In this interesting book Aronson discusses lapsed vegetarians, which she dubs lapsos. She argues that lapsos struggle with the implications of eating meat, and in so doing their spirits are strengthened. She offers the book not as a polemic, but rather a peace offering to soften the debate over meat eating, trace ambiguity and nuance, and suggest that being a vegetarian should not be so easy.

If non-human animals have high moral status, then we commit a grave moral error by eating them. Eating animals is thus morally risky, while many agree that it is morally permissible to not eat animals. According to some philosophers, then, non-animal ethicists should err on the side of caution and refrain from eating animals. I argue that this precautionary argument assumes a false dichotomy of dietary options: a diet that includes farm-raised animals or a diet that does not include animals (...) of any kind. There is a third dietary option, namely, a diet of plants and non-traditional animal protein, and there is evidence that such a diet results in the least amount of harm to animals. It follows therefore that moral uncertainty does not support the adoption of a vegetarian diet. (shrink)

Jag argumenterar för att Torbjörn Tännsjö borde anse det fel att äta kött. Därför borde han bli vegetarian. Anledningen till detta är en artikel, "Why we ought to accept the repugnant conclusion", som Tännsjö publicerade 2002 i tidskriften Utilitas.

Kathryn Paxton George's recent publication, Animal, Vegetable, or Woman?, is the culmination of more than a decade's work and encompasses standard and original arguments against the feminist-vegetarian connection. This paper demonstrates that George's key arguments are deeply flawed, antithetical to basic feminist commitments, and beg the question against fundamental aspects of the debate. Those who do not accept the feminist-vegetarian connection should rethink their position or offer a non-question-begging defense of it.

C. Stephen Layman contends that an argument supporting theism over naturalism can be constructed based on three defensible, non–question-begging premises about the moral order. Previous critics of Layman’s argument have challenged the truth of these premises. We stipulate them arguendo but go on to show that there is a deeper problem: a fourth premise introduced to complete the argument—the “completion premise,” as we call it—is true only if we assume that God exists or we concede that there is no afterlife. (...) We close with suggestions for how Layman’s argument must be strengthened to meet with dialectical success. (shrink)

Abstract This article delves into the study of the term «tark-i awlà» (abandoning performance of that which is better and doing that which is less than better) as an approach for defending the infallibility of the prophets when confronting verses from the Holy Qur‘ān that apparently prove the prophets committed sins; and after going into the semantics of «tark-i awlà», the following question has been made the focus of discussion and study: are the intellectual arguments proving the infalliblity of the (...) Prophets in agreement with the fact that the prophets committed tark-i awlà? According to the author, considering that tark-i awlà is a type of error and lapse and because the intellectual arguments for infallibility (like the trust and certitude of the people, the guiding purpose of prophet hood, the necessity of following the prophets, the principle of luṭf (grace) and absence of disinclination in the hearts of the people towards the prophets) necessitate the negation of all types of errors and lapses from the prophets, the prophets must be infallible from tark-i awlà too and this approach by Islamic theologians in justifying the verses that indicate the committing of sins by the prophets is not successful. Accepting the committing of tark-i awlà by the prophets is to accept that they committed errors and is against the belief of the Shi‘a regarding the infallibility of the prophets. As a result, Shi‘a theology will face a great challenge in justifying the verses that indicate the committing of errors and lapses by the Prophets which, according to the author, necessitates a revision of the Shi‘a theological belief in regards to the absolute infallibility of the prophets. (shrink)

William L. Rowe’s argument against divine freedom has drawn considerable attention from theist philosophers. One reply to Rowe’s argument that has emerged in the recent literature appeals to modified accounts of libertarian freedom which have the result that God may be free even if he necessarily actualizes the best possible world. Though in many ways attractive, this approach appears to lead to the damning consequence of modal collapse i.e., that the actual world is the only possible world. But appearances can (...) be deceiving, and in this paper I argue that the threat of modal collapse dissolves when we consider Alvin Plantinga’s critique of the purportedly Leibnizian notion that God can actualize any possible world, and incorporate the implications of this critique into the divine freedom debate. Developing a suggestion by Edward R. Wierenga, I argue first that the modal collapse objection fails within a Molinist context, and then I extend the discussion beyond that context to show that the objection also fails on the assumption that Molinism is false. (shrink)

This paper introduces a generic agent-based model simulating the exchange and the diffusion of pro and con arguments. It is applied to the case of the diffusion of vegetarian diets in the context of a potential emergence of a second nutrition transition. To this day, agent-based simulation has been extensively used to study opinion dynamics. However, the vast majority of existing models have been limited to extremely abstract and simplified representations of the diffusion process. These simplifications impairs the realism of (...) the simulations and disables the understanding of the reasons for the shift of an actor's opinion. The generic model presented here explicitly represents exchanges of arguments between actors in the context of an opinion dynamic model. In particular, the inner attitude towards an opinion of each agent is formalized as an argumentation graph and each agent can share arguments with other agents. Simulation experiments show that introducing attacks between arguments and a limitation of the number of arguments mobilized by agents has a strong impact on the evolution of the agents' opinion. We also highlight that when a new argument is introduced into the system, the quantity and the profile of the agents receiving the new argument will impact the evolution of the overall opinion. Finally, the application of this model to vegetarian diet adoption seems consistent with historical food behaviour dynamics observed during crises. (shrink)

