Whenever science returns a confident and univocal answer to a question, Trumping Naturalism enjoins us to accept it. The majority of contemporary philosophers are sympathetic to this sort of position. Indeed, several have endorsed it or something very close to it. Arguments for Trumping Naturalism, however, are scant, the principal one being the Track Record Argument. The argument is based on the fact that in cases of conflict, science has a better track record than non-scientific forms of inquiry (...) such as philosophy. My chapter investigates this argument. I enumerate and assess several objections to the argument, from footling objections to stronger ones. My conclusion is that the Track Record Argument is not as strong as imagined. (shrink)

This article frames Trump's politics through a genealogy of propaganda, going back to P.T. Barnum in the 19th century and moving through the crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon and the public relations counsel Edward Bernays in the 20th. This genealogy shows how propaganda was developed as a tool by eager professionals who would hire themselves to the elite to control the masses. Trump’s propaganda presents a break in that he has not only removed professionals from control over his propaganda, he (...) has mobilized it as a force against them. His lower and middle class supporters may not materially gain from Trump’s politics, but they get to vent their ressentiment on the professional class and see them too become the targets of propagandistic control. Ultimately, the conflict between working class whites, those without college degrees, and professionals earns little for its participants and occludes the role that elites play in class dynamics in the United States. This article adds substance and context to the claims that Trump’s appeal is anti-professional while showing that the claims that his supporters are ‘voting against their interests’ does not reflect the real psychological benefits many Trumpists get from supporting him. (shrink)

Following the storming of the US Capitol building, Donald Trump became digitally toxic, and was deplatformed from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube—as well as a host of other social media networks. Subsequent debate has centred on the questions of whether these companies did the right thing and the possible ramifications of their actions for the future of digital societies along with their democratic organisation. This article seeks to answer this question through examining complex, and seemingly contradictory notions (legality and the (...) protection of public interest vs issues of democratic legitimacy and digital sovereignty) and argues that reform is needed to determine who, in the future, will control the infosphere—and how. (shrink)

This paper argues that so-called “trumping preemption” is in fact overdetermination or early preemption, and is thus not a distinctive form of redundant causation. I draw a novel lesson from cases thought to be trumping: that the boundary between preemption and overdetermination should be reconsidered.

-/- Title: Why Trump’s Tariff Strategy Could Be a Political and Economic Win for America By Angelito Malicse -/- In the turbulent landscape of global trade, former President Donald Trump’s renewed push for tariffs is stirring both support and concern. Critics argue it will raise consumer prices and provoke trade wars, but there’s a strong case that his approach—especially if it leads to reshoring manufacturing—could deliver long-term gains politically and economically for the United States. -/- Tariffs as a Strategic Trade (...) Lever -/- Tariffs are import taxes meant to level the playing field. For example, Trump’s 2018 tariffs on Chinese goods, which reached $250 billion worth of imports, aimed to curb unfair trade practices and reduce America’s trade deficit.[1] Such policies effectively make foreign goods more expensive, encouraging companies to move manufacturing closer to their largest market: the U.S. -/- The Rise of Reshoring -/- Many American manufacturers have already begun moving production back to the U.S. According to the Reshoring Initiative, over 350,000 jobs were announced to return to the U.S. in 2022 alone—driven by both policy and supply chain disruption during the pandemic.[2] Tariffs amplify this incentive by making overseas production less profitable. -/- Although labor costs are higher in the U.S., advanced manufacturing and automation reduce the difference. A Boston Consulting Group study found that by 2020, U.S. manufacturing costs were already on par with or cheaper than those in major developed countries when productivity is factored in.[3] -/- Strategic Supply Chain Security -/- The pandemic exposed America’s dependency on foreign countries for essential goods. Nearly 80% of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are sourced from China and India.[4] By imposing tariffs and encouraging domestic production, the U.S. can rebuild strategic industries—such as semiconductors, rare earths, and medical equipment—reducing national security risks. -/- In 2021, President Biden signed an executive order to secure U.S. supply chains, highlighting bipartisan agreement on this issue.[5] Trump’s tariffs support this direction by making domestic investment more appealing. -/- A Political Win In Key States -/- Politically, Trump’s message of economic nationalism resonates with blue-collar workers and swing-state voters. The 2016 and 2020 elections showed strong support for him in manufacturing-heavy states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—places hit hardest by decades of offshoring.[6] -/- Bringing jobs back creates a powerful narrative: Trump as the defender of the American worker, fighting back against decades of globalization. -/- Investor Realignment and Capital Flow -/- Wall Street may not love tariffs, but many investors are adapting. Major corporations—including Intel, General Motors, and even Apple—have announced U.S. expansion or manufacturing plans, partly due to geopolitical tension and cost recalculations triggered by tariffs.[7] The CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act further reinforce the trend toward domestic investment, complementing Trump’s tariff-heavy approach. -/- The Risks: Inflation and Retaliation -/- Yes, there are risks. Tariffs often lead to price increases for consumers. A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the 2018–2019 tariffs raised costs for U.S. households by an average of $1,277 annually.[8] -/- Trade partners may retaliate. For instance, China imposed its own tariffs on $110 billion of American goods in response to Trump’s measures, hitting farmers and manufacturers alike.[9] Tariffs can also strain relations with U.S. allies, as seen when Trump’s steel tariffs affected Canada and the EU. -/- Conclusion: A High-Stakes Strategy With Long-Term Rewards -/- Despite the trade-offs, Trump’s tariff policy could be a winning strategy—economically, strategically, and politically. If it results in a clear shift of jobs back to the U.S., strengthens key industries, and fosters greater independence from geopolitical rivals, voters may view the short-term costs as worthwhile. -/- In an age where economic security is national security, tariffs may be more than protectionist tools. They could become instruments of national revival. -/- References -/- [1] Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “Economic Impact of Section 301 Tariffs on U.S. Imports from China.” [2] Reshoring Initiative 2022 Data Report, [3] Boston Consulting Group, “The Shifting Economics of Global Manufacturing,” 2020. [4] Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Dependence on Pharmaceutical Imports,” 2020. [5] White House, Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains, February 24, 2021. [6] Pew Research Center, “How the 2020 electorate compares to 2016,” November 2020. [7] CNBC, “Intel and Apple shift manufacturing back to U.S.”, 2022–2023 reports. [8] Peterson Institute for International Economics, “Consumer Costs of Tariffs,” March 2019. [9] BBC News, “China hits back with tariffs on US goods,” 2019. -/- . (shrink)

