A standard example of a justified aggressor is the tactical bomber who is about to destroy an ammunitions factory in a proportionate, justified military attack, full well knowing that an innocent civilian bystander will also be killed by his attack (“collateral damage”). Intuitively it seems hard to believe that the innocent bystander threatened by the tactical bomber is morally prohibited from killing him in self-defense. Yet, Stephen R. Shalom indeed endorses such a prohibition. I shall argue (...) that all the examples Shalom offers in support of his view are disanalogous to the case in question, and provide examples that are analogous and strongly suggest that Shalom’s claim leads to counter-intuitive implications. Moreover, I will provide a clear-cut case that demonstrates that Shalom cannot rely on a general principle prohibiting lethal violence against permissible violence. Thus, I conclude that Shalom has failed to provide a convincing argument in support of his case. (shrink)

Even among those who find lethal defense against non-responsible threats, innocent aggressors, or justified aggressors justified even in one to one cases, there is a debate as to what the best explanation of this permissibility is. The contenders in this debate are the liability account, which holds that the non-responsible or justified human targets of the defensive measures are liable to attack, and the justified infringement account, which claims that the targets retain their right not to be attacked but may (...) be attacked anyway, even in one to one situations. Given that we normally think that rights are trumps, this latter claim is counter-intuitive and rather surprising, and therefore in need of justification and explanation. So far only Jonathan Quong has actually tried to provide an explanation; however, I will argue that his explanation fails and that Quong’s own account of liability is misguided. I then address Helen Frowe’s critique of the liability account. She makes the important concession that the tactical bomber has to compensate his victims, but she tries to block the conclusion that he must therefore be liable. I will demonstrate that her attempt to explain away liability fails once that concession is made. (shrink)

Victor Tadros thinks the idea that in a conflict both sides may permissibly use force should (typically) be rejected. Thus, he thinks that two shipwrecked persons should not fight for the only available flotsam (which can only carry one person) but instead toss a coin, and that a bomber justifiably attacking an ammunitions factory must not be counterattacked by the innocent bystanders he endangers. I shall argue that Tadros’s claim rests on unwarranted assumptions and is also mistaken in the (...) light of the moral reasoning that he himself offers in support of his ‘means principle’. (shrink)

I shall argue that in some wars both sides are (as a collective) justified, that is, they can both satisfy valid jus ad bellum requirements. Moreover, in some wars – but not in all – the individual soldiers on the unjustified side (that is, on the side without jus ad bellum) may nevertheless kill soldiers (and also civilians as a side-effect) on the justified side, even if the enemy soldiers always abide by jus in bello constraints. Traditional just war theory (...) and self-proclaimed “revisionist” just war theory think otherwise since the former focuses on the law enforcement or public authority justification for inflicting harm and the latter on the self-defense justification. These are both intrinsically asymmetrical justifications: there is no justified self-defense (properly understood) against justified self-defense, nor is there justified law-enforcement against justified law-enforcement. However, there can, as I will show, be justified self-defense against force that is justified by a necessity justification, and there can be force justified by a necessity justification being used against force that is also justified by a necessity justification. The necessity justification is not intrinsically asymmetrical, and it is an indispensable justification in the context of war. Moreover, with regard to some forms of inflicting harm on others one may give special weight to one’s own interests and the interests of those to whom one has special responsibilities when assessing the proportionality of those acts. That is, the proportionality calculation may be agent-relative. This is in particular so in the case of foreseeably preventing innocent and non-threatening people from being saved (for instance, by shooting down a tactical bomber who would have saved them by destroying an ammunitions factory) but less so in the case of the intentional or foreseeable direct harming of innocent and non-threatening people (dropping bombs on people standing near an ammunitions factory). In the light of these considerations, I will then answer the question as to when soldiers may justifiably participate in war (and when not). (shrink)

McMahan’s own example of a symmetrical defense case, namely his tactical bomber example, opens the door wide open for soldiers to defend their fellow-citizens (on grounds of their special obligations towards them) even if as part of this defense they target non-liable soldiers. So the soldiers on both sides would be permitted to kill each other and, given how McMahan defines “justification,” they would also be justified in doing so and hence not be liable. Thus, we arrive, against (...) McMahan’s intentions, at a moral equality of combatants. In addition, his own account of liability cannot deal adequately with symmetrical defense cases in the first place. This undermines his presupposition that justification defeats liability, which is central to his defense of the moral inequality of combatants. I shall argue that McMahan’s attempts to counter these objections fail and that therefore his general claim of the moral inequality of combatants remains unpersuasive. (shrink)

In Michel de Certeau’s Invention of the Everyday, improvisational community dance function as a catalyst for the subversive art of the oppressed, via its ancient Greek virtue/power of mētis, being “foxlike.” And in de Certeau’s The Possession of Loudun, this foxlike dance moves to the stage, as an improv chorus that disrupts the events at Loudon when reimagined as a tetralogy of plays at City Dionysia. More precisely, Loudun’s tetralogy could be interpreted as a series of three tragedies and one (...) comedy, the latter of which involves the chorine nuns’ channeling of anomie into a proto-feminist transfiguration. More precisely, the tactical prowess of the nuns’ chorus leader, namely the prioress Jeanne des Anges, elevates her to the status of an angelic prophet, which in de Certeau’s theatrical dancing critique makes her the Loudun tetralogy’s Dionysian, foxlike mage. In conclusion, this analysis suggests de Certeau’s relevance for revolutionary social justice today. (shrink)

Stressing that the pronoun "I" picks out one and only one person in the world (i.e., me), I argue against Hunt (and other like-minded Rand commentators) that the supposed "hard case" of destructive people who do not care for their own lives poses no special difficulty for rational egoism. I conclude that the proper response to a terse objection like "What about suicide bombers?" is the equally terse assertion "But I don't want to get blown up.".

