This essay outlines an empirically grounded account of normative political legitimacy. The main idea is to give a normative edge to empirical measures of sociological legitimacy through a nonmoralized form of ideology critique. A power structure’s responsiveness to the values of those subjected to its authority can be measured empirically and may be explanatory or predictive insofar as it tracks belief in legitimacy, but by itself it lacks normative purchase. It merely describes a preference alignment, and so tells us (...) nothing about whether the ruled have reason to support the rulers. I argue that we can close this gap by filtering the preferences of the ruled through a form of nonmoralized epistemic ideology critique, itself grounded in an empirical account of how belief in legitimacy is formed. (shrink)

The Open Paradigm Project is an initiative devoted to sharing the stories of persons who have been harmed and/or disserved while receiving psychiatric care. In these first-person accounts, participants detail their grief, disdain, anger, apprehen- sion, and frustration as they reflect on their treatment experiences. This article argues that they possess legitimate claims of ‘resentment’ that warrant acknowledgment and reparation, as evidenced by the insufficient credibility of experts and coercive regu- lation of atypical patients. Moreover, it contends that biomedicalization, which (...) is not only an empirical process but a moral discourse, unjustifiably nullifies the testimonies of subjected patients and thus perpetuates epistemic injustices as well as physical injuries. I implement a critical ethics of care to consider the normative conditions of responsiveness while also evaluating ongoing problems like ‘ethical loneliness’ and ‘medical gaslighting.’ As illustrated in The Open Paradigm Project, certain para- digms of care can be used to sustain marginalization by blurring the boundaries of treatment, fostering abandonment, and dismissing critiques of authority. These are keen lessons that apply far beyond the scope of psychiatric settings. (shrink)

Political scientists often regard responsiveness as a measure of democratic representation. However, responsiveness is particularly difficult with regard to the young. Populations are ageing quickly, old-age dependency ratios are increasing, the young vote less than other age groups, and younger citizens feel they have no political clout. This paper proposes a series of instruments designed to justify the increased consideration of younger citizens’ interests in a manner consistent with the standard view of representation as responsiveness. It is (...) divided into three sections. The first describes the current taxonomy of responsiveness, which differs depending on the agents, objects and viewpoints. A broader notion of responsiveness implies that it is multidimensional and that responsiveness in one dimension does not necessarily entail responsiveness in other dimensions. Despite this context, the young seem to have a representation deficit in all known dimensions of responsiveness. The second section challenges the very framework of political representation as it is tied to responsiveness, drawing on the recent constructivist trend in political representation. This section shows that criticisms of responsiveness prove insufficient to dismiss its importance from democratic forms of representation. The third section proposes three reforms that are likely to increase responsiveness on different dimensions based on age: the establishment of temporal electoral circles, the creation of mandatory youth-focused measurement indexes, and a normative strategy for promoting age-group responsiveness, consisting of attentiveness by representatives of the represented’s time-related objective interests. (shrink)

Pogge and Wenar have recently argued that we are responsible for the persistence of the so-called ‘resource curse’. But their analyses are limited in important ways. I trace these limitations to their undue focus on the ways in which the international rules governing resource transactions undermine government accountability. To overcome the shortcomings of Pogge’s and Wenar’s analyses, I propose a normative framework organized around the social value of government responsiveness and discuss the implications of adopting this framework for future (...) normative assessment of the resource curse and our relationships to it. (A correction note is available under "Teaching Materials".). (shrink)

In this thesis, I aim to contribute to the reconciliation of two ways of looking at human agency—from the perspective of agents themselves, and from a detached, scientific perspective—by combining resources from the free will literature and the action theory literature. I will show that we can preserve most of our ordinary conception and intuitions about human agency rooted in common sense even if we suppose the truth of determinism and a universal event-causal framework. Below are the two key claims (...) defended in the thesis. (i.) Free Agency (which is required by moral responsibility) is the ability to respond to reasons. (ii.) To exercise free agency is to act for reasons; while acting for reasons can be captured within an event-causal framework. Accordingly, I will defend two theories concerning human agency: one is the reasons-responsiveness theory of free will and moral responsibility; the other is the causal theory of action. The first theory helps to show that free will and moral responsibility can exist in a deterministic world; while the second theory helps to resolve the tension between action and the event-causal framework. Moreover, I will integrate these two theories. This integration aims to provide a more complete picture of human agency. According to this picture, the exercising of human agency can be taken as a continuum—ranging from basic voluntary control to high-level actions which merit moral evaluation; this continuum can be captured within a unified theoretical framework, namely, the event-causal framework. That is, the important features of human agency, from basic purposive actions to free and responsible actions can be explained in terms of event-causations. In doing so, I advance a new account of reasons-responsiveness theory, deflate the problem of causal deviance by developing a novel account of control, and solve the problem of disappearing agency by developing an account of agent’s participation in her action. I will also investigate several kinds of phenomenology of agency which purportedly speak against the event-causal account of action. The integrated theory developed shows us how our agency, in all its complexity, fits into a naturalistic picture of the world. (shrink)