Estamos en presencia de un par de presidentes que están perpetrando el delito trasnacional de tráfico ilegal de personas con fines de someterlos a explotación laboral, servidumbre y/o esclavitud penitenciaria en la nueva Colonia Penitenciaria en que Bukele está convirtiendo al Estado de El Salvador.

The slogans of social movements are often put forward as simple truths, so that advocacy has consisted in changing social conditions such that these new truth claims are accepted as true: that women’s rights are human rights, that Black lives matter. Social movements critical of the political ascendance of Donald Trump, however, have been concerned not merely with this or that truth claim, but with the status—epistemological, social, and political—of truth itself. Those examining this post-truth moment have often turned to (...) Friedrich Nietzsche, who for many is synonymous with the kind of postmodern conception of truth at the center of post-truth politics. However, while it is true that Nietzsche offers valuable... (shrink)

When political philosopher Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of ‘banality of evil’ she did so in reference to the actions of Germans who appropriated the doctrines of National Socialism “thoughtlessly” and without obvious intentions to do evil. But, Arendt’s description of this phenomenon entails that such banality can be found even in a democracy such as the USA. The relation of law and morality must therefore be unambiguous to defend the rule of law against the rule of men. However, a (...) legal philosophy other than positivism is essential to safeguard the Republic against the overreach of executive power. And, where the psychopathology of Donald Trump is at the core of America’s electoral discontent in 2020, as mental health professionals have argued, there is all the more reason to take Arendt’s counsel especially seriously today. It is in this context that it is argued here that the American public must beware Trump’s inducement of America’s banality of evil. (shrink)

This article examines potential regulatory pathways for AI in the United States following the Trump administration's 2025 revocation of the Biden-era AI Executive Order. We outline two competing governance scenarios: decentralized state-level regulation (with minimal federal oversight) and centralized federal dominance (through legislative pre-emption). We critically evaluate each model's policy implications, constitutional challenges, and practical trade-offs, particularly regarding innovation and state autonomy. We argue that AI's technological characteristics and context-dependent nature complicate achieving regulatory coherence amid competing federal and state interests. (...) As a result, even under the Trump administration's broader deregulatory agenda, targeted federal intervention may remain necessary. (shrink)