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a moderate degree) categories of tactics (...) proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)

In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.

Despite extensive evidence for its effectiveness, ECT remains the subject of fierce opposition from those contesting its benefits and claiming extreme harms. Alongside some reflections on my experiences of this treatment, I examine the case against ECT, and find that it appears to rest primarily on unsubstantiated claims about major ethical violations, rather than clinical factors such as effectiveness and risk.

A new book by Jocko Willink, "Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual", is reviewed. Leadership Strategy and Tactics explore the nature of leadership styles and strategies in both narrative forms as the author discusses past experiences in the military, as well as in real-world applications beyond the military domain. The author provides timely, yet timeless advice for aspiring leaders in an easily digestible form, with quick reference chapters and simple tactical points.

According to Freud: the business of the analysis is to secure the best possible psychological conditions for the functions of the ego. Functional interpretation rather than veridical reconstruction of past events. Truth in an interpretation is the proximity to the apotheotic resilience of the resilience of the ego undertaking the interpretation in the face of emerging contingencies. If apotheosis implicates the critical functionality of the interpretation, then the apotheosis is the resoluteness that defies future evidence undermining the interpretation. The critical (...) interpretation is the analytic truth that overcomes defeat by the empirical evidence by which it is normally defeasible. Resoluteness amounts to acquisition of the evidence-transcendent METHOD enabling narrative truth. (shrink)

Although certain recent developments in mendacious political manipulation of public discourse are horrifying to the academic mind, I argue that we should not panic. Charles Peirce’s pragmatist epistemology with its teleological arc, long horizon, and rare balance between robust realism and contrite fallibilism offers guidance to weather the storm, and perhaps even see it as inevitable in our intellectual development. This paper explores Peirce’s classic “four methods of fixing belief”, which takes us on an entertaining and still very pertinent tour (...) through tenacity, authority and a priori speculation to the method of science – the only method which is both public and self-correcting. Although in the West we (mostly) proudly self-conceive as living in a ‘scientific age’, I argue that this is premature. Precisely insofar as we treat the misbehavior of governments as a harbinger of doom, we remain trapped in authoritarian modes of thinking which Peirce identified with medievalism, although modernity is increasingly quickening around us in worldwide information-sharing practices that are shaped entirely by mutual help. With this framework in mind, many tactics of recent media are most helpfully seen as belonging not to a post-truth, but a pre-truth stage of human intellectual development. Advice on this is sought from Plato, who of course also faced a world that was ‘pre-academic’. (shrink)

In 2001 the Indonesian government agreed to the introduction in the Indonesian Papua of regional, consociational elements of power-sharing, despite the fact that the dominant model of this system in Indonesia is centripetalism. The so-called special autonomy for the Indonesian Papua has never been fully implemented, however. The article seeks to test the thesis that the Indonesian authorities' institution of consociational arrangements for Papua, and their subsequent failure to fully implement those arrangements, were, in fact, tactical moves serving to (...) reduce the threat arising from growing pro-independence aspirations among the Papuans and to firmly attach Papuan territory to Indonesia. This article has been published in "Hemispheres" 2016, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 5-20. (shrink)

The article emphasizes the relevance of revising the content of professional activities and the range of powers of specialists of IT departments in business organizations and, accordingly, the conceptual foundations of their professional training. The need for forming future IT specialists with unique skills and abilities to carry out strategic and tactical activities and develop the relevant competencies, which allows them to be active participants in the construction and implementation of the organization’s business strategies, has been clarified. The purpose (...) of the article is to review and analyse the features of strategic and tactical activities in the functioning of IT specialists in a business organization, as well as the study of methodological foundations of the formation of tactical and strategic competence in future IT specialists, which will allow them to implement various measures of strategic planning and project work successfully. During the study of the problem of training future IT specialists for strategic and tactical activities in business organizations, methods of retrospective analysis, generalization and interpolation of theoretical aspects of the problem were applied; methods of conceptualizing advanced pedagogical experience in the formation of professional important competencies of future IT specialists were used. It has been found that tactical and strategic competence determines the ability of an IT specialist to project short-term and long-term goals, develop methods and tactics for their achievement, and in this way effectively organize professional activity and achieve success in it. It has been substantiated that the development of tactical and strategic competence can be realized in terms of a specially organized training process for future IT specialists contributing to their mastering the experience of developing and approbation IT strategies and tactics. Methodological approaches (competent-oriented, creative-developmental, multidisciplinary, practice-oriented, problem-based ones) have been revealed, for them the methods of training future IT specialists for strategic and tactical activities in business organization should be based. It has been noted that the methods of formation of future IT specialists’ readiness for strategic and tactical activities involve a number of stages, namely: 1) actualization of professional needs, interests, motives, and formation of students’ business values; 2) determination of the goal and selection the tools of influence aimed at the shaping of students’ scientific and theoretical knowledge and personal experience in the implementation of professional skills; 3) arming students with an arsenal of strategies that allow for a holistic analysis of the situation, actions, and motives and, as a result, permits to reduce the operational costs of the organization and the turned IT service into a driver of business; 4) modelling of possible strategy implementation tactics in various production situations; 5) analysis of acquired experience, control and correction of formation of future IT specialists’ professionally important competencies. The features of the application of methods of activation and stimulation of motivation and responsibility in educational and professional activities, organizational methods, the method of immersion in the situation, the method of pattern and case study in the process of formation of tactical and strategic competence in future IT specialists have been defined and described. A conclusion was made regarding the requirement for step-by-step application of methods and technologies in order to prepare future IT specialists for strategic and tactical activities during their professional training process. (shrink)