In a recent book, Neil Levy argues that culpable action – action for which we are morally responsible – is necessarily produced by states of which we are consciously aware. However, criminal defendants are routinely held responsible for criminal harm caused by states of which they are not conscious in Levy’s sense. In this chapter I argue that cases of negligent criminal harm indicate that Levy’s claim that moral responsibility requires synchronic conscious awareness of the moral significance of an act (...) is too strict, and that tracing conditions cannot be successfully used to bolster Levy’s account. Instead, current legal practices indicate that criminal responsibility requires the capacity for diachronic agency and self-control, not synchronic conscious control. (shrink)

Anemia is a common health problem among Libyan women. Age, heavy menstruation, and pregnancy are vital risk factors for this problem. In this study, we prospectively examined 60 Libyan women all of which were diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia, their hemoglobin levels were less than 10.0 g/dl. The level of hemoglobin is also analyzed for vegetarian and charcoal-eating women. We found that during pregnancy charcoal-eating women exhibit lower hemoglobin levels than non-eating women. Pregnant young women in the age of 17-27 (...) years have the lowest hemoglobin levels than the other age groups. In addition, vegetarians, heavy coffee and tea drinking, and heavy menstruation in non-pregnant women, as well as breastfeeding, strongly lower hemoglobin levels as measured by their complete blood count. (shrink)

When consumers choose to abstain from purchasing meat, they face some uncertainty about whether their decisions will have an impact on the number of animals raised and killed. Consequentialists have argued that this uncertainty should not dissuade consumers from a vegetarian diet because the “expected” impact, or average impact, will be predictable. Recently, however, critics have argued that the expected marginal impact of a consumer change is likely to be much smaller or more radically unpredictable than previously thought. This objection (...) to the consequentialist case for vegetarianism is known as the “causal inefficacy” (or “causal impotence”) objection. In this paper, we argue that the inefficacy objection fails. First, we summarize the contours of the objection and the standard “expected impact” response to it. Second, we examine and rebut two contemporary attempts (by Mark Budolfson and Ted Warfield) to defeat the expected impact reply through alleged demonstrations of the inefficacy of abstaining from meat consumption. Third, we argue that there are good reasons to believe that single individual consumers—not just individual consumers taken as an aggregate—really do make a positive difference when they choose to abstain from meat consumption. Our case rests on three economic observations: (i) animal producers operate in a highly competitive environment, (ii) complex supply chains efficiently communicate some information about product demand, and (iii) consumers of plant-based meat alternatives have positive consumption spillover effects on other consumers. (shrink)

Ethical vegans and vegetarians believe that it is seriously immoral to bring into existence animals whose lives would be miserable. In this paper, I will discuss whether such a belief also leads to the conclusion that it is seriously immoral to bring human beings into existence. I will argue that vegans should abstain from having children since they believe that unnecessary suffering should be avoided. After all, humans will suffer in life, and having children is not necessary for a (...) good life. Thus vegans, and probably vegetarians as well, should not have children. I will consider several objections against this controversial claim, show why the objections fail and conclude that it would be best for ethical vegans to abstain from procreation. (shrink)

Ethical vegetarians maintain that vegetarianism is morally required. The principal reasons offered in support of ethical vegetarianism are: (i) concern for the welfare and well-being of the animals being eaten, (ii) concern for the environment, (iii) concern over global food scarcity and the just distribution of resources, and (iv) concern for future generations. Each of these reasons is explored in turn, starting with a historical look at ethical vegetarianism and the moral status of animals.

Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we (...) can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so. (shrink)

Due to ethical lapses of leaders, interest in ethical leadership has grown, raising important questions about the responsibility of leaders in ensuring moral and ethical conduct. Research conducted on ethical leadership failed to investigate the active role that the characteristics of ethical climate and organisational justice have an increasing or decreasing influence on the ethical leadership in the organisation’s outcomes of employees’ ethical behaviour. Thus, this study examined the dual-mediations of work ethical climate and organisational justice on the relation of (...) ethical leadership and ethical behaviour of employees. A total of 620 full-time employees from five Iraqi provinces working at 33 Iraqi organisations in the field of manufacturing, retailing, medical, insurance, information technology, legal, finance, and telecommunication responded to the questionnaire survey. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the model and data analysis was carried out using structural equation modelling-partial least square (SEM-PLS). The results revealed that there is a significant relationship between ethical leadership behaviour and the ethical behaviour of employees. Primarily, the study also found that ethical climate and organisational justice play a very significant mediating role between ethical leadership and employees’ ethical behaviour. (shrink)

Ethical consequentialist vegetarians believe that farmed animals have lives that are worse than non-existence. In this paper, I sketch out an argument that wild animals have worse lives than farmed animals, and that consistent vegetarians should therefore reduce the number of wild animals as a top priority. I consider objections to the argument, and discuss which courses of action are open to those who accept the argument.

