Results for 'two-level utilitarianism'

952 found
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  1. Valuing humane lives in two-level utilitarianism.Nicolas Delon - 2020 - Utilitas 32 (3):276-293.
    I examine the two-level utilitarian case for humane animal agriculture (by R. M. Hare and Gary Varner) and argue that it fails on its own terms. The case states that, at the ‘intuitive level’ of moral thinking, we can justify raising and killing animals for food, regarding them as replaceable, while treating them with respect. I show that two-level utilitarianism supports, instead, alternatives to animal agriculture. First, the case for humane animal agriculture does not follow from (...)
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  2. Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare's Two-Level Utilitarianism, by Gary E. Varner * The Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Robert W. Lurz.K. Andrews - 2014 - Mind 123 (491):959-966.
    A review of Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism, by Gary E. Varner. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 336. H/b £40.23. and The Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Robert W. Lurz. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 320. P/b £20.21.
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  3. Review of Gary Varner, Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism[REVIEW]Gary Comstock - 2013 - Environmental Values 22 (3):417-420.
    With his 1998 book, In Nature’s Interests? Gary Varner proved to be one of our most original and trenchant of environmental ethicists. Here, in the first of a promised two volume set, he makes his mark on another field, animal ethics, leaving an even deeper imprint. Thoroughly grounded in the relevant philosophical and scientific literatures, Varner is as precise in analysis as he is wide-ranging in scope. His writing is clear and rigorous, and he explains philosophical nuances with extraordinary economy (...)
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  4. Utilitarianism with and without expected utility.David McCarthy, Kalle Mikkola & Joaquin Teruji Thomas - 2020 - Journal of Mathematical Economics 87:77-113.
    We give two social aggregation theorems under conditions of risk, one for constant population cases, the other an extension to variable populations. Intra and interpersonal welfare comparisons are encoded in a single ‘individual preorder’. The theorems give axioms that uniquely determine a social preorder in terms of this individual preorder. The social preorders described by these theorems have features that may be considered characteristic of Harsanyi-style utilitarianism, such as indifference to ex ante and ex post equality. However, the theorems (...)
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  5. (1 other version)Moral rules, utilitarianism and schizophrenic moral education.Kevin McDonough - 1992 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 26 (1):75–89.
    R. M. Hare has argued for and defended a ‘two-level’, view of moral agency. He argues that moral agents ought to rely on the rules of ‘intuitive moral thinking’ for their ‘everyday’ moral judgments. When these rules conflict or when we do not have a rule at hand, we ought to ascend to the act-utilitarian,‘critical’ level of moral thinking. I argue that since the rules at the intuitive level of moral thinking necessarily conflict much more often than (...)
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  6. Consequentialism and Nonhuman Animals.Tyler John & Jeff Sebo - 2020 - In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism. New York, USA: Oup Usa. pp. 564-591.
    Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well- being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting us to exterminate (...)
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  7. Additively-separable and rank-discounted variable-population social welfare functions: A characterization.Dean Spears & H. Orri Stefansson - 2021 - Economic Letters 203:1-3.
    Economic policy evaluations require social welfare functions for variable-size populations. Two important candidates are critical-level generalized utilitarianism (CLGU) and rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism, which was recently characterized by Asheim and Zuber (2014) (AZ). AZ introduce a novel axiom, existence of egalitarian equivalence (EEE). First, we show that, under some uncontroversial criteria for a plausible social welfare relation, EEE suffices to rule out the Repugnant Conclusion of population ethics (without AZ’s other novel axioms). Second, we provide a (...)
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  8. Measuring the Consequences of Rules: Holly M. Smith.Holly M. Smith - 2010 - Utilitas 22 (4):413-433.
    Recently two distinct forms of rule-utilitarianism have been introduced that differ on how to measure the consequences of rules. Brad Hooker advocates fixed-rate rule-utilitarianism, while Michael Ridge advocates variable-rate rule-utilitarianism. I argue that both of these are inferior to a new proposal, optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism. According to optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism, an ideal code is the code whose optimum acceptance level is no lower than that of any alternative code. I then argue that all three forms of (...)
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  9. Two-level grammars: Some interesting properties of van Wijngaarden grammars.Luis M. Augusto - 2023 - Omega - Journal of Formal Languages 1:3-34.