I argue against the Doctrine of Double Effect’s explanation of the moral difference between terror bombing and strategic bombing. I show that the standard thought-experiment of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber which dominates this debate is underdetermined in three crucial respects: (1) the non-psychological worlds of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; (2) the psychologies of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; and (3) the structure of the thought-experiment, especially in relation to its similarity with the (...) Trolley Problem. (1) If the two worlds are not identical, then it may be these differences between the two worlds and not the Doctrine of Double Effect to explain the moral difference; (2a) if Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber have the same causal beliefs, then why does Terror Bomber set out to kill the children? It may then be this unwarranted and immoral choice and not the Doctrine of Double Effect that explains the moral difference; (2b) if the two have different causal beliefs, then we can’t rule out the counterfactual that, had Strategic Bomber had the same beliefs as Terror Bomber, she would have also acted as Terror Bomber did. Finally, (3) the Strategic Bomber scenario could also be constructed so as to be structurally equivalent to the Fat Man scenario in the Trolley Problem: but then the Doctrine of Double Effect would give different answers to two symmetrical cases. (shrink)

When you type the word “serendipity” in a word-processor application such as Microsoft Word, the autocorrection engine suggests you choose other words like “luck” or “fate”. This correcting act turns out to be incorrect. However, it points to the reality that serendipity is not a familiar English word and can be misunderstood easily. Serendipity is a very much scientific concept as it has been found useful in numerous scientific discoveries, pharmaceutical innovations, and numerous humankind’s technical and technological advances. Therefore, there (...) have been many books written around the concept. So why do we need this additional book? This is not just another book about serendipity. It has evolved from the Editor’s question lingering for a decade after finishing his widely cited article (coauthored with Prof. Nancy K. Napier of Boise State University, ID, USA) “Serendipity as a strategic advantage?” in T. Wilkinson’s edited volume Strategic Management in the 21st Century, published by Praeger. The Editor and contributing authors have tried to achieve the following in this title. Demystifying the Serendipity Myth The phenomenon of serendipity has always been thought of as a “miracle”. It is the mystery of human innovation and one of the ultimate secrets of our society. But serendipity is not just a lucky coincidence nor any hidden conspiracy. This book explores the science of the information process behind this seemingly miraculous phenomenon. It connects human society with nature, going back to the root of our existence and looking at the flame of survival to discover the harmony in making creativity. Presenting the nuts and bolts of being an adventurer of science The authors present their conceptual investigations into serendipity’s nature and its mechanism by examining interesting real events and stories. The content is thought-provoking, and readers are led to question and explore their own life stories and problems along the journey of reading this book. Catching an elusive high-value target requires great strategies and efforts. But there are no dark secrets here because this is the “way of nature” – how we humans have always strived for innovation without realizing the blueprints behind such processes. Unlike other books on serendipity, this book will show you that a powerful “secret” is closer than you think. Delivering practical uses for different audiences By understanding the conditionality and survival drivers of serendipity, individuals or organizations can make better decisions on creating the right environment to facilitate the encounter and attainment of this valuable phenomenon. For scientists: With clear explanations of the information processes underlying serendipity, flexible theoretical frameworks of mindsponge and the 3D principle of creativity, researchers are provided with the tools they need to dig deeper into their own fields of study and find practical applications, be it psychology, economics, sociology, or anything that involves innovation (which is, in fact, every scientific discipline). For curious casual readers: Everybody needs innovation to make breakthroughs or spice up one’s life. If you think great ideas come to people randomly from an unknown fairy place, this book will convince you otherwise without taking away that awe and wonder. But above all, you will know how to become more creative, scientifically and straightforwardly, with no snake oil and no weird tricks. For ambitious business people: The flame that brought about great successes throughout human history is within you. But you can only use it if you understand it. While others wait for serendipity to come, you will be able to actively hunt for those precious moments. As it has always been: the best hunters triumph, not the passive wanderers. And in this age of information chaos, finding the golden fruits is not easy. Those from information technology know this problem well, and this book is the treasure map that they have been seeking to navigate that stormy ocean looking for jewels. Like a kingfisher tracking its prey through the water, waiting to gracefully strike, with serendipity, a person seizes the prize of creativity amid the chaos of life. ¤ ¤ ¤ Official introduction: The book explores the nature, underlying causes, and the information processing mechanism of serendipity. It proposes that natural or social survival demands drive serendipity, and serendipity is conditional on the environment and the mindset, on both individual and collective levels. From Darwin's evolution theory to Sun Tzu's war tactics, major innovations throughout human history are unified by this key concept. In the rapidly changing world, information is abundant but rather chaotic. The adaptive power of serendipity allows people to notice treasures within this wild sea, but only for those who understand how it works. To increase the probability of encountering and attaining serendipity, one should employ the mindsponge mechanism and the 3D process of creativity, for without these frameworks, serendipity is truly an elusive target. The book also discusses methods to build environments and cultures rich in navigational and useful information to maximize the chance of finding and capitalizing on serendipity. As a skill, serendipity has a resemblance to how kingfishers observe and hunt their prey. (shrink)