The article shows that Donald Trump used three distinct but mutually supportive strategies to ascent to power in the 2016 elections. It argues that sovereignty in general uses these three strategies to justify its power. But it is only one of them, the one linked to a biopolitical conception of sovereignty, that allows for lack of authority. Trump used this strategy to great effect in 2016, but the article argues that it will be hard to pursue the same strategy from (...) the Oval Office. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The election of Donald Trump reflects the rise of a Right-wing nationalist movement. Central to Trump’s appeal has been his advocacy of anti-immigrant, racist, and misogynist ideas. At its core, his ruling power bloc consists of neo-liberal fundamentalists, the religious Right, and white nationalists. There are similarities between the new power bloc and fascism, and there are many who see Trump’s administration as such. Nevertheless, the new president’s authoritarian power bloc is neither hegemonic nor fascist yet, but it fascist (...) core is growing quickly. It's important to look at its American roots in the 'Redemeer' Counterrevolution against Reconstruction. -/- KEYWORDS: -/- Hegemonyfascismnationalismneo-liberalismracism Previous article View issue table of contents Next article Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. -/- Notes on Contributors: Jerry Harris is a founding member and national secretary of the Global Studies Association of North America and a founding member and on the international executive committee of the Network for the Critical Studies of Global Capitalism. He specializes in transnational capitalist class theory and political economy. He is author of Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy (Clarity Press, 2016) and The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Conflict in a Transnational World (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). -/- Carl Davidson is a co-founder of the Global Studies Association and director of the Online University of the Left. His area of interest is American history and politics. He is the author (with Jerry Harris) of Cyber Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age (Changemaker Publications, 2005) and New Paths to Socialism (Changemaker Publications, 2011). -/- Bill Fletcher Jr. is former president of TransAfrica Forum, a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, and co-author (with Peter Agard) of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934–1941, co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, and author of They’re Bankrupting Us—And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. -/- Paul Harris is a founding member of the San Francisco Law Collective, the national president of the Lawyers Guild, and the author of Black Rage Confronts the Law (New York University Press, 1997). (shrink)

The recent discussion surrounding Harvard University's perceived support for Palestinian perspectives and the Trump administration's subsequent threats to limit federal funding highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of the complex and interconnected relationship that exists between governmental entities and institutions of higher education. The belief that the government can randomly decrease financial support to institutions such as Harvard without facing considerable negative outcomes reflects a limited viewpoint and is fundamentally misinformed.

The unusually loyal supporters of Donald Trump are often described as a cult. How can we understand this extreme phenomenon in U.S. politics? We develop theoretical expectations and use the Big Five personality dimensions to investigate whether Trump's most loyal supporters share personality characteristics that might make them inclined to cult-like support. We find that (1) Trump's supporters share high levels of Conscientiousness; (2) this is substantively and statistically distinguishable from the commonly identified association between Conscientiousness and Conservatism; and (3) (...) the association is highly robust to a range of sensitivity tests. Our main findings are robust across two surveys. Study 1 is an online survey conducted in 2021 designed specifically for this project. Study 2 is the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES). (shrink)

Sometimes constitutions fail. The unprecedented election of Donald Trump, a populist insurgent who lacks the prior political experience or military service of all presidents before him, is such a sharp break in American historical experience that it raises questions as to whether something is deeply amiss with the constitutional order. Constitutional failure is not uncommon. A path-breaking global study of national constitutions shows that on average, they last only nineteen years. The U.S. Constitution is an uncommon outlier and, as such, (...) is accounted by many a long-running success story. But could a bell be tolling for American constitutionalism? In this Essay, I assess the meaning of Trump’s shocking rise for the future of our constitutional order. The shock, of course, was not the election of a Republican president. There have been many Republican presidents since Lincoln, each making their own distinctive contribution to the American tradition. Yet, there are good reasons to think this time around is different. The efficacy and, perhaps, stability of our constitutional order are in question, and we should try to understand why. (shrink)

The accepted working assumption on the eve of the 2020 Presidential Election in the US was that his image, as well as the perception that he holds negative opinions regarding immigrants and immigration while supported by white supremacists, would result in voters casting their ballot based on racial or ethnic considerations to vote against him. This paper was aimed at examining that linkage, to see if it took place in reality, or rather if voting needs to be looked at as (...) a choice made based on class and stature, not racial background. To examine the issue at hand, 2016 voting patterns were compared to 2020 exit polls based on racial background. The findings showed that support for President Trump rose across all races, sometimes more than doubling. At the same time, votes were analyzed based on a breakdown by class. For the study, three batches of districts were chosen: the poor of America, the average of America, and the rich of America. One district was chosen from each state, and a total of 147 districts from across the US were looked at. The research shows that as one climbs the social ladder, support for President Trump declines. Or, in the context of this paper: the lower one is on the social class ladder, especially among the 'forgotten' periphery, the higher the approval and support rate of President Trump is. (shrink)

Se promueve el respeto y la garantía del derecho al refugio y el derecho al asilo territorial de los venezolanos y de todo migrante en EEUU.