    The van Wijngaarden grammars are two-level grammars that present many interesting properties. In the present article I elaborate on six of these properties, to wit, (i) their being constituted by two grammars, (ii) their ability to generate (possibly infinitely many) strict languages and their own metalanguage, (iii) their context-sensitivity, (iv) their high descriptive power, (v) their productivity, or the ability to generate an infinite number of production rules, and (vi) their equivalence with the unrestricted, or Type-0, Chomsky grammars.
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  10. L'etica del Novecento. Dopo Nietzsche.Sergio Cremaschi - 2005 - Roma RM, Italia: Carocci.
    TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...)
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  11. Two Levels of Moral Thinking.Daniel Star - 2011 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 1:75-96.
    The purpose of this paper is to introduce a two level account of moral thinking that, unlike other accounts, does justice to three very plausible propositions that seem to form an inconsistent triad: (1) People can be morally virtuous without the aid of philosophy. (2) Morally virtuous people non-accidentally act for good reasons, and work out what it is that they ought to do on the basis of considering such reasons. (3) Philosophers engaged in the project of normative ethics (...)
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  12. Extensive Measurement in Social Choice.Jacob M. Nebel - forthcoming - Theoretical Economics.
    Extensive measurement is the standard measurement-theoretic approach for constructing a ratio scale. It involves the comparison of objects that can be concatenated in an additively representable way. This paper studies the implications of extensively measurable welfare for social choice theory. We do this in two frameworks: an Arrovian framework with a fixed population and no interpersonal comparisons, and a generalized framework with variable populations and full interpersonal comparability. In each framework we use extensive measurement to introduce novel domain restrictions, independence (...)
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  13. Free action as two level voluntary control.John Dilworth - 2008 - Philosophical Frontiers 3 (1):29-45.
    The naturalistic voluntary control (VC) theory explains free will and consciousness in terms of each other. It is central to free voluntary control of action that one can control both what one is conscious of, and also what one is not conscious of. Furthermore, the specific cognitive ability or skill involved in voluntarily controlling whether information is processed consciously or unconsciously can itself be used to explain consciousness. In functional terms, it is whatever kind of cognitive processing occurs when a (...)
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  14. A Two Level Account of Executive Authority.Michael Skerker - 2019 - In Claire Oakes Finkelstein & Michael Skerker (eds.), Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority. Oxford University Press.
    The suite of secretive national security programs initiated in the US since 9/11 has created debate not only about the merits of targeted killing, torture, secret detention, cyberwar, global signals intercepts, and data-mining, but about the very secrecy in which these programs were conceived, debated by government officials, and implemented. Law must be revealed to those who are expected to comply with its demands. Law is a mere pretext for coercion if the laws permitting the government to coerce people for (...)
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  15. (2 other versions)Better to be than not to be?Gustaf Arrhenius & Wlodek Rabinowitz - 2010 - In Hans Joas (ed.), The benefit of broad horizons: intellectual and institutional preconditions for a global social science: festschrift for Bjorn Wittrock on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Leiden [etc.]: Brill. pp. 65 - 85.
    Can it be better or worse for a person to be than not to be, that is, can it be better or worse to exist than not to exist at all? This old 'existential question' has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy. There are roughly two reasons for this renewed interest. Firstly, traditional so-called “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counter-intuitive implications in regard to questions concerning procreation and our moral duties to future, not yet existing people. (...)
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  16. Minds that Matter: Seven Degrees of Moral Standing.Julian Friedland - 2004 - Between the Species 13 (4).
    Prominent non-speciesist attempts to determine the amount of moral standing properly attributable to conscious beings argue that certain non-human animals should be granted the highest consideration as self-conscious persons. Most of these theories also include a lesser moral standing for the sentient, or merely conscious, non-person. Thus, the standard approach has been to advocate a two-tiered theory—'sentience' or 'consciousness' and 'self-consciousness' or 'personhood'. While the first level seems to present little interpretative difficulty, the second has recently been criticized as (...)
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  17. Coupling levels of abstraction in understanding meaningful human control of autonomous weapons: a two-tiered approach.Steven Umbrello - 2021 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (3):455-464.
    The international debate on the ethics and legality of autonomous weapon systems (AWS), along with the call for a ban, primarily focus on the nebulous concept of fully autonomous AWS. These are AWS capable of target selection and engagement absent human supervision or control. This paper argues that such a conception of autonomy is divorced from both military planning and decision-making operations; it also ignores the design requirements that govern AWS engineering and the subsequent tracking and tracing of moral responsibility. (...)