Interpreters have noticed that Nietzsche, in addition to sometimes being uproariously funny, reflects more on laughter and having a sense of humor than almost any other philosopher. Several scholars have further noticed that Nietzschean laughter sometimes seems to have an epistemic function. In this chapter, I assume that Nietzsche is a pluralist about the functions of humor and laughter, and seek to establish the uses he finds for them. I offer an interpretation according to which he tactically uses humor and (...) laughter for epistemic purposes. His epistemic aims include enabling inquiry (when faith and reverence might have forbidden it), achieving knowledge (for himself or for his reader), and abandoning error (again for himself or for his reader). Humor supports these goals by inducing contempt and the laughter that expresses (and sometimes also conjures) it. (shrink)

McMahan argues that justification defeats liability to defensive attack (which would undermine the thesis of the "moral equality of combatants"). In response, I argue, first, that McMahan’s attempt to burden the contrary claim with counter-intuitive implications fails; second, that McMahan’s own position implies that the innocent civilians do not have a right of self-defense against justified attackers, which neither coheres with his description of the case (the justified bombers infringe the rights of the civilians) nor with his views about rights (...) forfeiture, is unsupported by independent argument, and, in any case, extremely implausible and counter-intuitive; and third, that his interpretation of the insulin case confuses the normative relations between an agent’s justification and non-liability on the one hand and permissible or impermissible interference with the agent’s act on the other. Similar confusions, fourth, affect his discussion of liability to compensation. (shrink)

I argue against the Doctrine of Double Effect’s explanation of the moral difference between terror bombing and strategic bombing. I show that the standard thought-experiment of terror bombing and strategic bombing which dominates this debate is underdetermined with regards to the agents’ psychologies: (a) if Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber have the same causal beliefs, then why does Terror Bomber set out to kill the children? It may then be this unwarranted and immoral choice and not the (...) Doctrine of Double Effect that explains the moral difference; (b) if the two have different causal beliefs, then we can’t rule out the counterfactual that, had Strategic Bomber had the same beliefs as Terror Bomber, she would have also acted as Terror Bomber did. (shrink)

Structural gaslighting arises when conceptual work functions to obscure the non-accidental connections between structures of oppression and the patterns of harm they produce and license. This paper examines the role that structural gaslighting plays in white feminist methodology and epistemology using Fricker’s (2007) discussion of hermeneutical injustice as an illustration. Fricker’s work produces structural gaslighting through several methods: i) the outright denial of the role that structural oppression plays in producing interpretive harm, ii) the use of single-axis conceptual resources to (...) understand intersectional oppression, and iii) the failure to recognize the legacy of women of color’s epistemic resistance work surrounding the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. I argue that Fricker’s whitewashed discussion of epistemic resistance to sexual harassment in the United States is a form of structural gaslighting that fails to treat women of color as knowers and exemplifies the strategic forgetting that is a central methodological tactic of white feminism. (shrink)

Interpreters have noticed that Nietzsche, in addition to sometimes being uproariously funny, reflects more on laughter and having a sense of humor than almost any other philosopher. Several scholars have further noticed that Nietzschean laughter sometimes seems to have an epistemic function. In this chapter, I therefore assume that Nietzsche is a pluralist about the functions of humor and laughter, and seek to establish the uses he finds for them. I offer an interpretation according to which he tactically uses humor (...) and laughter for epistemic purposes. His epistemic aims include enabling inquiry (when faith and reverence might have forbidden it), achieving knowledge (for himself or for his reader), and abandoning error (again for himself or for his reader). Humor supports these goals by inducing contempt and the laughter that expresses (and sometimes also conjures) it. (shrink)

Sit-ins, blockades, and lock-ons are common protest tactics. They work partly because continuing the operation or attempting quickly to remove activists risks injuring or killing them. Injuring or killing the activists is morally wrong, so the targets of the protest must (temporarily) yield to the activists. This appears to be a case of moral blackmail: The blackmailer makes it so that the blackmailed must either do what the blackmailer wants or do something morally wrong. Here, protestors appear to exploit the (...) targets’ tendency to be moral. Can such tactics be justified? I contend that they can insofar as such activists merely add further reason to what their targets already have decisive reason to do. The problem of moral blackmail, however, complicates the morality of primarily communicative civil disobedience. (shrink)

In contrast to the thesis of a thorough homology between the demystifying vocation of modernism and the profanatory tendencies of capitalist dynamics, the work of Roberto Schwarz seems to provide elements for a more nuanced conception of the modernist experience. While denouncing the setback caused by the routinisation of artistic strategies of defamiliarization, the Brazilian critic remains reluctant to accept the postmodernist assumption that any attempt to give consequence to the modernist universe in changed circumstances is necessarily doomed to failure. (...) To be sure, works that uncritically reproduce modernist tropes and tactics of representing reality in a dislocated way in order to provoke surprise, as advertisements do, are indeed bound to falter. But as long as they let themselves be informed at every stage by a critical inadequacy to the commodified world, modernist approaches may retain a critical value within an increasingly virulent anti-modernist culture. (shrink)