Delusions are deeply evidence-resistant. Patients with delusions are unmoved by evidence that is in direct conflict with the delusion, often responding to such evidence by offering obvious, and strange, confabulations. As a consequence, the standard view is that delusions are not evidence-responsive. This claim has been used as a key argumentative wedge in debates on the nature of delusions. Some have taken delusions to be beliefs and argued that this implies that belief is not constitutively evidence-responsive. Others hold fixed the (...) evidenceresponsiveness of belief and take this to show that delusions cannot be beliefs. Against this common assumption, I appeal to a large range of empirical evidence to argue that delusions are evidence-responsive in the sense that subjects have the capacity to respond to evidence on their delusion in rationally permissible ways. The extreme evidence-resistance of delusions is a consequence of powerful masking factors on these capacities, such as strange perceptual experiences, motivational factors, and cognitive biases. This view makes room for holding both that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive and that delusions are beliefs, and it has important implications for the study and treatment of delusions. (shrink)

John Broome argues that rationality cannot consist in reasons-responsiveness since rationality supervenes on the mind, while reasons-responsiveness does not supervene on the mind. I here defend this conception of rationality by way of defending the assumption that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind. Given the many advantages of an analysis of rationality in terms of reasons-responsiveness, and in light of independent considerations in favour of the view that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, we should take seriously (...) the backup view, a hypothesis that explains why reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind even though paradigmatic reasons are external facts. I argue that Broome’s objections to the backup view, as well as his more general objection to the thesis that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, do not succeed. (shrink)

Empirical evidence challenges many of the assumptions that underlie traditional philosophical and commonsense conceptions of human agency. It has been suggested that this evidence threatens also to undermine free will and moral responsibility. In this paper, I will focus on the purported threat to moral responsibility. The evidence challenges assumptions concerning the ability to exercise conscious control and to act for reasons. This raises an apparent challenge to moral responsibility as these abilities appear to be necessary for morally responsible agency. (...) I will argue that this challenge collapses once the underlying conditions on moral responsibility are specified in sufficient detail. I will argue, in other words, that the empirical evidence does not support a challenge to the assumption that we are, in general, morally responsible agents. In the final section, I will suggest that empirical research on human agency is nevertheless relevant to various questions about moral responsibility. (shrink)

In Nora Heinzelmann's recent ‘Rationality is not Coherence,’ she sets out a novel and forceful challenge for coherence accounts of rationality (henceforth: CRs). Heinzelmann argues that, first, there are cases in which the norms in CRs generate conflict and, thus, agents cannot be rational; but, second, it is counterintuitive that agents cannot be rational in these cases; and, third, reasons responsiveness accounts of rationality (henceforth: RRs) do not have this counterintuitive result. From this, Heinzelmann concludes that RRs are superior (...) to CRs. In this article, I argue that Heinzelmann is mistaken. In Section I, I introduce the two CR norms on which Heinzelmann focuses, Enkrasia and Persistence of Intention. In Section II, I discuss Heinzelmann's argument against Enkrasia. In Section III, I discuss Heinzelmann's argument against the conjunction of Enkrasia and Persistence of Intention. (shrink)

Moral discourse contains judgements of two prominent kinds. It contains deontic judgements about rightness and wrongness, obligation and duty, and what a person ought to do. As I understand them, these deontic judgements are normative: they express conclusions about the bearing of normative reasons on the actions and other responses that are available to us. And it contains evaluative judgements about goodness and badness. Prominent among these are the judgements that evaluate the quality of our responsiveness to morally relevant (...) reasons. We have a rich vocabulary for making such evaluations – our vocabulary of aretaic terms. Aretaic terms are those which can be used to attribute virtues: terms such as “kind”, “honest”, “fair”, “tolerant” and “reliable”. However, while they can be used to attribute virtues, they have other uses too; and they can be applied not only to persons but also to various states of persons, to actions and other responses, and to patterns of response. In this paper, I offer an account of the relationship between some of the principal uses of aretaic terms; and I show how a useful taxonomy of moral virtues can be generated from the thought that these are ways of being well oriented to morally relevant reasons. (shrink)