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  18. Utilitarianism, Welfare, Children.Anthony Skelton - 2014 - In Alexander Bagattini & Colin Macleod (eds.), The Nature of Children's Well-being: Theory and Practice. Springer. pp. 85-103.
    Utilitarianism is the view according to which the only basic requirement of morality is to maximize net aggregate welfare. This position has implications for the ethics of creating and rearing children. Most discussions of these implications focus either on the ethics of procreation and in particular on how many and whom it is right to create, or on whether utilitarianism permits the kind of partiality that child rearing requires. Despite its importance to creating and raising children, there are, (...)
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  19. Consequentialism and Respect: Two Strategies for Justifying Act Utilitarianism.Ben Eggleston - 2020 - Utilitas 32 (1):1-18.
    Most arguments in support of act utilitarianism are elaborations of one of two basic strategies. One is the consequentialist strategy. This strategy relies on the consequentialist premise that an act is right if and only if it produces the best possible consequences and the welfarist premise that the value of a state of affairs is entirely determined by its overall amount of well-being. The other strategy is based on the idea of treating individuals respectfully and resolving conflicts among individuals (...)
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  20. Utilitarianism and the Social Nature of Persons.Nikhil Venkatesh - 2023 - Dissertation, University College London
    This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a (...)
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  21. Utilitarianism versus the privileging of speech.Terence Rajivan Edward - 2022 - IJRDO Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research 8 (11):12.
    Apparently the Western philosophical tradition has (wrongly) preferred speech over writing – so claims Jacques Derrida. In this paper, I consider whether utilitarianism involves such a preference. There are at least two arguments against the claim.
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  22. Evolution and Utilitarianism.François Jaquet - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (5):1151-1161.
    Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer have recently provided an evolutionary argument for utilitarianism. They argue that most of our deontological beliefs were shaped by evolution, from which they conclude that these beliefs are unjustified. By contrast, they maintain that the utilitarian belief that everyone’s well-being matters equally is immune to such debunking arguments because it wasn’t similarly influenced. However, Guy Kahane remarks that this belief lacks substantial content unless it is paired with an account of well-being, and he (...)
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  23. Ideal Utilitarianism: Rashdall and Moore.Anthony Skelton - 2011 - In Thomas Hurka (ed.), Underivative duty: British moral philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 45-65.
    Ideal utilitarianism states that the only fundamental requirement of morality is to promote a plurality of intrinsic goods. This paper critically evaluates Hastings Rashdall’s arguments for ideal utilitarianism, while comparing them with G. E. Moore’s arguments. Section I outlines Rashdall’s ethical outlook. Section II considers two different arguments that he provides for its theory of rightness. Section III discusses his defence of a pluralist theory of value. Section IV argues that Rashdall makes a lasting contribution to the defence (...)
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  24. Utilitarianism, Altruism, and Consent.Meacham Christopher - 2022 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21 (1).
    A number of criticisms of Utilitarianism – such as “nearest and dearest” objections, “demandingness” objections, and “altruistic” objections – arise because Utilitarianism doesn’t permit partially or wholly disregarding the utility of certain subjects. A number of authors, including Sider, Portmore and Vessel, have responded to these objections by suggesting we adopt “dual-maximizing” theories which provide a way to incorporate disregarding. And in response to “altruistic” objections in particular – objections noting that it seems permissible to make utility-decreasing sacrifices (...)
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  25. Levels of explanation reconceived.Angela Potochnik - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (1):59-72.
    A common argument against explanatory reductionism is that higher‐level explanations are sometimes or always preferable because they are more general than reductive explanations. Here I challenge two basic assumptions that are needed for that argument to succeed. It cannot be assumed that higher‐level explanations are more general than their lower‐level alternatives or that higher‐level explanations are general in the right way to be explanatory. I suggest a novel form of pluralism regarding levels of explanation, according to (...)
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  26. Utilitarianism and its British nineteenth-century critics.Sergio Volodia Marcello Cremaschi - 2008 - Notizie di Politeia. Rivista di Etica E Scelte Pubbliche 24 (90):31-49.
    I try to reconstruct the hidden agenda of nineteenth-century British controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image, successfully created by the two Mills, of a battle between Prejudice and Reason. When examined in depth, competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. Controversies, the propelling devices of research (...)