This paper develops a notion of manipulative gaslighting, which is designed to capture something not captured by epistemic gaslighting, namely the intent to undermine women by denying their testimony about harms done to them by men. Manipulative gaslighting, I propose, consists in getting someone to doubt her testimony by challenging its credibility using two tactics: “sidestepping” and “displacing”. I explain how manipulative gaslighting is distinct from reasonable disagreement, with which it is sometimes confused. I also argue for three further claims: (...) that manipulative gaslighting is a method of enacting misogyny, that it is often a collective phenomenon, and, as collective, qualifies as a mode of psychological oppression. (shrink)

This book shows how research in linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language, and rhetoric can be connected through argumentation to analyze a recognizably common strategy used in political and everyday conversation, namely the distortion of another’s words in an argumentative exchange. Straw man argumentation refers to the modification of a position by misquoting, misreporting or wrenching the original speaker’s statements from their context in order to attack them more easily or more effectively. Through 63 examples taken from different contexts (including political (...) and forensic discourses and dialogs) and 20 legal cases, the book analyzes the explicit and implicit types of straw man, shows how to assess the correctness of a quote or a report, and illustrates the arguments that can be used for supporting an interpretation and defending against a distortion. The tools of argumentation theory, a discipline aimed at investigating the uses of arguments by combining insights from pragmatics, logic, and communication, are applied to provide an original account of interpretation and reporting, and to describe and illustrate tactics and procedures that can be used and implemented for practical purposes.. This book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political communication, communication in general, argumentation theory, rhetoric and pragmatics, as well as to people working in public speech, speech writing, and discourse analysis. (shrink)

Containerization in a multi-cloud environment facilitates workload portability and optimized resource uti-lization. Containerization in multi-cloud environments has received significant attention in recent years both from academic research and industrial development perspectives. However, there exists no effort to systematically investigate the state of research on this topic. The aim of this research is to systematically identify and categorize the multiple aspects of containerization in multi-cloud environment. We conducted the Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) on the literature published between January 2013 and March (...) 2023. Eighty-six studies were finally selected and the key results are: (1) Four leading themes on cloud computing and network systems research were identified: ‘Scalability and High Availability’, ‘Performance and Optimization’, ‘Security and Privacy’, and ‘Multi-Cloud Container Monitoring and Adaptation’. (2) Seventy-four patterns and strategies for containerization in multi-cloud environment were classified across 10 subcategories and 4 categories. (3) Ten quality attributes considered were identified with 47 associated tactics. (4) Four frameworks were introduced from the analysis of identified challenges and solutions: security, automation, deployment, and monitoring challenge-solution frameworks. The results of this SMS will assist researchers and practitioners in pursuing further studies on containerization in multi-cloud environment and developing specialized solutions for containerization applications in multi-cloud environment. (shrink)

This study aims to examine how interdisciplinary urban interventions within architectural education can effectively address social justice issues. Motivated by the growing need for inclusive and equitable urban spaces, this research explores the potential of collaborative design and participatory research methods to foster social awareness and community engagement. Focusing on student-led projects in cities such as Houston, San Diego, and Amsterdam, this study addresses social justice challenges across themes like Art Activism, Tactical Urbanism, environmental justice, and gender equity. Using (...) case study analysis, digital mapping, and poster creation as core methodologies, the research demonstrates the value of multi-scalar, interdisciplinary approaches in tackling complex urban problems. The key findings highlight that integrating these approaches into architectural education promotes critical engagement with social justice issues, equipping students with practical skills for future professional challenges. The implications suggest that expanding this framework to diverse urban contexts could enhance its impact, offering a foundation for further studies on interdisciplinary design as a tool for urban equity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between anti-physicalist arguments in the philosophy of mind and anti-naturalist arguments in metaethics, and to show how the literature on the mind-body problem can inform metaethics. Among the questions we will consider are: (1) whether a moral parallel of the knowledge argument can be constructed to create trouble for naturalists, (2) the relationship between such a "Moral Knowledge Argument" and the familiar Open Question Argument, and (3) how naturalists can respond (...) to the Moral Twin Earth argument. We will give particular attention to recent arguments in the philosophy of mind that aim to show that anti-physicalist arguments can be defused by acknowledging a distinctive kind of conceptual dualism between the phenomenal and the physical. This tactic for evading anti-physicalist arguments has come to be known as the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. We will propose a metaethical version of this strategy, which we shall call the `Moral Concept Strategy'. We suggest that the Moral Concept Strategy offers the most promising way out of these anti-naturalist arguments, though significant challenges remain. (shrink)

Since at least 2016, many have worried that social media enables authoritarians to meddle in democratic politics. The concern is that trolls and bots amplify deceptive content. In this chapter I argue that these tactics have a more insidious anti-democratic purpose. Lies implanted in democratic discourse by authoritarians are often intended to be caught. Their primary goal is not to successfully deceive, but rather to undermine the democratic value of testimony. In well-functioning democracies, our mutual reliance on testimony also generates (...) a distinctively democratic value: decentralized testimonial networks evade control by the state or powerful actors. The deliberate exposure of deception in democratic testimonial networks undermines this value by implicating citizens in their own epistemic corruption, weakening the resilience of democratic society against authoritarian pressure. In this chapter I illustrate that danger through a close reading of recent Russian social media interference operations, showing both their epistemic underpinnings and their ongoing political threat. (shrink)