Extensionalism is, roughly, the view that perception occurs in episodes that are temporally extended (and thus capable of accomodating in their entirety phenomena taking a nonzero lapse of time to occur). This view is widely acknowledged to be incompatible with thin presentism, the second most popular position in temporal ontology. In this paper, I argue that extensionalism is also incompatible with several other positions in temporal ontology, namely those positing the existence of non-present times that host sentience—positions I collectively refer (...) to as the sentient non-present view. Most notably, extensionalism proves to be incompatible with B-theoretical eternalism, which is the most popular position in temporal ontology. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers have criticized intensive animal farming because it can be harmful to the environment, it causes pain and misery to a large number of animals, and furthermore eating meat and animal-based products can be unhealthful. The issue of industrially farmed animals has become one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. On the one hand, utilitarians have argued that we should become vegetarians or vegans because the practices of raising animals for food are immoral since (...) they minimize the overall happiness. Deontologists, on the other hand, have argued that the practices of raising animals for food are immoral because animals have certain rights and we have duties toward them. Some virtue ethicists remain unconvinced of deontic and consequentialist arguments against the exploitation of animals and suggest that a virtue-based approach is better equipped to show what is immoral about raising and using animals for food, and what is virtuous about ethical veganism. (shrink)

Peter Singer argues, on consequentialist grounds, that individuals ought to be vegetarian. Many have pressed, in response, a causal impotence objection to Singer’s argument: any individual person’s refraining from purchasing and consuming animal products will not have an important effect on contemporary farming practices. In this paper, I sketch a Singer-inspired consequentialist argument for vegetarianism that avoids this objection. The basic idea is that, for agents who are aware of the origins of their food, continuing to consume animal products is (...) morally bad because it leads to not appropriately disvaluing the origins of their food. That is a morally bad outcome that can be avoided by becoming vegetarian. (shrink)

Most ethical discussions about diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products rather than an individual assessment of the moral footprint of eating products of certain animal species. This way of thinking is represented in the typical division of four dietary attitudes. There are vegans, vegetarians, welfarists and ordinary meat -eaters. However, the common “all or nothing” discussions between meat -eaters, vegans and vegetarians bypass very important factors in assessing dietary habits. I argue that if (...) we want to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal products, we should take into consideration not only life quality of animals during farming or violation of their rights—as is typically done—but, most of all, their body weight, life time in farms and time efficiency in animal products acquisition. Without these factors, an assessment of animal products is much too simplified. If we assume some easily accepted premises, we can justify a thesis that, regardless of the treatment of animals during farming and slaughtering, for example, eating chicken can be 163 times morally worse than eating beef, drinking milk can be 58 times morally better than eating eggs, and eating some types of fish can be even 501 times worse than eating beef. In order to justify such a thesis there is no need to reform common morality by, for example, criticizing its speciesism. The thesis that some animal products are much worse than others can be justified on common moral grounds. (shrink)

On April 19, 2024, the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness was announced at the “Emerging Science of Animal Consciousness” conference held at New York University. The New York Declaration is an effort to showcase a scientific consensus on the presence of conscious experiences across all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and many invertebrates (at least including cephalopods, decapod crustaceans, and insects). Scientifically, the New York Declaration marks a significant advancement for humanity. However, it also brings heightened awareness to (...) the moral challenges associated with animals that have conscious experiences (or phenomenal consciousness). This article will discuss philosophical approaches to the moral issue of killing sentient beings, thereby highlighting an existing moral dilemma in human society: In sustaining human survival, a species considered to have morality, we have to violate our own moral standards by killing other species with intrinsic value, consciousness, or sentience. This moral dilemma has long been present in human society. Various solutions have been proposed and implemented in practice to address this issue, such as the non-violence and vegetarian approach of Buddhism, the application of Islamic law and sacred rituals to animals in Islam, animal rights movements and voluntary extinction in Western countries, and the technology producing meat using animal cells. However, despite these approaches, we have not yet been able to fully resolve the dilemma, as sentient beings continue to be killed for our survival. We believe the most feasible solution is to change the current food consumption culture, build an eco-surplus culture to mitigate climate change, prevent deforestation, and promote peace. (shrink)

This article provides a philosophical overview of some of the central Buddhist positions and argument regarding animal welfare. It introduces the Buddha's teaching of ahiṃsā or non-violence and rationally reconstructs five arguments from the context of early Indian Buddhism that aim to justify its extension to animals. These arguments appeal to the capacity and desire not to suffer, the virtue of compassion, as well as Buddhist views on the nature of self, karma, and reincarnation. This article also considers how versions (...) of these arguments have been applied to address a practical issue in Buddhist ethics; whether Buddhists should be vegetarian. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ (...) first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Attribution theorists assume that character information informs judgments of blame. But there is disagreement over why. One camp holds that character information is a fundamental determinant of blame. Another camp holds that character information merely provides evidence about the mental states and processes that determine responsibility. We argue for a two-channel view, where character simultaneously has fundamental and evidential effects on blame. In two large factorial studies (n = 495), participants rate whether someone is blameworthy when he makes a mistake (...) (burns a cake or misses a bus stop). Although mental state inferences predict blame judgments, character information does not. Using mediation analyses, we find that character information influences responsibility via two channels (Studies 3–4; n = 447), which are sensitive to different kinds of information (Study 5; n = 149). On the one hand, forgetfulness increases judgments of responsibility, because mental lapses manifest an objectionable character flaw. On the other hand, forgetfulness decreases judgments of state control, which in turn decreases responsibility judgments. These two channels cancel out, which is why we find no aggregate effect of forgetfulness on responsibility. Our results challenge several fundamental assumptions about the role of character information in moral judgment, including that good character typically mitigates blame. (shrink)