This paper revisits some of the arguments in Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, twenty years after the book first appeared. Not only are many of Rorty’s diagnoses and predictions eerily prescient in the wake of the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency, but there is also perceptive political advice in Rorty’s book that I argue the contemporary American Left would do well to heed. While many post-election commentators have tended to read Achieving Our Country as an admonishment of (...) so-called “identity politics” in favor of an “old Left” politics of redistribution and economic justice, I argue that the main distinction on which the analysis in Achieving Our Country hangs is between what Rorty calls “real politics” and “cultural politics”, a conclusion that is confirmed, I argue, by examining the three concrete suggestions for the American Left that together form the core positive argument in Rorty’s book. (shrink)

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are notoriously uninterested in truthtelling. They also often appear uninterested even in constructing plausible falsehoods. What stands out above all is the brazenness and frequency with which they repeat known falsehoods. In spite of this, they are not always greeted with incredulity. Indeed, Republicans continue to express trust in Donald Trump in remarkable numbers. The only way to properly make sense of what Trump and Johnson are doing, we argue, is to give a greater role (...) to audience relativity - and in some cases, audience participation - in notions like bullshitting and bald-faced lying. In this paper, we develop a new understanding of bullshitting, one that includes bald-faced lying, and recognizes that different communicative acts may be directed at different audiences with a single utterance. In addition, we argue for recognition of the category of bald-faced bullshitting, a particular speciality of both Trump and Johnson, and one especially useful to authoritarian leaders. (shrink)

Can we ever have politics without the noble lie? Can we have a collective political identity that does not exclude or define ‘us’ as ‘not them’? In the Ethics, Spinoza argues that individual human emotions and imagination shape the social world. This world, he argues, can in turn be shaped by political institutions to be more or less hopeful, more or less rational, or more or less angry and indignant. In his political works, Spinoza offered suggestions for how to shape (...) a political imaginary and create collective identities that are more guided by hope than by fear or anger. In this talk, using the framework of Spinoza's theory of emotions, I will investigate how Barack Obama's promise of 'hope' was translated into Donald Trump's rhetoric of hate. Such a transition, from hope to fear is one that would be unsurprising to Spinoza. Spinoza worried about the political and personal effectiveness of hope. He argued that hope can easily be turned into what he called ‘indignatio’ or indignation – an emotion that he believed eroded trust in political institutions and was the limit of state power. Spinoza warned about the danger of governance that relies upon the emotions of anger and hatred. In the Ethics, Spinoza painstakingly reconstructs the way in which individual emotions, ideas and motivations are shaped within social worlds. He argued that emotions based on pain, including hatred and indignation, diminish the power of the individuals who experience them and the political collective in which those individuals reside. Anger, fear and indignation weaken the state. In the second section of the paper, I will set out how the Trump administration’s reliance on the motivational forces of hate and anger risk what Spinoza called indignation. Trump's reliance on exclusionary conceptions of American identity have fanned the flames of racial, ethnic and religious hatred to motivate his base have had widespread social and political effects. I will offer arguments and examples which bear out the Spinozan worries about the effects of anger and indignation on the political and the social. Spinoza’s political works were written not just to explain the worries about an angry and indignant multitude, but also to show how to turn political indignation and anger into a chastened, and perhaps more rational, hope. Finally, I will propose that we may derive from Spinoza participatory, democratic institutions and collective identities that can overcome this indignation. (shrink)

Expert consensus is crucial for those who are not relevant experts in the field in which they are studying. However, for those who are a relevant expert in the field of a philosophic subject, there is a debate that asks if a minority view can ever be considered rational. Bryan Frances argues that if one is a relevant expert in a field, and is in the minority, their views must be irrational. In this essay I will be arguing that Frances' (...) argument fails in terms of the 'explanation' way, leading to leery acceptance of the 'no-process' way. I argue that relevant expert consensus does not matter; it is evaluating the argument that one makes. First, I discuss the debate on whether a relevant expert can disregard consensus and what a relevant expert is. Secondly, I deconstruct Frances' view charitably. Third, I analyze the issues with Frances' argument. Lastly, I offer an alternative to evaluating a minority view amongst relevant experts. (shrink)

El presidente de los EEUU, Donald Trump (y sus colaboradores), incurren en la realización de conductas que reúnen los elementos fácticos y jurídicos como para considerarlas configuradoras de la presunta ejecución de los delitos de lesa humanidad de deportación y desplazamiento forzado masivo, de forma flagrante, al revocarle el Estatus de Protección Temporal (TPS) a más de 347 mil venezolanos que viven en los EEUU en situación migratoria regularizada conforme a Derecho, dado que la aprobación del TPS, a su favor, (...) está sustentada en la Ley que regula la expedición del TPS, vigente en los EEUU. La arbitraria “cancelación” del estatus migratorio temporal de las personas afectadas está basada en motivaciones políticas, relacionadas con el origen nacional de las víctimas, es decir, por tener nacionalidad venezolana. Cabe indicar que la responsabilidad penal, frente a este tipo de crímenes atroces, es de carácter personal y no trasladable al Estado. (shrink)