This paper critiques the view that love has meaning only when it is answered by the same object or fulfilled through a successful relationship, and theorizes how love returns to the life of the one who loves regardless of relational success or failure. Unanswered love, love that never becomes a relationship, and love that has already ended are often treated as failed or extinguished emotions. Yet some forms of love, even when they receive no return from the same object, transform (...) the lover’s sensibility, reorder the standards by which importance is judged, reveal what kind of being the lover is, and leave lasting traces in later choices and life orientation. This paper calls this structure the return of love. In this paper, the return of love refers to the process by which sensibility, values, memory, self-understanding, and life orientation transformed through love are reintegrated into the existential structure of the one who loves. This does not mean that love necessarily comes back from the same object in the same form, nor is it a doctrine of moral compensation or an optimistic consolatory claim about love. The return of love is possible because love is not an emotion that is emitted toward an object and then vanishes into nothingness, but an event that genuinely transforms the world of the one who loves. To explain this structure of return, this paper defines love as an event in which an object acquires a special meaning-position within a human being’s world and thereby transforms the lover’s sensibility and structure of life. The minimal structure of love is analyzed through four elements: responsiveness, the capture of attention, the rise of importance, and the emergence of meaning-position. These four elements do not constitute a stage model in which all love unfolds according to the same temporal sequence. Rather, they are analytical components required for love to arise as love beyond strong preference or temporary interest. Love is not merely a state in which an object is pleasurable or attractive; it is a structure in which that object gains irreplaceable weight within the subject’s world and begins to organize later perception and judgment. This paper distinguishes the formation of love from the continuation of a relationship. Love can arise without the response of the other. Even if a person does not love me in return, that person may already have acquired a special meaning-position within my world, and that love may genuinely transform my sensibility and life. However, for love as a human relationship to continue in a healthy form, a certain degree of mutuality is necessary. When non-mutuality persists in a way that loses contact with reality and erases the other’s independence and possibility of refusal, love may degenerate into obsession or reality-distorting fixation. Thus, this paper affirms the reality of unanswered love while strictly distinguishing the formation of love from the legitimacy of a relationship, and love from obsession. The return of love is analyzed across four primary layers. First, sensory return refers to the way an expanded capacity for responsiveness, opened through love, becomes active again in later experiences of the world. Second, semantic return refers to the way love reorganizes the order of values and importance through which one determines what matters. Third, self-formative return refers to the process through which the subject comes to understand anew what kind of being they are—what they love, and what kind of world makes them feel vividly alive. Fourth, temporal return refers to the way love endures through memory, reinterpretation, later choices, and standards of judgment. These four layers show that love can continue to operate within the life of the one who loves, regardless of the success or failure of a relationship. At the same time, this paper does not identify every transformation left by love with growth. Love changes human beings, but that change does not always expand life. Some forms of love may harden into closure, self-erasure, reality distortion, and obsession. By contrast, return as growth designates cases in which love’s inherently world-opening structure is not damaged, but is integrated into an expanded sensibility, refined values, deepened self-understanding, and renewed openness to the world. The return of love, then, names the structure of transformation, whereas return as growth names a specific realization of that transformation in which the lover is led into a wider world. For this argument, the paper does not restrict the objects of love to human relationships. Not only other persons, but also oneself, animals and living beings, landscapes, objects, places, music, literature, dance, exercise, knowledge, questions, and conversation may become objects of love. These objects have different structures of mutuality, yet all may form the minimal structure of love. This expansion of love’s objects is not the final aim of the paper. Rather, it provides the theoretical ground for showing that the return of love is not merely an aftereffect of a particular romantic relationship, but a general structure through which human beings are deeply moved by something in the world and are transformed by that movement. In conclusion, this paper understands love not as an emotion subordinated to the success or failure of relationships, but as an event through which human beings are deeply moved by something outside themselves and thereby reorganize the meaning structure of their lives. To be capable of love is to remain not entirely closed off from the world. Love need not be answered by the same object in order to return; it returns by transforming the lover’s sensibility, values, self-understanding, and temporal structure, and by reappearing within the life that has been changed through love. -/- Love does not vanish with the success or failure of a relationship. Love returns as the transformed world of the one who loved. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences are not immediately responsive to reasons. You see a stick submerged in a glass of water as bent no matter how much you know about light refraction. Due to this isolation from reasons, perception is traditionally considered outside the scope of epistemic evaluability as justified or unjustified. Is perception really as independent from reasons as visual illusions make it out to be? I argue no, drawing on psychological evidence from perceptual learning. The flexibility of perceptual learning is a (...) way of responding to new epistemic reasons. The resulting perceptual experiences are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel theoretical framework that redefines early-stage entrepreneurial time management failure as a rational psychological response to institutional precarity rather than a personal deficiency. We propose the Legitimacy-Responsiveness Exchange Theory (LRET), which posits that when founders lack tangible legitimacy assets proven products, paying customers, established reputation they substitute immediate responsiveness as the primary currency for credibility. This substitution creates a measurable psychological trap wherein the anxiety cost of non-response systematically exceeds the opportunity cost of constant (...) availability, resulting in strategic drift and operational chaos. The theory introduces three core quantifiable constructs: (1) Legitimacy Capital Index (LCI), measuring accumulated institutional validation through market validation, social proof, operational reality, and track record; (2) Responsiveness Intensity Index (RII), capturing behavioral patterns of immediate availability across communication, decision-making, and operational domains; and (3) Existential Anxiety Index (EAI), quantifying the psychological distress associated with perceived threats to venture legitimacy. (shrink)

This paper articulates the Principle of Regulation as a foundational philosophical principle operating prior to the conventional divisions of ethics, ontology, and epistemology. Rather than proposing a normative or descriptive theory, the principle concerns the structural calibration of the possibility of responsiveness according to modes of presence. Ethics is understood as rooted in spirit and therefore stable in its essence, while its manifestation varies through relational and non-ethical fields. Within this framework, responsibility can be analyzed without presupposing intention, consciousness, (...) or moral agency. Artificial intelligence is introduced not as an ethical subject, but as a limiting case that renders the structure of responsiveness visible, thereby allowing ethical analysis without anthropomorphism or ethical exclusion. (shrink)

In typical monotransitive verbs, such as "to touch," the patient is a passive recipient of action. In this paper, I discuss a special class of monotransitive verbs in which the patient is not, and cannot be, just a passive recipient of action. These verbs, such as "to educate," hinge on intersubjective experience. This intersubjectivity throws a wrench into classical descriptions of grammatical transitivity, transforming the recipient of action from a passive patient receiving the action into an active agent accepting the (...) action. As such, light is thrown on other "intertransitive" verbs and the experiences they describe, with special attention paid to education. (shrink)