One of the starting assumptions in the debate over the ethical status of animals is that someone who is committed to reducing animal suffering should not eat meat. Steven Davis has recently advanced a novel criticism of this view. He argues that individuals who are committed to reducing animal suffering should not adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, as Tom Regan an other animal rights advocates claim, but one containing free-range beef. To make his case Davis highlights an overlooked form (...) of animal harm, that done to field animals in crop production. Yet while Davis's argument is ingenious and thought-provoking, it is not a successful challenge to vegetarianism and veganism's status as the diets that most advance animal rights. Scientific studies of crop production that Davis draws on document two different forms of harm done to field animals: those that are directly killed by harvesting equipment and those that are killed by other animals. Once this distinction is made explicit, the degree to which such studies pose a problem for animal protection theory considerably weakens. Davis also overlooks philosophically significant forms of harm to human beings that are present in beef production but not crop harvesting. Finally, he bases his argument on the controversial assumption that there is no difference between deliberate and accidental killing - either of animals or people. Although these problems defeat Davis's attempt to offer an immanent critique of Regan's animal rights position, his analysis does have important dietary ramifications that animal advocates should take into account. (shrink)

Challenging the basic assumptions of a meat-eating society, Deep Vegetarianism is a spirited and compelling defense of a vegetarian lifestyle. Considering all of the major arguments both for and against vegetarianism and the habits of meat-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans alike, Michael Allen Fox addresses vegetarianism's cultural, historical, and philosophical background; details vegetarianism's impact on one's living and thinking; and relates vegetarianism to classical and recent defenses of the moral status of animals. Demonstrating how a vegetarian diet is related to (...) our awareness of the world and our ethical outlook on life, Fox looks at the different kinds of vegetarian commitments people make and their reasons for making them. In chapters that address such issues as the experiences, emotions, and grounds that are part of choosing vegetarianism, Fox discusses not only good health, animal suffering, and the environmental impacts of meat production, but such issues as the meaning of food, world hunger, religion and spirituality, and, significantly, the links share between vegetarianism and other human rights movements and ideologies, particularly feminism. In an extensive chapter that addresses arguments made by advocates of meat-eating, Fox speaks to claims of humans as natural carnivores, animals as replaceable, and vegetarians as anti-feminist. He also addresses arguments surrounding the eating habits of indigenous peoples, eating free-range animals, and carnivorous behavior among animals. The most complete examination of the vegetarian outlook to date, Deep Vegetarianism reveals the broad range of philosophical views that contribute to such a choice. It recognizes, and calls for, a conscious awareness of -- and an individual responsibility to -- the issues that exist in the moral, political, and social spheres of our existence. With its lively and controversial discussion, Deep Vegetarianism promises to appeal to anyone looking to explore the relationship between dietary choice, lifestyle, the treatment of animals and the environment, and personal ethical responsibility. It will also be particularly useful for students and teachers of moral philosophy, ethics, religion, comparative cultures, ecology, and feminism. (shrink)

The prospect of consumable meat produced in a laboratory setting without the need to raise and slaughter animals is both realistic and exciting. Not only could such in vitro meat become popular due to potential cost savings, but it also avoids many of the ethical and environmental problems with traditional meat productions. However, as with any new technology, in vitro meat is likely to face some detractors. We examine in detail three potential objections: 1) in vitro meat is disrespectful, either (...) to nature or to animals; 2) it will reduce the number of happy animals in the world; and 3) it will open the door to cannibalism. While each objection has some attraction, we ultimately find that all can be overcome. The upshot is that in vitro meat production is generally permissible and, especially for ethical vegetarians, worth promoting. (shrink)

Because factory-farmed meat production inflicts gratuitous suffering upon animals and wreaks havoc on the environment, there are morally compelling reasons to become vegetarian. Yet industrial plant agriculture causes the death of many field animals, and this leads some to question whether consumers ought to get some of their protein from certain kinds of non factory-farmed meat. Donald Bruckner, for instance, boldly argues that the harm principle implies an obligation to collect and consume roadkill and that strict vegetarianism is thus immoral. (...) But this argument works only if the following claims are true: all humans have access to roadkill, roadkill would go to waste if those who happen upon it don’t themselves consume it, it’s impossible to harvest vegetables without killing animals, the animals who are killed in plant production are all-things-considered harmed by crop farming, and the best arguments for vegetarianism all endorse the harm principle. As I will argue in this paper, each claim is deeply problematic. Consequently, in most cases, humans ought to strictly eat plants and save the roadkill for cats. (shrink)