In the early 20th century, the most numerous and well-funded institutions in the United States—corporations—used public relations to make a widespread and fundamental change in the way they constitute and regulate their relations of knowledge with the public. Today, we can see this change reflected in a variety of areas such as journalism, political outreach, social media, and in the ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ administration of Donald J. Trump. This article traces practices of corporate truth-telling and knowledge production across three (...) periods I will call the personal, the legal, and public relations, which are roughly coincident with the antebellum period, the Gilded Age, and the 20th century, respectively. In sum, what can be found in public relations and now broadly across society, is that relations of knowledge have come to be refigured as relations of power, subordinating traditional epistemological concerns like justification and belief in favor of government and control. (shrink)

As it became clear that Donald Trump had a real base of political support, even as analysts consistently underestimated his electoral prospects, they grew increasingly fascinated with the question of who was supporting him (and why). However, researchers also tend to hold strong negative opinions about Trump. Consequently, they have approached this research with uncharitable priors about the kind of person who would support him and what they would be motivated by. Research design and data analysis often seem to be (...) oriented towards reinforcing those assumptions. This essay highlights the epistemological consequences of these tendencies through a series of case studies featuring prominent and influential works that purport to explain the role of race and racism in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It demonstrates that quality control systems, which should catch major errors, seem to be failing in systematic ways as a result of shared priors and commitments between authors, reviewers and editors – which are also held in common with the journalists and scholars citing and amplifying this work – leading to misinformation cascades. Of course, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, prejudicial study design, and failure to address confounds are not limited to questions about Trump – however they seem to be particularly pronounced in this case due to the relative homogeneity and intensity of scholars’ views about this topic as compared to other social phenomena. “Trump studies,” therefore, provides fertile ground for exploring how social research can go awry – and the consequences of these failures -- particularly with respect to work on contentious and politically-charged topics. (shrink)

Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy.1 We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions, as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty: by giving someone the power to force others to serve one’s will by (...) threatening to inflict harm, in the absence of general rules of conduct. According to the logic of the argument, welfare-state provisions are not coercive insofar as they do not allow the identification and discriminatory treatment of individuals. By contrast, we claim that a structure of coercion is likely to emerge from the command-and-control nature of protectionist institutions and immigration restrictions currently advocated by the radical right. (shrink)

The article discusses the future of US democracy after the end of Donald J. Trump’s scandal-ridden presidency, which culminated in a violent attempted self-coup. In contrast to many observers outside the United States who appear to assume that Joe Biden’s inauguration marks the failure of the coup attempt, I argue that this view is overly optimistic. First, Trump by no means acted alone but was supported by leading figures in the Republican Party (GOP). Second, the attack on democratic norms and (...) institutions to restore and permanently cement Republican minority rule continues to move forward. The 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election set the course on whether the United States will return to liberal democracy or degrade into Hungary-style competitive authoritarianism. (shrink)

Do forest owners’ levels of education or value profiles explain their responses to climate change? The cultural cognition thesis has cast serious doubt on the familiar and often criticized "knowledge deficit" model, which says that laypeople are less concerned about climate change because they lack scientific knowledge. Advocates of CCT maintain that citizens with the highest degrees of scientific literacy and numeracy are not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, this is the group in which cultural polarization is greatest, (...) and thus individuals with more limited scientific literacy and numeracy are more concerned about climate change under certain circumstances than those with higher scientific literacy and numeracy. The CCT predicts that cultural and other values will trump the positive effects of education on some forest owners' attitudes to climate change. Here, using survey data collected in 2010 from 766 private forest owners in Sweden and Germany, we provide the first evidence that perceptions of climate change risk are uncorrelated with, or sometimes positively correlated with, education level and can be explained without reference to cultural or other values. We conclude that the recent claim that advanced scientific literacy and numeracy polarizes perceptions of climate change risk is unsupported by the forest owner data. In neither of the two countries was university education found to reduce the perception of risk from climate change. Indeed in most cases university education increased the perception of risk. Even more importantly, the effect of university education was not dependent on the individuals' value profile. (shrink)

An introduction of the ethics of belief and application to current political debates, with the observation that people of all political persuasions have beliefs that are not based on strong evidence. -/- Also posted on Cardiff's "Open for Debate" blog.