This capstone project aimed to enhance the operational efficiency of school transactions at Mary Perpetua E. Brioso National High School (MPEBNHS) in response to challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This goal was achieved by developing and implementing the Mobile-Based Selected School Services Application, "iSkulSerb." The development of iSkulSerb followed the systematic approach of Borg and Gall's (1983) Research and Development (R&D) methodology for creating and validating educational products. To ensure the validity and reliability of the application, it underwent rigorous (...) examination by both IT and education experts. Additionally, survey questionnaires were administered during the project's implementation to assess the impact of iSkulSerb's features on school stakeholders. The research findings highlighted positive perceptions and outcomes related to iSkulSerb. Stakeholders demonstrated a favorable acceptance of the application, as evidenced by an overall weighted mean of 4.34. The accessibility of school services saw a substantial improvement, reflected in the weighted mean of 4.37. User-friendliness also received positive feedback, with an overall weighted mean of 4.27. These findings suggest that iSkulSerb effectively addresses the challenges faced by the school, contributing to enhanced operational efficiency and improved stakeholder experiences. Given the demonstrated reliability and efficacy of iSkulSerb, there is a compelling case for its widespread adoption across other public schools within the Schools Division of Masbate Province. The positive reception and success metrics indicate that iSkulSerb can serve as a benchmark for other regional schools. (shrink)

Epistemic Sentimentalism is the view that emotional experiences such as fear and guilt are a source of immediate justification for evaluative beliefs. For example, guilt can sometimes immediately justify a subject’s belief that they have done something wrong. In this paper I focus on a family of objections to Epistemic Sentimentalism that all take as a premise the claim that emotions possess a normative property that is apparently antithetical to it: epistemic reason-responsiveness, i.e., emotions have evidential bases and justifications (...) can be demanded of them. I respond to these objections whilst granting that emotions are reason-responsive. This is not only dialectically significant vis-à-vis the prospects for Epistemic Sentimentalism, but also supports a broader claim about the compatibility of a mental item’s being reason-responsive and its being a generative source of epistemic justification. (shrink)

This article confronts two different evaluations of the narrative identity paradigm in order to examine the possibility of a minimal narrative, practical identity without excessive stress on psychic unity and moral wholeness. It consists of three sections. The first part explains the criticisms of Lippitt and Quinn. Both authors warn of the MacIntyrean narrative model's emphasis on psychic unity and moral wholeness and argue for an ethical thinking that is built around concepts of psychic disunity and moral openness. The second (...) section introduces thoughts of Korsgaard and Frankfurt as having one important intuition in common: both their insights express the idea that our identity conceptions are intimately connected with processes of practical and moral reasoning; the ways in which we see ourselves are significant for the ways in which we act. Their sort-like conclusions are linked to the insights of Kennett and Matthews, who argue with help of empirical research on Dissociative Identity Disorder and psychopathy that we should understand our practical identity conceptions narratively. The third and last section shows how the insights of the first and second sections can be brought together in a truthful vision of moral reasoning and the moral person. It argues for a more realistic perspective on morality without altogether banishing narrative thinking, centred on the concept of moral responsiveness. This results in the affirmation of a basal practical, narrative identity and the acceptance of qualities as improvisation and imagination in moral reasoning. (shrink)

Larry Temkin draws on the work of Angus Deaton to argue that countries with poor governance sometimes rely on charitable giving and foreign aid in ways that enable them to avoid relying on their own citizens; this can cause them to be unresponsive to their citizens’ needs and thus prevent the long-term alleviation of poverty and other social problems. I argue that the implications of this “lack of government responsiveness argument” (or LOGRA) are both broader and narrower than they (...) might first appear. I explore how LOGRA applies more broadly to certain types of charitable giving in developed countries, with a focus on medical crowdfunding. I then highlight how LOGRA does not apply to charitable giving aimed at alleviating the suffering of the absolutely politically marginalized, or those especially vulnerable people to whom governments are never responsive. (shrink)

This paper provides a realist analysis of the EU's legitimacy. We propose a modification of Bernard Williams' theory of legitimacy, which we term critical responsiveness. For Williams, 'Basic Legitimation Demand + Modernity = Liberalism'. Drawing on that model, we make three claims. (i) The right side of the equation is insufficiently sensitive to popular sovereignty; (ii) The left side of the equation is best thought of as a 'legitimation story': a non-moralised normative account of how to shore up belief (...) in legitimacy while steering clear of both raw domination and ideological distortions. (iii) The EU's current legitimation story draws on a tradition of popular sovereignty that sits badly with the supranational delegation and pooling of sovereign powers. We conclude by suggesting that the EU's legitimation deficit may be best addressed demoicratically, by recovering the value of popular sovereignty at the expense of a degree of state sovereignty. (shrink)