When we use a word, we face a crucial epistemic gap: we ground our move on the fact that our interlocutor knows the meaning of the word we used, and therefore he can interpret our dialogical intention. However, how is it possible to know the other’s mind? Hamblin explained this dialogical problem advancing the idea of dialectical meaning: on his view, the use of a word is based on a set of presumptions. Building on this approach, the use of a (...) word in a dialogue can be analyzed in terms of presumptive reasoning, while the manipulative strategies based on slanted or loaded terms or redefinitions can be conceived as forms of conflicts of presumptions. A presumptive approach to meaning can also ground different dialectical strategies to solve misunderstanding or definitional disagreements, or tactics to undermine the interlocutor’s arguments by advancing charges of equivocation. (shrink)

The article examines the content and process of forming the principles of a customer-oriented approach to the management of transport enterprises in the context of sustainable development. The author's definition of the concept of “principles of a customer-oriented approach to the management of transport enterprises” is given on the basis of its understanding as strategic and tactical areas of activity aimed at maximizing the satisfaction of customers' needs and expectations through the use of digital technologies and innovative approaches. The (...) key principles of a customer-oriented approach to managing transport enterprises in the context of sustainable development are developed, among which the following are highlighted: understanding customer needs; personalization of service; interaction at all stages; digital transformation of processes; data analysis and forecasting; creation of a digital environment; training and development of personnel; culture of service and open communication; continuous analysis and improvement; focus on the sustainability of relations, etc. The author's own model of digital transformation of transport enterprises using the principles of a customer-oriented approach is proposed. A generalized characterization and impact on the processes of customer focus of individual digital technologies for managing customer relations of transport enterprises is presented. (shrink)

Why are personal attacks so powerful? In political debates, speeches, discussions and campaigns, negative character judgments, aggressive charges and charged epithets are used for different purposes. They can block the dialogue, trigger value judgments and influence decisions; they can force the interlocutor to withdraw a viewpoint or undermine his arguments. Personal attacks are not only multifaceted dialogical moves, but also complex argumentative strategies. They can be considered as premises for further arguments based on signs, generalizations or consequences. They involve tactics (...) for arousing emotions such as fear, hate or contempt, or for ridiculing the interlocutor. The twofold level of investigation presented in this paper is aimed at distinguishing the different roles that ad hominem have in a dialogue and bringing to light their hidden dimensions. The reasoning structure of each type of attack will be distinguished from the tactics used to increase its effectiveness and conceal its weaknesses. (shrink)

In contemporary academic, political, and media discourse, terrorism is typically portrayed as an existential threat to lives and states, a threat driven by religious extremists who seek the destruction of Western civilization and who are immune to reason and negotiation. In many countries, including the US, the UK, and Australia, this existential threat narrative of terrorism has been used to justify sweeping counterterrorism legislation, as well as military operations and even the use of tactics such as torture and indefinite detention. (...) In this chapter I outline the components of the existential threat narrative, and explain how critical terrorism scholars have critiqued this narrative on two main grounds: that it is based on false empirical claims about the nature, scale, and motivations of modern non-state terrorism, and that counterterrorism policies and practices based on this narrative have had extremely destructive consequences for individuals, communities, and states—in some cases, causing far more destruction than terrorism itself. In the final section I offer some suggestions for the direction of future terrorism research in light of these critiques of the existential threat narrative. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, technological modernity (...) and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the pragmatic relevance of race in history. Kant and Hegel's racist development thesis assumes that nonwhite, non-European racial groups are defective practical agents. In response, philosophers have opted to drop race from a theory of history and progress. They posit that denying its pragmatic relevance amounts to anti-racist egalitarianism. I dub this tactic “colorblind cosmopolitanism” and offer grounds for its rejection. Following Du Bois, I ascribe, instead, a pragmatic role to race in history. Namely, Du (...) Bois argues that race is an “instrument of progress” that advances emancipatory struggle. He appeals to the writing of history—or historiography—to cultivate group consciousness of historical memory in order to strengthen intragroup bonds among the racially oppressed, especially black Americans, and create intergroup bonds that reconstruct the republic on the basis of universal ideals. I detail Du Bois's defense of the black struggle for freedom in the wake of the U.S. Civil War to provide a concrete illustration of “spirit” in American history. (shrink)

The detection of hate speech and fake news in political discourse is at the same time a crucial necessity for democratic societies and a challenge for several areas of study. However, most of the studies have focused on what is explicitly stated: false article information, language that expresses hatred, derogatory expressions. This paper argues that the explicit dimension of manipulation is only one – and the least problematic – of the risks of political discourse. The language of the unsaid is (...) much more dangerous and incomparably more difficult to detect, hidden in different types of fallacies and inappropriate uses of emotive language. Through a threefold coding scheme based on the instruments of argumentation theory and pragmatics, a corpus of argumentative tweets published by 4 politicians (Matteo Salvini, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Joseph Biden) within 6 months from their taking office (corresponding to the official end of their election campaign) is analyzed, detecting the types of argument, the fallacies, and the uses and misuses of “emotive words.” This coding results in the argumentation profiles of the speakers, which are compared statistically to show their different implicit strategies and deceptive tactics. (shrink)

