemology, consists of four interesting chapters and 21 papers that cover the selected topic through the prism of philosophical disciplines such as ethics, epistemology, the history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and philosophy of science. In this introduction, we will not discuss the contents of the articles so as not to disrupt the intended integral approach to reading the collection. A significant feature of this collection is the continuity that extends from one paper to another, from topic to topic, and from problem to problem. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade for their support in realizing this collection, as well as to our colleagues from the Department and Institute of Philosophy who have made this collection a relevant and significant achievement with their contributions. We are also thankful to the reviewers of the collection as a whole, as well as to the referees of individual articles, who have provided us with detailed comments and remarks that have made this collection clearer and more comprehensive. We owe a special thanks to our colleagues from Zagreb, Rijeka, and Maribor, whose exceptional papers have contributed to making this collection an unabashed international contribution to debates about the ethics and epistemology of virtues and vices. (shrink)