This chapter evaluates two competing views of morally responsible agency. The first view at issue is Vargas’s circumstantialism—on which responsible agency is a function of the agent and her circumstances, and so is highly context sensitive. The second view is McGeer’s scaffolded-responsiveness view, on which responsible agency is constituted by the capacity for responsiveness to reasons directly, and indirectly via sensitivity to the expectations of one’s audience (whose sensitivity may be more developed than one’s own). This chapter defends (...) a version of the scaffolded-responsiveness view, and develops two further claims. Firstly, moral responsibility should not be tied too closely to liability to praise or blame. Secondly, rather than revising our existing concept of responsibility, we would do better to ask what we want the concept of responsibility for. (shrink)

The felling of the Sycamore Gap tree resulted in a passionate public response, which offers a window into public attitudes of care about the natural environment. The response, however, was inconsistent with other recent tree-loss events, in terms of both magnitude and strength of feeling. To better understand this inconsistency and its consequences, an analysis of public responses to the Sycamore Gap event, and other comparative tree-loss events, has been performed. This reveals that the expressions particularly convey moral sentiments concerning (...) the instrumental and aesthetic value of the tree, with little recognition of intrinsic value. Following an environmental care ethics approach, I argue that these responses don’t reflect an authentic care about nature but instead a desire to care about nature. The absence of an appropriate appreciation of the non-anthropocentric identity of nature results in an epistemically-constrained ethical response, reduced individual agency, and thus limited environmental responsiveness. (shrink)

Abstract The values of the healthcare sector are fairly ubiquitous across the globe, focusing on caring and respect, patient health, excellence in care delivery, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Many individual pharmacists embrace these core values. But their ability to honor these values is significantly determined by the nature of the system they work in. -/- The paper starts with a model of the prevailing pharmacist workforce model in Scotland, in which core roles are predominantly separated into hierarchically disaggregated jobs focused on (...) one professional ‘pillar’: Clinician /Practice Provider; Educator; Leader/Manager; and Researcher. This is the ‘Atomistic’ Model. This skills-segregation yields a workforce of individuals working in isolation rather than collaborating together, and lacking a shared information flow, purpose and identity. Key strategic flaws include suboptimal responsiveness to population and subpopulation needs, inconsistency and inequity of care, an erosion of professional agency, and lower job satisfaction. It is conjectured that this results from a lack of congruence between values, professional ethos, and organizational structure. ‘Atomism’ culminates in a syndrome of widespread professional-level cognitive dissonance. -/- The paper contrasts this with a new emerging workforce vision, The Collaborative Care Model. This new model defines a systems-first-approach, built on the principle that all jobs must include all four professional ‘pillars’. Vertical skills integration, involving education and task sharing, will support sustainability and succession planning. Horizontal skills integration (across practice, leadership and research) is included to improve responsiveness to population need and individual professional agency. The working conditions, supportive ethos, and career structure needed to make the model work are described. Moral theory and workforce theory are used to justify why the model may be more effective for population health, delivering greater job satisfaction for individuals and ultimately helping systematically realize and honor healthcare values. Finally, the paper sketches the first steps needed to implement the model at the national level, starting with the operationalization of new multi-pillar professional curricula across the career spectrum. Potential pitfalls and challenges are also discussed. -/- Co-Authors: 1. Paul Forsyth (PF) Lead Pharmacist Clinical Cardiology, Pharmacy, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde. Contribution: Conceptualization; Model Curation; Model Theory; Model Visualization; Writing - original draft (lead author), Writing - review & editing (lead author) 2. Andrew Radley (AR), Consultant in Public Health Pharmacy, NHS Tayside. Contribution: Conceptualization; Model curation; Model Theory; Writing - review & editing 3. Gordon Rushworth (GR), MPharm MSc FFRPS FRPharmS (Consultant). Programme Director, Highland Pharmacy Education & Research Centre, NHS Highland, Inverness. Contribution: Model curation; Writing - review & editing 4. Fiona Marra (FM) National Lead Clinician Scottish Infection and Immunology Network (SPAIIN) / Advanced Pharmacist HCV / HIV, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde. Contribution: Model curation; Writing - review & editing 5. Susan Roberts (SR) Associate Postgraduate Pharmacy Dean, NHS Education for Scotland. Contribution: Model curation; Writing - review & editing 6. Roisin O’Hare (RO) Lead Teacher Practitioner Pharmacist, Northern Ireland University Network, Southern Health and Social Care Trust. Contribution: Model curation; Writing - review & editing 7. Catherine Duggan (CD) Chief Executive Officer, International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP). Contribution: Model curation; Writing - review & editing 8. Barry Maguire (BM) Senior Lecturer, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Life Sciences, The University of Edinburgh. Contribution: Conceptualization; Model Curation; Model Theory; Model Visualization; Supervision; Writing - original draft (senior academic supervisor), Writing - review & editing (senior academic supervisor) -/- . (shrink)

This thesis examines the fundamental question of how compassion can be practiced without metaphysical grasping within the framework of Ontological Instability and Fluctuational Metaphysics. Building upon extensive research in Buddhist non-attachment practices, phenomenological approaches to empathy, and process-relational philosophy, this work develops a novel theoretical framework called "Fluctuational Compassion Theory" (FCT). The central argument is that genuine compassion emerges not despite ontological instability but precisely through it, requiring a radical reconceptualization of ethical responsiveness that abandons all metaphysical foundations while (...) maintaining coherent compassionate practice. Through rigorous philosophical analysis, empirical validation from contemplative traditions, and comprehensive visual modeling, this thesis demonstrates that fluctuational compassion represents a genuinely post-metaphysical approach to ethics that is fully coherent within an ontologically unstable reality. The work introduces five novel concepts: the Compassionate Instability Principle, Processual Compassionate Emergence, Ontological Compassion Uncertainty Relations, Rhizomatic Compassionate Networks, and Fluctuational Compassionate Coherence. These concepts collectively provide a revolutionary understanding of how ethical responsiveness can operate without any form of metaphysical grasping, offering profound implications for contemporary moral philosophy, contemplative practice, and social engagement. (shrink)