Language and politics go hand in hand and learning and comprehending political genre is to learn a language created for codifying, extending and transmitting political discourse in any text/talk. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Fairclough’s CDA and Rhetoric, the current study aims at investigating Donald Trump’s First Speech, from the point of frequency and functions of some rhetorical strategies (Parallelism, Anaphora and the Power of Three, Antithesis and Expletive, etc.), Nominalization, Passivization, We-groups and Modality as well as Lexical and (...) Textual Analysis, presented to the UN delivered on Sep. 19, 2017. Specifically, the study seeks to determine: (1) how President Trump succeeded in conveying his notions and assumptions to his intended audience, and in convincing and negotiating, (2) how he attempted to explicitly and implicitly pass his attitudes on his targets, and (3) how those orientations, intended notions and assumptions were seamlessly presented to his addressees in discoursal and lexico-grammatical levels; (4) and finally in this underlying trend how he achieved his own ends. The results of the study hope to enhance reading comprehension and writing in academic registers for EFL/ESL students. (shrink)

Public health policy often limits people’s liberty for their own good. The very point of many types of public health measures is to restrict people’s options in order to stop them from doing unhealthy things, for example use harmful recreational drugs or drive without a seatbelt. While such restrictive public health policies enjoy widespread support, so does the traditional liberal idea that liberty (or autonomy) is a higher value, to be given priority in most, if not all, circumstances. In this (...) text, I will defend the thesis that liberty is an important value, but with no claim to priority. (shrink)

in this article, we explore how responsible research and innovation (RRI) interacts with the current political context. We examine the (1) possible consequences for RRI and related agendas if values associated with ‘populist’ movements become more pervasive, (2) the role that a lack of RRI has potentially played in the development of this political context, and (3) how RRI as a concept, practice, and research agenda should respond. We argue that whilst RRI is threatened, it is now more important than (...) ever. We propose that RRI needs to go beyond being a method for facilitating societal input into research and innovation and for highlighting desired impacts. RRI needs to evolve to provide an effective conduit for criticisms and the input of critical thinking and reflexivity into science and innovation, including in terms of economic policy and politics. (shrink)

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a central concept in climate change economics. This chapter explains the SCC and investigates it philosophically. As is widely acknowledged, any SCC calculation requires the analyst to make choices about the infamous topic of discount rates. But to understand the nature and role of discounting, one must understand how that concept—and indeed the SCC concept itself—is yoked to the concept of a value function, whose job is to take ways the world could be (...) across indefinite timespans and to rank them from better to worse. A great deal, therefore, turns on the details of the value function and on just what is meant by “better” and “worse.” This chapter seeks to explicate these and related issues, and then to situate them within the evolving landscape of federal climate policy in the United States. (shrink)

This article discusses whether a sense of humor is a political virtue. It argues that a sense of humor is conducive to the central political virtues. We must first, however, delineate different types of humor (benevolent or malicious) and the different political virtues (sociability, prudence, and justice) to which they correspond. Generally speaking, a sense of humor is politically virtuous when it encourages good will toward fellow citizens, an awareness of the limits of power, and a tendency not to take (...) oneself too seriously or when it condemns moral or intellectual vice. An analysis of President Donald Trumps deeply flawed sense of humor is used to ground this account. (shrink)

Suppose that Billy and Suzy each throw a rock at window, and either rock is sufficient to shatter the window. While some consider this a paradigmatic case of causal overdetermination, in which multiple cases are sufficient for an outcome, others consider it a case of joint causation, in which multiple causes are necessary to bring about an effect. Some hold that every case of overdetermination is a case of joint causation underdescribed: at a maximal level of description, every cause is (...) necessary to bring about the outcome in precisely the way that it occurs. -/- This paper shows the latter principle to be false. I introduce a novel class of events that are insensitive to the additive force of multiple causes. They are to be contrasted with sensitive events, which physically and counterfactually vary according to the number and sorts of causes they have. I argue that sensitive effects are symptoms of joint causation; insensitive effects are symptoms of overdetermination. Insensitive effects resulting from multiple causes cannot be classified as "joint causation underdescribed," but only as overdetermination. -/- I suggest that cases of "trumping preemption" should be understood as cases of overdetermination with insensitive effects. Consequently, Lewis' influence account of causation cannot handle these cases. (shrink)