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  27. Levels of Ontology and Natural Language: the Case of the Ontology of Parts and Wholes.Friederike Moltmann - 2021 - In James Miller (ed.), The Language of Ontology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    It is common in contemporary metaphysics to distinguish two levels of ontology: the ontology of ordinary objects and the ontology of fundamental reality. This papers argues that natural language reflects not only the ontology of ordinary objects, but also a language-driven ontology, which is involved in the mass-count distinction and part-structure-sensitive semantic selection, as well as perhaps the light ontology of pleonastic entities. The paper recasts my older theory of situated part structures without situations, making use of a primitive notion (...)
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  28. Hedonistic Act Utilitarianism: Action Guidance and Moral intuitions.Simon Rosenqvist - 2020 - Dissertation, Uppsala University
    According to hedonistic act utilitarianism, an act is morally right if and only if, and because, it produces at least as much pleasure minus pain as any alternative act available to the agent. This dissertation gives a partial defense of utilitarianism against two types of objections: action guidance objections and intuitive objections. In Chapter 1, the main themes of the dissertation are introduced. The chapter also examines questions of how to understand utilitarianism, including (a) how to best (...)
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  29. Habit in Semiosis: Two Different Perspectives Based on Hierarchical Multi-level System Modeling and Niche Construction Theory.Pedro Ata & Joao Queiroz - 2016 - In West D. Anderson M. & West Donna (eds.), Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Springer. pp. 109-119.
    Habit in semiosis can be modeled both as a macro-level in a hierarchical multi-level system where it functions as boundary conditions for emergence of semiosis, and as a cognitive niche produced by an ecologically-inherited environment of cognitive artifacts. According to the first perspective, semiosis is modeled in terms of a multilayered system, with micro functional entities at the lower-level and with higher-level processes being mereologically composed of these lower-level entities. According to the second perspective, habits (...)
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  30. Utilitarianism and the Moral Status of Animals: A Psychological Perspective.François Jaquet, Manon Delphine Gouiran & Florian Cova - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-19.
    Recent years have seen a growing interest among psychologists for debates in moral philosophy. Moral psychologists have investigated the causal origins of the opposition between utilitarian and deontological judgments and the psychological underpinnings of people’s beliefs about the moral status of animals. One issue that remains underexplored in this research area is the relationship between people’s disposition to engage in utilitarian thinking and their attitudes towards animals. This gap is unfortunate considering the tight philosophical connection between utilitarianism and the (...)
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  31. Utilitarianism and Dewey's “Three Independent Factors in Morals”.Guy Axtell - 2008 - ISUS-X Conference Proceedings, Kadish Center for Morality, Law and Public Affairs, Boalt Hall, Berkeley CA.
    The centennial of Dewey & Tuft’s Ethics (1908) provides a timely opportunity to reflect both on Dewey’s intellectual debt to utilitarian thought, and on his critique of it. In this paper I examine Dewey’s assessment of utilitarianism, but also his developing view of the good (ends; consequences), the right (rules; obligations) and the virtuous (approbations; standards) as “three independent factors in morals.” This doctrine (found most clearly in the 2nd edition of 1932) as I argue in the last sections, (...)
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  32. The method of levels of abstraction.Luciano Floridi - 2008 - Minds and Machines 18 (3):303–329.
    The use of “levels of abstraction” in philosophical analysis (levelism) has recently come under attack. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of epistemological levelism should be retained as a fundamental method, called the method of levels of abstraction. After a brief introduction, in section “Some Definitions and Preliminary Examples” the nature and applicability of the epistemological method of levels of abstraction is clarified. In section “A Classic Application of the Method ofion”, the philosophical fruitfulness of the new (...)
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  33. Levels of abstraction and the Turing test.Luciano Floridi - 2010 - Kybernetes 39 (3):423-440.
    An important lesson that philosophy can learn from the Turing Test and computer science more generally concerns the careful use of the method of Levels of Abstraction (LoA). In this paper, the method is first briefly summarised. The constituents of the method are “observables”, collected together and moderated by predicates restraining their “behaviour”. The resulting collection of sets of observables is called a “gradient of abstractions” and it formalises the minimum consistency conditions that the chosen abstractions must satisfy. Two useful (...)
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  34. A Defense of Scalar Utilitarianism.Kevin Patrick Tobia - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (3):283-294.