Since its origins in the mid-Twentieth Century, Cognitive Science has almost exclusively operated within the philosophical frames provided by Cartesian Representationalism. In recent years, alternative, phenomenological and pragmatist, frames have served as a resource for the emergence of non-representational approaches to mind and cognition. These have been gathered under the label ‘4E cognition’, indicating their Embodied, Extended, Enacted and Embedded nature. This chapter examines one version of 4E cognition, which builds upon Ecological Psychology, and argues that it fails to pass (...) the Evaluation Test: it cannot account for the central role of normativity and evaluation in our responsiveness to loci of significance in the lifeworld, while failing to provide an argument for the exclusion of evaluative and normative aspects. (shrink)

Event-driven architectures have fundamentally transformed Business Process Management (BPM) by facilitating real-time responsiveness to a myriad of external and internal triggers. This paradigm shift is particularly evident in the logistics and supply chain sectors, where dynamic and unpredictable events frequently impact operations. This article explores the implementation of Pega’s event-driven BPM systems and their efficacy in reducing delays and optimizing operations within these industries. Through a comprehensive analysis of case studies and empirical data, the study demonstrates how real-time event (...) processing enhances decision-making processes, improves operational efficiency, and fosters greater adaptability to changing market conditions. The integration of Pega’s BPM solutions enables organizations to automate responses to events such as shipment delays, inventory shortages, and demand fluctuations, thereby minimizing downtime and maximizing resource utilization. Furthermore, the article discusses the methodological approaches employed to assess the performance improvements achieved through event-driven BPM, highlighting key metrics such as response time reduction, process throughput, and overall system reliability. The findings underscore the pivotal role of event-driven architectures in modern BPM, offering a robust framework for organizations aiming to achieve heightened responsiveness and operational excellence in an increasingly volatile business environment. (shrink)

This paper argues that ethical risk can arise prior to intention and independently of mind. Rather than locating moral concern in agency or intelligence, it focuses on the proportional relationship between effects and responsiveness. When structures produce effects that exceed the horizon of human or social responsiveness, a condition of structural disproportionality emerges. Artificial intelligence intensifies this condition by accelerating effects and expanding their reach while remaining structurally indifferent to delayed human regulation. The paper concludes that ethical responsibility (...) belongs not to intention, but to the timely self-regulation of effect-producing structures. (shrink)

The conception of rationality as Reasons Responsiveness (RR) has seen a revival in the literature. However, RR faces the indeterminacy problem: an agent may be instrumentally irrational even without failing to respond correctly to reasons. Reasons do not conclusively determine choice, but this should not be possible on RR. Hybrid Voluntarism (HV), which is supposed to apply particularly to cases where “reasons run out”, may be a solution. According to Ruth Chang, we can create will-based reasons through commitment if (...) the given reasons balance. HV is attractive since it seems to explain instrumental irrationality and preserve RR’s distinctive appeal. In this paper, I argue that HV fails to save RR in the face of indeterminacy. I first suggest that we distinguish between overdetermination and underdetermination and then show that while RR may solve the former, it fails with the latter. Therefore, we are still left with a case of irrationality without a failure to respond correctly to reasons. (shrink)

In this article, I will explore how the underlying research values of ‘openness’ and ‘mutual responsiveness’, which are central to open science practices, can be integrated into a new ethos of science. Firstly, I will revisit Robert Merton's early contribution to this issue, examining whether the ethos of science should be understood as a set of norms for scientists to practice ‘good’ science or as a set of research values as a functional requirement of the scientific system to produce (...) knowledge, irrespective of individual adherence to these norms. Secondly, I will analyse the recent codification of scientific practice in terms of ‘scientific integrity’, a framework that Merton did not pursue. Based on this analysis, and illustrated on the case of COVID-19 as a case in which the institution of science was challenged to deliver urgently on societal desirable outcomes, I will argue that promoting open science and its core norms of collaboration and openness requires broader governance of the institution of science in its relationship with society at large, rather than relying solely on self-governance within the scientific community through a new ethos of science. This conclusion has implications for re-evaluating research assessments, suggesting that the evaluation of the scientific system should take precedence over evaluating individual researchers, and that incentives should be provided to encourage specific research behaviour rather than solely focusing on individual research outputs. This article is followed up by Commentaries of Carl Mitcham, Alfred Nordmann, Sabina Leonelli, Lukas Fuchs, Monica Edwards-Schachter. (shrink)