The move from outright denialism by the fossil fuel and related industries to ‘soft denial’ urges reassessing the mechanisms and networks of actors involved in anti-environmentalism. One high-level tactic which harnesses evolutionary psychology and organizational self-protective tendencies to willfully overlook negative outcomes involves compartmentalization. Segmented judgment applies to multiple domains, including highlighting commitments, declarations, and philanthropy as a mask for continuing unsustainability. Selective accounting gives the impression that states and companies are doing enough on climate, that things are not as (...) bad as they seem, and that much-touted sustainable actions compensate for continuing environmental harms–in effect reducing the impetus for responsible action and diverting attention from climate change’s primary drivers. This bait-and-switch strategy fragments climate accounting by avoiding including both sustainable and unsustainable initiatives in the same ledger. This study categorizes strategies of compartmentalization according to sectoral, narrative, political, behavioral, and structural perspectives, with examples among agrochemical, fossil, and mining industries. Each of these facets is evaluated through examples of actions undertaken by corporations and public agents, often exploiting Global North-South dynamics. In spite of these aspects having different spheres of influence, acts of compartmentalization are interconnected and represent a core background frame enabling the climate denial machine. (shrink)

The police are required to establish probable cause before engaging in custodial interrogation. Much custodial interrogation relies on a fraudulent epistemic environment (FEE) in which the police knowingly use deception and dishonesty to gain an advantage over a suspect regarding a material issue, injuring the interests of the suspect. Probable cause, then, is a sort of evidentiary and epistemic standard that legally justifies the police’s use of deceptive and dishonest custodial interrogation tactics that are on par with fraud. However, there (...) are both deontological and consequentialist considerations that show why the police’s use of an FEE is often unjustified. Accordingly, the paper argues that even if the use of an FEE is based on probable cause, there are other (non-epistemic) reasons to think evidence with probative value (such as a confession) should be excluded when derived from an FEE and there is no acute threat of harm to others. (shrink)

Ecotage, or the destruction of property for the sake of promoting environmental ends, is beginning to (re)establish itself both as a topic of public discussion and as a radical activist tactic. In response to these developments, a small but growing academic literature questions whether, and if so under what conditions, ecotage can be morally justified. This paper contributes to the literature by arguing that instances of ecotage are pro tanto justified insofar as they are instances of effective and proportionate self- (...) and/or other-defense. Having elucidated and defended its central claim, this paper concludes by briefly considering some other morally relevant features of ecotage that might tell for or against its overall justification in particular cases. (shrink)

This article offers a normative analysis of some of the most controversial incidents involving police—what I call police-generated killings. In these cases, bad police tactics create a situation where deadly force becomes necessary, becomes perceived as necessary, or occurs unintentionally. Police deserve blame for such killings because they choose tactics that unnecessarily raise the risk of deadly force, thus violating their obligation to prioritize the protection of life. Since current law in the United States fails to ban many bad tactics, (...) police- generated killings often are treated as “lawful but awful.” To address these killings, some call on changes to departmental policies or voluntary reparations by local governments, yet such measures leave in place a troubling gap between ethics and law. I argue that police-generated killings merit legal sanctions by appealing to a relevant analogy: self-generated self-defense, where the person who engages in self-defense started the trouble. The persistent lack of accountability for police-generated killings threatens life, police legitimacy, and trust in democratic institutions. The article closes by identifying tools in law and policy to address this challenge. (shrink)

The ever-evolving ways attacker continues to improve their phishing techniques to bypass existing state-of-the-art phishing detection methods pose a mountain of challenges to researchers in both industry and academia research due to the inability of current approaches to detect complex phishing attack. Thus, current anti-phishing methods remain vulnerable to complex phishing because of the increasingly sophistication tactics adopted by attacker coupled with the rate at which new tactics are being developed to evade detection. In this research, we proposed an adaptable (...) framework that combines Deep learning and Randon Forest to read images, synthesize speech from deep-fake videos, and natural language processing at various predictions layered to significantly increase the performance of machine learning models for phishing attack detection. (shrink)

The Mahabharata, an Indian epic poem, describes a legendary war between two sides of a royal family. The epic’s plot involves numerous moral dilemmas that have intrigued and perplexed scholars of Indian literature. Many of these dilemmas revolve around a character named Krsna. Krsna is a divine incarnation and a self-proclaimed upholder of dharma, a system of social and religious duties central to Hindu ethics. Yet, during the war, Krsna repeatedly encourages his allies to use tactics that violate dharma. In (...) this paper, I try to make sense of Krsna’s actions by analyzing them in terms of categories from Western moral philosophy. I show that Krsna seems to embrace an ethical approach called consequentialism, but that his version of consequentialism differs from Western theories of consequentialism by seeing adherence to dharma as an intrinsic good. (shrink)

Plato claimed that morality exits to control conflict. Business people increasingly are called upon to resolve moral conflicts between various stakeholders who maintain opposing ethical positions or principles. Attempts to resolve these moral conflicts within business discussions may be exacerbated if disputants have different communicative styles. To better understand the communication process involved in attempts to resolve a moral dilemma, we investigate the "discourse ethics" procedure of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas claims that an individual's level of moral reasoning parallels the type (...) of communication which that individual typically uses in attempts to resolve conflict. Our research focuses upon the relationship between the communicative style used by participants attempting to resolve a particular moral dilemma involving workplace safety and the level of moral reasoning possessed by those participants. The results of our study suggest that, contrary to Habermas' views, participants with "higher" levels of moral reasoning do not use "discursive" communicative tactics more frequently than participants that possessed "lower" moral reasoning. (shrink)