Modal intuitions are the primary source of modal knowledge but also of modal error. According to the theory of modal error in this paper, modal intuitions retain their evidential force in spite of their fallibility, and erroneous modal intuitions are in principle identifiable and eliminable by subjecting our intuitions to a priori dialectic. After an inventory of standard sources of modal error, two further sources are examined in detail. The first source - namely, the failure to distinguish between metaphysical possibility (...) and various kinds of epistemic possibility - turns out to be comparatively easy to untangle and poses little threat to intuition-driven philosophical investigation. The second source is the local misunderstanding of one's concepts . This pathology may be understood on analogy with a patient who is given a clean bill of health at his annual check-up, despite his having a cold at the time of the check-up: although the patient's health is locally disrupted, his overall health is sufficiently good to enable him to overcome the cold without external intervention. Even when our understanding of certain pivotal concepts has lapsed locally, our larger body of intuitions is sufficiently reliable to allow us, without intervention, to ferret out the modal errors resulting from this lapse of understanding by means of dialectic and/or a process of a priori reflection. This source of modal error, and our capacity to overcome it, has wide-ranging implications for philosophical method - including, in particular, its promise for disarming skepticism about the classical method of intuition-driven investigation itself. Indeed, it is shown that skeptical accounts of modal error are ultimately self-defeating. (shrink)

Eliminative reasoning is a method that has been employed in many significant episodes in the history of science. It has also been advocated by some philosophers as an important means for justifying well-established scientific theories. Arguments for how eliminative reasoning is able to do so, however, have generally relied on a too narrow conception of evidence, and have therefore tended to lapse into merely heuristic or pragmatic justifications for their conclusions. This paper shows how a broader conception of evidence not (...) only can supply the needed justification but also illuminates the methodological significance of eliminative reasoning in a variety of contexts. (shrink)

Philosophers have offered several apparently powerful arguments against the permissibility of eating meat. However, the idea that it is okay to eat meat can seem like a bit of ethical common sense. This paper examines the attempt to adapt one of the most influential philosophical defenses of common sense –G. E. Moore’s case against the skeptic andthe idealist –in support of the omnivore. I first introduce and explain Moore’s argument against the skeptic. I then explain how that argument can be (...) adapted to address two influential philosophical arguments against the omnivore, due to Tom Regan and James Rachels. The adapted Moorean arguments appear strikingly similar to the original. However, I argue that we should not simply assume that all Moorean arguments are created equal. Instead, I propose a set of principled criteria that can be used to test Moorean arguments on a case-by-case basis. Those criteria give the Moorean reason for optimism against the skeptic, but suggest that the Moorean’s case is much weaker against the ethical vegetarian. I conclude that the Moorean omnivore’s argument has potentially uncomfortable implications for all sides in debates about ethical vegetarianism, and illuminates important and neglected questions about the force of philosophical arguments in applied ethics. (shrink)

This paper describes a pair of dietary practices I label default vegetarianism and default veganism. The basic idea is that one adopts a default of adhering to vegetarian and vegan diets, with periodic exceptions. While I do not exhaustively defend either of these dietary practices as morally required, I do suggest that they are more promising than other dietary practices that are normally discussed like strict veganism and vegetarianism. For they may do a better job of striking a balance between (...) normative concerns about contemporary farming practices and competing considerations of life. Additionally, I argue that framing discussions in terms of defaults is useful for various reasons: it helps organize agreements and disagreements, it more accurately reflects the way people conceptualize their dietary practices, and it presents a more dialectically effective view. (shrink)

In an article previously published in this Journal, Anthony Oyowe critically engages with my attempt to demonstrate how the human rights characteristic of South Africa’s Constitution can be grounded on a certain interpretation of Afro-communitarian values that are often associated with talk of ‘ubuntu’. Drawing on recurrent themes of human dignity and communal relationships in the sub-Saharan tradition, I have advanced a moral-philosophical principle that I argue entails and plausibly explains a wide array of individual rights to civil liberties, political (...) power, criminal procedures and economic resources. Oyowe’s most important criticism of my theory is in effect that it is caught in a dilemma: either the principle I articulate can account for human rights, in which case it does not count as communitarian, or it does count as the latter, but cannot account for the former. In this article, I reply to Oyowe, contending that he misinterprets key facets of my theory to the point of not yet engaging with its core strategy for deriving human rights from salient elements of ubuntu. I conclude that Oyowe is unjustified in claiming that there are ‘theoretical lapses’ that ‘cast enormous doubts’ on my project of deriving human rights from a basic moral principle with a recognizably sub-Saharan and communitarian pedigree. (shrink)