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) reflects an innovation paradigm that acknowledges that market innovations do not automatically deliver on socially desirable objectives, and requires a broad governance of knowledge coalitions of governmental bodies as well as industrial and societal actors to address market deficits. Responsible Innovation should be understood as a new paradigm for innovation which requires institutional changes in the research and innovation system and the public governance of the economy. It also requires the institutionalisation of an ethics of (...) co-responsibility as well as the introduction of new standards and certification processes for products. Dr. Dr. phil. von Schomberg will introduce Responsible Innovation against the background of 6 deficits of the (global) research and innovation system. (shrink)

How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. This book develops the foundations of an ethics of mind by investigating the responsibility that is presupposed by the requirements of rationality that govern our attitudes. It has five main goals. First, it (...) reinterprets the problem of responsibility for attitudes as a problem about the normativity of rationality. Second, it connects substantive and structural rationality by drawing on debates about responsibility. Third, it supports recent accounts of the normativity of rationality by explicitly defending the view that epistemic reasons and other ‘right-kind’ reasons are genuine normative reasons. Fourth, it breaks the stalemate between rationalist and voluntarist accounts of mental responsibility by proposing a hybrid view. Finally, it argues that irrationality can warrant moral blame, thus revealing an unnoticed normative force of rational requirements. Length of manuscript: 85,000 words. (shrink)

Which kinds of responsibility can we attribute to which kinds of collective, and why? In contrast, which kinds of collective responsibility can we not attribute—which kinds are ‘gappy’? This study provides a framework for answering these questions. It begins by distinguishing between three kinds of collective and three kinds of responsibility. It then explains how gaps—i.e. cases where we cannot attribute the responsibility we might want to—appear to arise within each type of collective responsibility. It argues some of these gaps (...) do not exist on closer inspection, at least for some collectives and some of the time. (shrink)

Many assume that we can be responsible only what is voluntary. This leads to puzzlement about our responsibility for our beliefs, since beliefs seem not to be voluntary. I argue against the initial assumption, presenting an account of responsibility and of voluntariness according to which, not only is voluntariness not required for responsibility, but the feature which renders an attitude a fundamental object of responsibility (that the attitude embodies one’s take on the world and one’s place in it) also guarantees (...) that it could not be voluntary. It turns out, then, that, for failing to be voluntary, beliefs are a central example of the sort of thing for which we are most fundamentally responsible. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide and defend what may be the first actual argument in support of P. F. Strawson's merely stated vision of a response-dependent theory of moral responsibility. It does so by way of an extended analogy with the funny. In part 1, it makes the easier and less controversial case for response-dependence about the funny. In part 2, it shows the tight analogy between anger and amusement in developing the harder and more controversial case for response-dependence about (...) a kind of blameworthiness. It then defends the view from three serious skeptical challenges. (shrink)

Discussion of epistemic responsibility typically focuses on belief formation and actions leading to it. Similarly, accounts of collective epistemic responsibility have addressed the issue of collective belief formation and associated actions. However, there has been little discussion of collective responsibility for preventing epistemic harms, particularly those preventable only by the collective action of an unorganized group. We propose an account of collective epistemic responsibility which fills this gap. Building on Hindriks' (2019) account of collective moral responsibility, we introduce the Epistemic (...) Duty to Join Forces. Our theory provides an account of the responsibilities of scientists to prevent epistemic harms during inquiry. (shrink)

It is commonplace to attribute obligations to φ or blameworthiness for φ-ing to groups even when no member has an obligation to φ or is individually blameworthy for not φ-ing. Such non-distributive attributions can seem problematic in cases where the group is not a moral agent in its own right. In response, it has been argued both that non-agential groups can have the capabilities requisite to have obligations of their own, and that group obligations can be understood in terms of (...) moral demands on individual group members. It has also been suggested that members of groups can share responsibility for an outcome in virtue of being causally or socially connected to that outcome. This paper discusses the agency problem and argues that the most promising attempts at solutions understand group obligations and blameworthiness as grounded in demands on individual agents. (shrink)

Theorists of moral responsibility have suggested that some of our responsibility-responses have a ‘point’, or a ‘function’, and that when, in general, blame with respect to a certain kind of person could not fulfill its function, that kind of person is not in fact blameworthy. Recently, however, some theorists (Beglin 2018, De Mesel 2025) seem to suggest a stronger thesis: if blame with respect to some kind of person can fulfill its function, then such persons are indeed blameworthy. Beglin and (...) De Mesel thus seek to put pressure on traditional incompatibilism, on grounds that blame has a function that can be fulfilled, even if no one ever has libertarian free will. In this paper, I argue that this style of argument cannot succeed: once we distinguish between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ function, we can see that the core argument faces a dilemma. If the proposal is one about ‘external’ function, we cannot move ‘from function to fittingness’; whereas if the proposal is about ‘internal’ function, the incompatibilist will reject that proposal on the usual grounds. (shrink)

[This download includes the table of contents and chapter 1.] -/- When we praise, blame, punish, or reward people for their actions, we are holding them responsible for what they have done. Common sense tells us that what makes human beings responsible has to do with their minds and, in particular, the relationship between their minds and their actions. Yet the empirical connection is not necessarily obvious. The “guilty mind” is a core concept of criminal law, but if a defendant (...) on trial for murder were found to have serious brain damage, which brain parts or processes would have to be damaged for him to be considered not responsible, or less responsible, for the crime? The authors argue that evidence from neuroscience and the other cognitive sciences can illuminate the nature of responsibility and agency. They go on to offer a novel and comprehensive neuroscientific theory of human responsibility. (shrink)