This papers responds to a recent argument by Sophie Gibert concerning the wrong of wrongful manipulation. I argue that the more serious explanatory question is whether manipulation is wrong by default, not whether, when manipulation is wrong, this wrong is ‘basic’. The former better elucidates the significance of Gibert’s arguments. I then respond to her argument, construed as the argument that manipulation is not wrong by default. First, the putative counterexamples she presents are drawn from areas of work and play (...) – legal advocacy, negotiation, and gameplay – where the moral status of manipulative tactics is very much in dispute; thus, her reported intuitions are not persuasive. Second, even if we grant that manipulation in these contexts is morally permissible, we can explain how it remains wrong by default by appealing to competitive conventions that realize common epistemic, aesthetic, and hedonistic goods. I also show why Gibert’s reply to this conventionalist maneuver fails. (shrink)

Polarization often happens asymmetrically. One political actor radicalizes, and the results reverberate through the political system. This is how the deep divisions in contemporary American politics arose: the Republican Party radicalized. Republican officeholders began to use extreme legislative tactics. Republican voters became animated by contempt for their political rivals and by the defense of their own social superiority. The party as a whole launched a wide-ranging campaign of voter suppression and its members endorsed violence in the face of electoral defeat. (...) This paper is about how such asymmetric polarization affects everyone else’s obligations. My core claim is that two kinds of relationship – civic friendship and non-subordination – underpin critical democratic norms. Republican misbehavior has severed cross-partisan civic friendships. Their authoritarianism forfeits their claim to non-subordination. The former means that non-Republicans need not justify policy on public grounds. The latter undercuts Republicans’ claim to enjoy minority vetoes when out of power and it gives their rivals reason to disobey the laws that Republicans make when they are in power. More generally, when one political actor contravenes the proper norms of democratic politics, their opposition is not bound by those norms. (shrink)

Unlike human soldiers, autonomous weapons systems are unaffected by psychological factors that would cause them to act outside the chain of command. This is a compelling moral justification for their development and eventual deployment in war. To achieve this level of sophistication, the software that runs AWS will have to first solve two problems: the frame problem and the representation problem. Solutions to these problems will inevitably involve complex software. Complex software will create security risks and will make AWS critically (...) vulnerable to hacking. I claim that the political and tactical consequences of hacked AWS far outweigh the purported advantages of AWS not being affected by psychological factors and always following orders. Therefore, one of the moral justifications for the deployment of AWS is undermined. (shrink)

A general insight of 20th-century philosophy of science is that the acceptance of a scientific theory is grounded, not merely on a theory's relation to data, but on its status as having no, or being superior to its, competitors. I explore the ways in which scientific realists might be thought to utilise this insight, have in fact utilised it, and can legitimately utilise it. In more detail, I point out that, barring a natural but mistaken characterisation of scientific realism, traditional (...) realism has not utilised that insight regarding scientific theories, i.e., has not explicitly factored that insight into, and invoked it as justification for, what realists believe. Nonetheless, a new form of realism has. In response to a key historical threat, two of the most thoroughly developed contemporary versions of realism—one put forward by Jarrett Leplin, another by Stathis Psillos—are anchored on the sensible tactic of requiring that the theories to which realists commit themselves have no competitors. I argue, however, that the particular kind of non-competitor condition they invoke is illegitimate in the context of the realism debate. I contend further that invoking a non-competitor condition that is legitimate, sensible, and even, as it turns out, required in the context of the debate threatens to eliminate the possibility of scientific realism altogether. (shrink)

This article analyses the fallacy of wrenching from context, using the dialectical notions of commitment and implicature as tools. The data, a set of key examples, is used to sharpen the conceptual borderlines around the related fallacies of straw man, accent, misquotation, and neglect of qualifications. According to the analysis, the main characteristics of wrenching from context are the manipulation of the meaning of the other’s statement through devices such as the use of misquotations, selective quotations, and quoting out of (...) context. The theoretical tools employed in the analysis are pragmatic theories of meaning and a dialectical model of commitment, used to explain how and why a standpoint is distorted. The analysis is based on a conception of fallacies as deceptive strategic moves in a game of dialogue. As a consequence, our focus is not only on misquotations as distortions of meaning, but on how they are used as dialectical tools to attack an opponent or win a dispute. Wrenching from context is described as a fallacy of unfairly attributing a commitment to another party that he never held. Its power as a deceptive argumentation tactic is based on complex mechanisms of implicit commitments and on their misemployment to improperly suggest an attribution of commitment. (shrink)

This paper analyzes selected examples of uses of argumentation tactics that exploit emotive language, many of them criticized as deceptive and even fallacious by classical and recent sources, including current informal logic textbooks. The analysis is based on six argumentation schemes, and an account of the dialectical setting in which these schemes are used. The three conclusions are (1) that such uses of emotive language are often reasonable and necessary in argumentation based on values, (2) but that they are defeasible, (...) and hence need to be seen as open to critical questioning (3) and that when they are used fallaciously, it is because they interfere with critical questioning or conceal the need for it. The analysis furnishes criteria for distinguishing between arguments based on the use of emotive words that are reasonable tools of persuasion, and those that are fallacious tactics used to conceal and distort information. (shrink)