In the classical Turing test, participants are challenged to tell whether they are interacting with another human being or with a machine. The way the interaction takes place is not direct, but a distant conversation through computer screen messages. Basic forms of interaction are face-to-face and embodied, context-dependent and based on the detection of reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Our idea is that interaction detection requires the integration of proprioceptive and interoceptive patterns with sensorimotor patterns, within quite short time lapses, so that (...) they appear as mutually contingent, as reciprocal. In other words, the experience of interaction takes place when sensorimotor patterns are contingent upon one’s own movements, and vice versa. I react to your movement, you react to mine. When I notice both components, I come to experience an interaction. Therefore, we designed a “minimal” Turing test to investigate how much information is required to detect these reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Using a new version of the perceptual crossing paradigm, we tested whether participants resorted to interaction detection to tell apart human from machine agents in repeated encounters with these agents. In two studies, we presented participants with movements of a human agent, either online or offline, and movements of a computerized oscillatory agent in three different blocks. In each block, either auditory or audiovisual feedback was provided along each trial. Analysis of participants’ explicit responses and of the implicit information subsumed in the dynamics of their series will reveal evidence that participants use the reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies within short time windows. For a machine to pass this minimal Turing test, it should be able to generate this sort of reciprocal contingencies. (shrink)

In 1906, Henry Stephens Salt published a short collection of essays that presented several rhetorically powerful, if formally deficient arguments for the vegetarian position. By interpreting Salt as a moral sentimentalist with ties to Aristotelian virtue ethics, I propose that his aesthetic argument deserves contemporary consideration. First, I connect ethics and aesthetics with the Greek concepts of kalon and kalokagathia that depend equally on beauty and morality before presenting Salt’s assertion: slaughterhouses are disgusting, therefore they should not be promoted. I (...) suggest three areas of development since Salt’s death that could be fruitfully plumbed to rebuild this assertion into a contemporary argument: an updated analysis of factory farm conditions, insights from moral psychologists on the adaptive socio-biological benefits of disgust as a source of cognitive information, and hermeneutical considerations about the role of the audience that allow blameworthiness for slaughterhouse atrocities to be laid upon the meat-eater. (shrink)

As a moral foundation for vegetarianism and other consumer choices, act consequentialism can be appealing. When we justify our consumer and dietary choices this way, however, we face the problem that our individual actions rarely actually precipitate more just agricultural and economic practices. This threshold or individual impotence problem engaged by consequentialist vegetarians and their critics extends to morally motivated consumer decision-making more generally, anywhere a lag persists between individual moral actions taken and systemic moral progress made. Regan and (...) others press just this point against Singer's utilitarian basis for vegetarianism; recently Chartier criticizes act-consequentialist vegetarianism by identifying many factors weakening the connection between individual meat purchases and changes in animal production. While such factors are relevant to act-consequentialist moral reasoning, I argue, they need not defeat the act-consequentialist case for vegetarianism and consumer ethics. This is shown by offering a probabilistic account of the threshold issue and discussing the positive and negative role-modelling effects of our morally motivated dietary and consumer choices. (shrink)

When our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that shape our self-identity. -/- By analyzing social interactions and evolving experiences, Roholt reveals the mechanisms of smartphone-distraction that impact our meaningful projects and activities. Roholt’s conception of meaning in life draws from a disparate group of philosophers—Susan Wolf, John Dewey, Hubert Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Borgmann. Central to Roholt’s (...) argument are what Borgmann calls focal practices: dinners with friends, running, a college seminar, attending sporting events. As a recurring example, Roholt develops the classification of musical instruments as focal things, contending that musical performance can be fruitfully understood as a focal practice. -/- Through this exploration of what generates meaning in life, Roholt makes us rethink the place we allow smartphones to occupy in the everyday. But he remains cautiously optimistic. This thoughtful, needed interrogation of smartphones shows how we can establish a positive role for technologies within our lives. (shrink)

The debate concerning the legitimacy of awarding reparations for historical injustices focuses on the issue of finding a proper moral justification for granting reparations to the descendants of the victims of injustices which took place in the remote past. Regarding the case of Romanian communism as a more recent injustice, and analyzing the moral problems entailed by this historical lapse, within this paper I argue that overcoming such a legacy cannot be carried out, as in the case of historical injustices (...) situated more remotely in time, through the means of selective reparations, such as restitutions or compensations. For, even though they are justified from the perspective of rectificatory justice, selective reparations do not fulfill the requirements of social justice. Rather, I argue that the fall of the Romanian communist regime should have been followed by an equal distribution of all properties illegitimately seized by the state, to all adult Romanian citizens at that time, in order to attain the imperative of equal distribution of property among all citizens. The equal distribution thesis is the only way through which the Romanian society could have complied, at that moment of political and social renewal, with the requirements of justice. I also aim at explaining why other principles of justice, which either have or could have been implemented, cannot be properly justified. Finally, I analyze two main objections which could be invoked against my thesis, namely the economic efficiency objection and the legal realist objection. (shrink)