Bernard Williams identifies Hume as “in some ways an archetypal reconciler” who, nevertheless, displays “a striking resistance to some of the central tenets of what [Williams calls] ‘morality’”. This assessment, it is argued, is generally correct. There are, however, some significant points of difference in their views concerning moral responsibility. This includes Williams’s view that a naturalistic project of the kind that Hume pursues is of limited value when it comes to making sense of “morality’s” illusions about responsibility and blame. (...) It is, Williams maintains, only when we consider moral responsibility in genealogical terms, which gives attention to the importance of culture and history, that we can find a way of exposing the various prejudices and illusions of “the morality system”. Nevertheless, despite these differences, what Hume and Williams share is a fundamental commitment to provide a more “truthful” and “realistic” understanding of moral responsibility and our human ethical predicament. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on whether and to what extent we judge that people are responsible for the consequences of their forgetfulness. We ran a series of behavioral studies to measure judgments of responsibility for the consequences of forgetfulness. Our results show that we are disposed to hold others responsible for some of their forgetfulness. The level of stress that the forgetful agent is under modulates judgments of responsibility, though the level of care that the agent exhibits toward performing (...) the forgotten action does not. We argue that this result has important implications for a long-running debate about the nature of responsible agency. (shrink)

My primary target in this paper is a puzzle that emerges from the conjunction of several seemingly innocent assumptions in action theory and the metaphysics of moral responsibility. The puzzle I have in mind is this. On one widely held account of moral responsibility, an agent is morally responsible only for those actions or outcomes over which that agent exercises control. Recently, however, some have cited cases where agents appear to be morally responsible without exercising any control. This leads some (...) to abandon the control-based account of responsibility and replace it with an alternative account. It leads others to deny the intuition that agents are responsible in these troublesome cases. After outlining the account of moral responsibility I have in mind, I look at some of the arguments made against the viability of this theory. I show that there are conceptual resources for salvaging the control account, focusing in particular on the nature of vigilance. I also argue that there is empirical data that supports the control account so conceived. (shrink)

The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments, it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of (...) people working as a team thanks to a software platform), may cause distributed moral actions (DMAs). These are morally good or evil (i.e. morally loaded) actions caused by local interactions that are in themselves neither good nor evil (morally neutral). In this article, I analyse DMRs that are due to DMAs, and argue in favour of the allocation, by default and overridably, of full moral responsibility (faultless responsibility) to all the nodes/agents in the network causally relevant for bringing about the DMA in question, independently of intentionality. The mechanism proposed is inspired by, and adapts, three concepts: back propagation from network theory, strict liability from jurisprudence and common knowledge from epistemic logic. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of moral responsibility are in widespread agreement that we can only be blamed for actions that express, reflect, or disclose something about us or the quality of our wills. In this paper I reject that thesis and argue that self disclosure is not a necessary condition on moral responsibility and blameworthiness: reactive responses ranging from aretaic appraisals all the way to outbursts of anger and resentment can be morally justified even when the blamed agent’s action expresses or discloses (...) nothing significant about his or her “deep self,” judgments and cares, or the quality of his or her will. I argue that the self-disclosure requirement on responsibility overestimates the extent to which our blaming practices and responsibility judgments are responsive to agents as opposed to actions, and that this mistake has the potential to distort both our reactive responses and our understanding of blamed agents’ characters. (shrink)

In cases of complicity in one’s own unfreedom and in structural injustice, it initially appears that agents are only vicariously responsible for their complicity because of the roles circumstantial and constitutive luck play in bringing about their complicity. By drawing on work from the phenomenological tradition, this paper rejects this conclusion and argues for a new responsive sense of agency and responsibility in cases of complicity. Highlighting the explanatory role of stubbornness in cases of complicity, it is argued that although (...) agents may only be vicariously responsible for becoming complicit, they can be held more directly responsible for entrenching their complicity. The complicit agent is responsible for their complicity to the extent that they fail to take responsibility for it. (shrink)

The Idea of Epistemic Responsibility (ER) emerged in epistemology was initially a response to Gettier. Classical thinkers, in response to Gettier, offered different directions for epistemic justification and strengthened the notion of ER. This study examines the evolution of ER from its classical origins in responses to Gettier’s critique of the justified true belief (JTB) model to its feminist reformulation in Lorraine Code’s Epistemic Responsibility. It hypothesizes that Code’s concept of ER offers a philosophically robust and ethically grounded resolution to (...) the Gettier problem by shifting epistemic justification from the abstract cognition to the situated, morally engaged practice. Using an analytic and comparative method, the research juxtaposes classical epistemologists such as Sosa, Chisholm, Bonjour and Kornblith with feminist theorists, especially Code, to trace how moral accountability, situated knowledge and relational trust redefine justification. The findings reveal that feminist conceptions of ER transform epistemology from a formal, context-free model into an ethically responsive framework that views knowledge as a moral and relational achievement. ER reframes the Gettier-style epistemic failure as a lapse of moral and cognitive responsibility rather than a mere problem of epistemic luck. Integrating intellectual virtue with moral accountability, ER thus bridges classical and feminist epistemology, offering a holistic, context-sensitive model of knowing. (shrink)