    Scalar Utilitarianism eschews foundational notions of rightness and wrongness in favor of evaluative comparisons of outcomes. I defend Scalar Utilitarianism from two critiques, the first against an argument for the thesis that Utilitarianism's commitments are fundamentally evaluative, and the second that Scalar Utilitarianism does not issue demands or sufficiently guide action. These defenses suggest a variety of more plausible Scalar Utilitarian interpretations, and I argue for a version that best represents a moral theory founded on evaluative (...)
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  35. Levels, Individual Variation and Massive Multiple Realization in Neurobiology.Kenneth Aizawa & Carl Gillett - 2009 - In John Bickle (ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 539--582.
    Biologists seems to hold two fundamental beliefs: Organisms are organized into levels and the individuals at these levels differ in their properties. Together these suggest that there will be massive multiple realization, i.e. that many human psychological properties are multiply realized at many neurobiological levels. This paper provides some documentation in support of this suggestion.
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  36. David Ross, Ideal Utilitarianism, and the Intrinsic Value of Acts.Francesco Orsi - 2012 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 1 (2).
    The denial of the intrinsic value of acts apart from both motives and consequences lies at the heart of Ross’s deontology and his opposition to ideal utilitarianism. Moreover, the claim that acts can have intrinsic value is a staple element of early and contemporary attempts to “consequentialise” all of morality. I first show why Ross’s denial is relevant both for his philosophy and for current debates. Then I consider and reject as inconclusive some of Ross’s explicit and implicit motivations (...)
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  37. Levels of Fundamentality in the Metaphysics of Physics.Karen Crowther - manuscript
    Within physics there are two ways of establishing the relative fundamentality of one theory compared to another, via two senses of reduction: "inter-level" and "intra-level" (Crowther, 2018). The former is standardly recognised as roughly correlating with the chain of ontological dependence (i.e., the phenomena described by theories of macro-physics are typically supposed to be ontologically dependent on the entities/behaviour described by theories of micro-physics), and thus has been of interest to naturalised metaphysics. The latter, though, has not been (...)
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  38. Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology.Guy Kahane, Jim A. C. Everett, Brian D. Earp, Lucius Caviola, Nadira S. Faber, Molly J. Crockett & Julian Savulescu - 2018 - Psychological Review 125 (2):131-164.
    Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutili- tarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people’s attitudes toward instrumental harm—that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate (...)
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  39. Levels, orders and the causal status of mental properties.Simone Gozzano - 2008 - European Journal of Philosophy 17 (3):347-362.
    In recent years Jaegwon Kim has offered an argument – the ‘supervenience argument’ – to show that supervenient mental properties, construed as second- order properties distinct from their first-order realizers, do not have causal powers of their own. In response, several philosophers have argued that if Kim’s argument is sound, it generalizes in such a way as to condemn to causal impotency all properties above the level of basic physics. This paper discusses Kim’s supervenience argument in the context of (...)
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  40. Individuality and adaptation across levels of selection: How shall we name and generalize the unit of Darwinism?Stephen Jay Gould & Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 1999 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96 (21):11904-09.
    Two major clarifications have greatly abetted the understanding and fruitful expansion of the theory of natural selection in recent years: the acknowledgment that interactors, not replicators, constitute the causal unit of selection; and the recognition that interactors are Darwinian individuals, and that such individuals exist with potency at several levels of organization (genes, organisms, demes, and species in particular), thus engendering a rich hierarchical theory of selection in contrast with Darwin’s own emphasis on the organismic level. But a piece (...)
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  41. Group-level Cognizing, Collaborative Remembering, and Individuals.Robert A. Wilson - 2017 - In Penny Van Bergen Michelle Meade (ed.), Collaborative Remembering: Theories, Research, and Applications. pp. 248-260.
    This chapter steps back from the important psychological work on collaborative remembering at the heart of the present volume to take up some broader questions about the place of memory in Western cultural thought, both historically and in contemporary society, offering the kind of integrative and reflective perspective for which philosophy is often known. In particular, the text aims to shed some light on the relationship between collaborative memory and the other two topics in this title—group-level cognizing and individuals—beginning (...)
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  42. Multi-Level Selection and the Explanatory Value of Mathematical Decompositions.Christopher Clarke - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4):1025-1055.