A review of the following four books, plus some reflections on Nietzsche's moral psychology and ethics: -/- Alfano: Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology (Cambridge University Press 2019). Leiter: Moral Psychology with Nietzsche (Oxford University Press 2019) Ridley: The Deed is Everything: Nietzsche on Will and Action (Oxford University Press 2018) Stern: Nietzsche’s Ethics (Cambridge University Press 2020) -/- These four books are broadly on Nietzsche’s moral psychology and ethics. The books differ widely in their aspirations: Ridley’s is focused solely on Nietzsche’s notion (...) of action, whereas Leiter’s is more synoptic. And they also differ widely in their conclusions: Leiter presents Nietzsche as a nearly infallible figure who has not only solved longstanding philosophical problems but has even managed to anticipate recent results in empirical psychology. Stern, on the other hand, presents Nietzsche as a rather amateurish philosopher, who picks up dribs and drabs from his cultural context and amalgamates them into interesting and provocative, but indefensible, positions. Between these extremes, we have readers like Ridley and Alfano, who are not averse to pointing out lacunae in Nietzsche’s arguments but who nonetheless see him as deeply insightful. -/- Although each of these books is worth reading, I will argue that they have various degrees of success. Alfano’s book is, to my mind, the most successful at achieving its stated aims; while I point out some potential oversights and some areas that could benefit from further development, Alfano’s book is both novel and important. Leiter’s book is clearly written and presents the arguments in an admirably forthright manner, but some of its conclusions are vitiated by lapses and mischaracterizations. Stern gets Nietzsche’s basic view right, but does not probe it very deeply and is too quick to present Nietzsche as confused; I see the confusions as emanating less from Nietzsche’s texts and more from Stern’s reading of them. Ridley’s book is original and provocative, but I find the central claim—that Nietzsche endorses an expressive account of action—ultimately unconvincing. Nonetheless, even the books I regard as flawed are valuable, for reasons I will point out along the way. (shrink)

Some legal theorists say that legal entrapment to commit a crime is incoherent. So far, there is no satisfactorily precise statement of this objection in the literature: it is obscure even as to the type of incoherence that is purportedly involved. (Perhaps consequently, substantial assessment of the objection is also absent.) We aim to provide a new statement of the objection that is more precise and more rigorous than its predecessors. We argue that the best form of the objection asserts (...) that, in attempting to entrap, law-enforcement agents lapse into a form of practical incoherence that involves the attempt simultaneously to pursue contrary ends. We then argue that the objection, in this form, encompasses all cases of legal entrapment only if it is supplemented by appeal to the premise that law-enforcement agents have an absolute duty never to create crimes. (shrink)

This aims to be a prophetic book. In his previous work from 1998, Tom Beaudoin had begun articulating, on behalf of his own generation, a quest that reflected GenXers' irreverence toward social institutions, which have typically failed to address the spiritual dimensions of their own experience. Beaudoin began to notice that many of his own cohort were getting lost in hyperspace, collapsing their real identity into a virtual artifice. Since then, in the age of internet and Instagram, this has only (...) been magnified for GenY and GenZ (etc), and nowadays this makes Beaudoin’s worries seem as poignant as the prophet Jeremiah’s. One of Beaudoin’s challenge, which he only began to address in this book, has been how to articulate a prophetic voice without lapsing into a moralizing posture which, for his demoralized young audience, would surely de-authenticate it. (shrink)

Philosophical dialetheism, whose main exponent is Graham Priest, claims that some contradictions hold, are true, and it is rational to accept and assert them. Such a position is naturally portrayed as a challenge to the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). But all the classic formulations of the LNC are, in a sense, not questioned by a typical dialetheist, since she is (cheerfully) required to accept them by her own theory. The goal of this paper is to develop a formulation of the (...) Law which appears to be unquestionable, in the sense that the Priestian dialetheist is committed to accept it without also accepting something inconsistent with it, on pain of trivialism—that is to say, on pain of lapsing into the position according to which everything is the case. This will be achieved via (a) a discussion of Priest's dialetheic treatment of the notions of rejection and denial; and (b) the characterization of a negation via the primitive intuition of content exclusion. Such a result will not constitute a cheap victory for the friends of consistency. We may just learn that different things have been historically conflated under the label of 'Law of Non-Contradiction'; that dialetheists rightly attack some formulations of the Law, and orthodox logicians and philosophers have been mistaken in assimilating them to the indisputable one. (shrink)

Is autonomy – governing yourself – compatible with letting yourself be governed by trust? This paper argues that autonomy is not only compatible with appropriate trust but actually requires it. Autonomy requires appropriate trust because it is undermined by inappropriate mistrust. An autonomous agent treats herself as answerable for her action-guiding commitments, where answerability requires openness to the rational influence of external, critical perspectives on those commitments. This openness to correction makes one vulnerable to manipulation and can be exploited in (...) ways that undermine autonomy instead of supporting it. We argue that autonomy is undermined by inappropriate trust, and that the inappropriateness lies in the agent’s failure to manifest appropriate responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness in the one trusted. The problem isn’t that autonomy requires dispensing with trust but that trust must itself be governed by appropriate responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness. Our view confronts two challenges. One challenge lies in explaining why you shouldn’t treat your vulnerability to manipulation as a general reason to let your trusting disposition lapse into an untrusting one. We argue that there is no such general reason to let your responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness be supplanted by a suspicious disposition to seek and require positive evidence of trustworthiness. A second, and deeper, challenge arises from the fact that in some especially sophisticated cases of manipulation there is no evidence of untrustworthiness to which you could respond. We argue that you cannot rationally cope with even this unresolvable risk of exploited trust by trusting only yourself. (shrink)