In the present article, I offer a new reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, specifically her argument that ideologies such as racism engender totalitarianism when the lonely and disenfranchised laborers of modern society develop a pathological fixation on formal logic, which I term “logomania.” That is, such logical deductions, from horrifically false premises, are the closest thing to thinking that individuals can engage in after their psyches, relationships, and communities have broken down. And it is only thus that (...) totalitarianism can achieve power, since it offers at least some form of connectedness and meaning, regardless how terrifying and violent. The danger persists, clearly, with the resurgence of the far Right, including in the extraordinary regime of Trump in the United States. From this I conclude that, along with the admirable calls to fight loneliness and rebuild our communities, we should also supplement all formal logical instruction and community education with instruction in creative thinking (including aesthetics), thereby discouraging the monomaniac reliance on formal logic as inadvertent weapon of totalitarianism. (shrink)

The weaponizing of scientific expertise to oppose regulation has been extensively studied. However, the relevant studies, belonging to the emerging discipline of agnotology, remain focused on the analysis of empirical corruption: of misinformation, doubt mongering, and other practices that cynically deploy expertise to render audiences ignorant of empirical facts. This paper explores the wrongful deployment of expertise beyond empirical corruption. To do so, I develop a broader framework of morally subversive expertise, building on recent work in political philosophy (Howard, 2016). (...) Expertise is subversive if it sets up its audience to fail morally, either intentionally or negligently. I distinguish three modes of subversive expertise: empirical subversion (the focus of agnotology), normative subversion and motivational subversion. Drawing on these distinctions, I offer a revisionary account of the Trump Administration’s regulatory science as a case study. I show that the Trump Administration’s use of expertise to dismantle climate regulation, contra the standard charge, cannot be explained using the resources of agnotology alone: the Administration produced highly reliable climate assessments, detailing the risks of climate change, candidly admitting the harms of its proposed policies, and still successfully deployed these findings to justify massive climate deregulation. The lesson of the analysis is that dismissing the expertise that underpins climate deregulation as empirically corrupt ‘anti-science’ both obscures its actual role in the politics of climate change and understates its wrongfulness: it misses the breadth of the assault on moral agency that sustains climate injustice. (shrink)

Why did millions of people respond to the failures of neoliberal capitalism by voting in leaders that further undermine their existence? In this article, I combine the insights of the early Frankfurt School Critical Theory (Theodor W. Adorno) with the insights of psychoanalytic theory (Sigmund Freud) to show how economic factors interact with psychological factors in the rise of the far-right today. The propaganda techniques used by far-right leaders create conditions in masses that are akin to hypnoses. Such techniques induce (...) regressions in far-right followers in which the unconscious predominates, and far-right leaders use to manipulate the masses. To further detail the theoretical framework, I analyze a Trump rally and an interview with a Trump follower. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze multiple aspects of how gender norms pervaded the 2016 election, from the way Clinton and Trump announced their presidency to the way masculinity and femininity were policed throughout the election. Examples include Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Gary Johnson. I also consider how some women who support Trump reacted to allegations about sexual harassment. The difference between running for President as a man and running for President as a woman makes all the difference (...) in the world. (OPEN ACCESS). (shrink)

Causation is defined as a relation between facts: C causes E if and only if C and E are nomologically independent facts and C is a necessary part of a nomologically sufficient condition for E. The analysis is applied to problems of overdetermination, preemption, trumping, intransitivity, switching, and double prevention. Preventing and allowing are defined and distinguished from causing. The analysis explains the direction of causation in terms of the logical form of dynamic laws. Even in a universe that (...) is deterministic in both temporal directions, not every fact must have a cause and present facts may have no future causes. (shrink)

Abstract: Reflecting on the practice of being a Spinoza scholar and Spinozist in Trump's Pandemic America, I argue that we can find consolation in Spinoza's insistent norm -- to understand rather than to blame, to banish free will as explanans so we can fully understand the explanandum. Just as Boethius reflected on human misunderstanding of luck, so Spinoza teaches that we need, in moments of despair, to look not to superstition, but to the recognition of the causal forces that yield (...) our triumphs and failures, and to understand them. While we are unmoored in the chaos of Trump's America, in the joyful expression of popular emancipatory power in the Black Lives Matters mass demonstrations and marches through American cities and suburbs, and the nightly horror of demonstrators murdered by police, I reach back to another moment of chaos with liberatory and nightmarish potential -- the years just after the U.S. Civil War described in Leaves of Grass. We can find Spinozist moments in Whitman's poem and philosophical memoir -- a kind of American Spinozism. As he travels among the horrors and the new possibilities of American life, Whitman insists on seeing and feeling the world as it is -- terrible, wonderful, in all its fleshy imperfection, while finding hope in these same flawed particulars. In 2020, Trump's America, Spinoza and Spinozism are not just relevant, are not just consolations in the Boethian sense, but they are essential epistemic survival tools for a world quite obviously in motion. (shrink)