    Do multi-level selection explanations of the evolution of social traits deepen the understanding provided by single-level explanations? Central to the former is a mathematical theorem, the multi-level Price decomposition. I build a framework through which to understand the explanatory role of such non-empirical decompositions in scientific practice. Applying this general framework to the present case places two tasks on the agenda. The first task is to distinguish the various ways of suppressing within-collective variation in fitness, and moreover (...)
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  43. High-Level Perception and Multimodal Perception.Dan Cavedon-Taylor - 2021 - In Heather Logue & Louise Richardson (eds.), Purpose and Procedure in Philosophy of Perception. New York: Oxford University Press.
    What is the correct procedure for determining the contents of perception? Philosophers tackling this question increasingly rely on empirically-oriented procedures in order to reach an answer. I argue that this constitutes an improvement over the armchair methodology constitutive of phenomenal contrast cases, but that there is a crucial respect in which current empirical procedures remain limited: they are unimodal in nature, wrongly treating the senses as isolatable faculties. I thus have two aims: first, to motivate a reorientation of the admissible (...)
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  44. Blessed Are the Forgetful: Utilitarianism and Remarriage in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.Enrico Terrone - 2017 - Film and Philosophy 21:74-90.
    This paper considers two different kinds of philosophical interpretations of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On the one hand, Eternal Sunshine as a thought experiment that can function as an argument against utilitarianism. On the other hand, Eternal Sunshine as an instance of the genre of the remarriage comedy. I will argue that these two kinds of interpretations are in conflict. More specifically, Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, cannot function as an argument against (...)
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  45. Group-level differences in visual search asymmetry.Emily S. Cramer, Michelle J. Dusko & Ronald A. Rensink - 2016 - Attention Perception and Psychophysics 78:1585-1602.
    East Asians and Westerners differ in various aspects of perception and cognition. For example, visual memory for East Asians is believed to be more influenced by the contextual aspects of a scene than is the case for Westerners (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). There are also differences in visual search: for Westerners, search for a long line among short is faster than for short among long, whereas this difference does not appear to hold for East Asians (Ueda et al., submitted). However, (...)
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  46. Two kinds of historical explanation in Evolutionary Biology.Nina Kranke - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (3):1-21.
    Historical explanations in evolutionary biology are commonly characterized as narrative explanations. Examples include explanations of the evolution of particular traits and explanations of macroevolutionary transitions. In this paper I present two case studies of explanations in accounts of pathogen evolution and host-pathogen coevolution, respectively, and argue that one of them is captured well by established accounts of time-sequenced narrative explanation. The other one differs from narrative explanations in important respects, even though it shares some characteristics with them as it is (...)
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  47. Marxism Against Utilitarianism in Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity appears to defend a distinctly existentialist, deontologically-constrained version of consequentialism. On that interpretation, her belief that freedom consists in the real possibilities provided by our concrete situation leads her to reject Kantian autonomy to allow for some consequentialist decisions, while her belief that our situation derives its meaning from freely-chosen projects leads her to limit such choices to their consequences for situated freedom rather than general happiness. However, I will argue that Beauvoir’s view is better understood (...)
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  48. Leveling the Field: Talking Levels in Cognitive Science.Luke Kersten, Andrew Brook & Robert West - 2016 - In A. Papafragou, D. Grodner, D. Mirman & J. C. Trueswell (eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 432-437) Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society. pp. 2399-2404.
    Talk of levels is everywhere in cognitive science. Whether it is in terms of adjudicating longstanding debates or motivating foundational concepts, one cannot go far without hearing about the need to talk at different ‘levels’. Yet in spite of its widespread application and use, the concept of levels has received little sustained attention within cognitive science. This paper provides an analysis of the various ways the notion of levels has been deployed within cognitive science. The paper begins by introducing and (...)
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  49. Recent Issues in High-Level Perception.Grace Helton - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (12):851-862.
    Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for (...)
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  50. Levellism and the method of abstraction.Luciano Floridi & J. W. Sanders - 2004 - IEG Research Report.
    The use of "levels of abstraction" in philosophical analysis (levellism) has recently come under attack. In this paper, we argue that a refined version of epistemological levellism should be retained as a fundamental method, which we call the method of abstraction. After a brief introduction, in section two we make clear the nature and applicability of the (epistemological) method of levels of abstraction. In section three, we show the fruitfulness of the new method by applying it to five case studies: (...)
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