Over the course of the Twilight series, Bella strives to and eventually succeeds in convincing Edward to turn her into a vampire. Her stated reason for this is that it will allow her to be with Edward forever. In this essay, I consider whether this type of immortality is something that would be good for Bella, or indeed for any of us. I begin by suggesting that Bella's own viewpoint is consonant with that of Leo Tolstoy, who contends that one (...) could not have meaningful life without immortality, because only immortality could allow one to make a permanent difference in the world. I argue that this characterization of a meaningful life is problematic, however, insofar as (1) immortality is neither sufficient nor necessary for having such an impact and (2) there is little reason to think that having such an impact is constitutive of a meaningful life. I go on to consider Edward's fear that vampires lack a soul as it relates to Martha Nussbaum's claim that immortal beings would be less capable of certain paradigmatic human values and virtues such as courage, love, or self-sacrifice. I suggest, contra Nussbaum, that Carlisle provides an example of an immortal who displays recognizably human virtues. However, the possibility of Carlisle's being virtuous in this way depends on the existence of other creatures who are mortal. -/- I close by considering the problem of boredom, as articulated by Bernard Williams. According to Williams, a meaningful human life is constituted by certain categorical desires such as the desire to raise children or to create art. The projects aimed at accomplishing these desires are necessarily finite in length, and cannot be repeated indefinitely without losing their value. I argue that many, though perhaps not all, of the immortals described in the series suffer from such boredom. For example, Edward and Rosalie struggle to find meaning in their lives and most werewolves choose to age and die normally after a certain time. Perhaps more significantly, many of the non-"vegetarian" vampires seem to have become entirely divorced from any recognizably human projects or values, and have become focused entirely on satisfying their immediate desires. These examples provide some reason to think that many of Bella's reasons for living, which are essentially tied to her mortality, are not likely to be met by becoming immortal. While this does not show that her choice to become a vampire will leave her ultimately unhappy, it does suggest that her doing so represents a considerable sacrifice. (shrink)

Once lively debates concerning the philosophical significance of self-fulfilling science, or the causal contribution of science to bringing about the states of affairs it depicts, lapsed in the 1970s. Recent claims concerning the influence of economic theory on the behavior it predicts or explains seem poised to revitalize discussion, yet lack of clarity abounds concerning the key features of such cases and the philosophical issues to which they might be relevant. In this paper, I examine a paradigmatic case of (...) self-fulfilling science, clarify its key features, and critically discuss two existing approaches to understanding such phenomena. Ultimately, I suggest a novel approach more well-suited to analyzing such cases and exploring their philosophical significance. (shrink)

A variety of eating and purchasing practices, in particular vegetarianism, are often motivated via an appeal to their expected good consequences. Lurking in the background, however, is the question: can I really hope to make a difference via my purchases in a social world as complex and wasteful as our own? I review the evidence as it stands and conclude that there are good reasons to suspect that one probably does not make a difference directly via one's purchases. That said, (...) there may be some related, though less direct, reasons to be vegetarian. (shrink)

After introductory reminder of and comments on Gödel’s ontological proof, we discuss the collapse of modalities, which is provable in Gödel’s ontological system GO. We argue that Gödel’s texts confirm modal collapse as intended consequence of his ontological system. Further, we aim to show that modal collapse properly fits into Gödel’s philosophical views, especially into his ontology of separation and union of force and fact, as well as into his cosmological theory of the nonobjectivity of the lapse of time. As (...) a result, modal collapse should not be conceived in Gödel so much as a deficit, but rather as a kind of the rise of modalities to the “perfect” being. We further show that, in accordance with Gödel’s ontology, the concepts of modality and time should be derived in terms of the “fundamental philosophical concept” of cause. To give an example of how a formalization of such causative Gödelian ontology and ontological proof might look, we propose the transformation of GO into a kind of causally re-interpreted justification logic. (shrink)

The discovery of the role of models in science by Granger parallels the analogous discovery made by Mary Hesse and Marx Wartofsky. The role models are granted highlights the linguistic dimension of science, resulting in a 'softening' of Bachelard's rationalistic epistemology without lapsing into relativism. A 'linguistic' theory of metaphor, as contrasted with Bachelard's 'psychological' theory, is basic to Granger's account of models. A final paragraph discusses to what extent Granger's 'mature' theory of models would imply a revision of his (...) early economic methodology. (shrink)

We often encounter people who we believe are behaving immorally. We routinely try to change minds and often donate to charitable organizations that do the same. Of course, this does not always work. In a liberal, rights-based society, we have to tolerate this. But legal entitlements to act in ways that others find immoral are inefficiently allocated. For example, some meat-eaters value eating meat less than some vegetarians would be willing to pay them to stop. While many have written (...) about the limits of the market, market design, and abuse of right, few have considered the sale of these entitlements. This article proposes a market-based solution, encouraging the sale of these entitlements under certain conditions. This would lead to improvements both on an economic efficiency analysis and on a moral analysis. (shrink)