Donald Trump’s speeches and messages are characterized by terms that are commonly referred to as “thick” or “emotive,” meaning that they are characterized by a tendency to be used to generate emotive reactions. This paper investigates how emotive meaning is related to emotions, and how it is generated or manipulated. Emotive meaning is analyzed as an evaluative conclusion that results from inferences triggered by the use of a term, which can be represented and assessed using argumentation schemes. The evaluative inferences (...) are regarded as part of the connotation of emotive words, which can be modified and stabilized by means of recontextualizations. The manipulative risks underlying the misuse and the redefinition of emotive words are accounted for in terms of presuppositions and implicit modifications of the interlocutors’ commitments. (shrink)

Sami Pihlström argues that, for principled reasons, we have a duty not to listen to racists. Although this stance can seem admirable, I worry that by cutting itself off from evidence, a refusal to listen leaves wrongfully accused persons no means of exonerating themselves. Moreover, given that concepts like racism now encompass beliefs and acts that many rightly consider sensible, a policy of silence risks dismissing implausibly large numbers of people as immoral. Stressing that listening is not acquiescing, I urge (...) Pihlström to think more carefully about the consequences of his stance, especially since it would increase the likelihood of conflict. (shrink)

Common principles for resource allocation in health care can prioritize the alleviation of small health burdens over lifesaving treatment. I argue that there is some evidence that these principles are at odds with a sizable share of public opinion, which holds that saving a life should take priority over any number of cures for minor ailments. I propose two possible explanations for this opinion, one debunking and one vindicatory. I also outline how well-designed surveys and moral inquiry could help decide (...) between them. Finally, I consider how priority-setting principles could be adjusted if the view that saving a life always trumps alleviating small burdens were vindicated. (shrink)

The most familiar philosophical conception of objective chance renders determinism incompatible with non-trivial chances. This conception – associated in particular with the work of David Lewis – is not a good fit with our use of the word ‘chance’ and its cognates in ordinary discourse. In this paper we show how a generalized framework for chance can reconcile determinism with non-trivial chances, and provide for a more charitable interpretation of ordinary chance-talk. According to our proposal, variation in an admissible ‘evidence (...) base’ generates a spectrum of different chance functions. Successive coarse-grainings of the evidence base generates a partial ordering of chance functions, with finer trumping coarser if known. We suggest that chance-attributions in ordinary discourse express different chance functions in different contexts, and we sketch a potential contextual mechanism for making particular chance functions salient. The mechanism involves the idea that admissible evidence is available evidence: propositions that could be known. A consequence is that attributions of objective chances inherit the relatively familiar context-sensitivity associated with the modal ‘could’. We show how this context-dependency undermines certain arguments for the incompatibility of chance with determinism. (shrink)

When I heard Donald Trump say in one of his many unofficial/quasi-official talks that his plan is to win the forthcoming election and be president for 18 more years, I at first thought he spoke in jest. This was not a jocular statement. This article explains why.

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)

The word 'rationalism,' as it appears in philosophical discussions of ethics and morality, signifies at least one of a cluster of theses, each of which connects some aspect of ethical experience to reason or rationality. The most provocative rationalist thesis arises in contemporary discussions in metaethics; and it is this thesis that remains the most likely referent, in contemporary discussions, of the phrase 'moral rationalism.' The thesis is more accurately referred to, however, as metaethical rationalism, since it concerns the provenance (...) and nature of moral obligations, rather than their substance. A strong version of metaethical rationalism maintains that if someone is morally obligated to perform a certain action, then performing that action is what she has the strongest reasons, all things considered, to do. A weaker version of metaethical rationalism claims that if someone is morally obligated to perform a certain action, then performing that action is something that she has a reason to do, even though the reason might not be decisive: another reason, for instance of prudence, might trump the reason she has to act morally. It is rationalism in this metaethical guise that will be the ultimate focus of this essay. (shrink)

Migrant women are often stereotyped. Some scholars associate the feminization of migration with domestic work and criticize the “care drain” as a new form of imperialism that the First World imposes on the Third World. However, migrant women employed as domestic workers in Northern America and Europe represent only 2% of migrant women worldwide and cannot be seen as characterizing the “feminization of migration”. Why are migrant domestic workers overestimated? This paper explores two possible sources of bias. The first is (...) sampling: conclusions about “care drain” are often generalized from small samples of domestic workers. The second stems from the affect heuristic: imagining children left behind by migrant mothers provokes strong feelings of injustice which trump other considerations. The paper argues that neither source of bias is unavoidable and finds evidence of gender stereotypes in the “care drain” construal. (shrink)