In recent years, states have expanded their formal legal powers to strip their subjects of citizenship. But should states have the power to revoke citizenship? If so, how may this power be permissibly exercised, and how ought it to be constrained? This article argues that some standard critiques of denationalization face some important limitations. These limitations stem from the fact that these critiques fail to identify the distinctiveness of citizenship as a status, and, thus, fail to identify an objection that (...) is directly connected with citizenship loss. To supplement these critiques, I offer a framework for understanding the value of citizenship, which draws attention to the egalitarian functions of citizenship. This yields a novel interpretation and defense of the charge that denationalization is problematically inegalitarian: viz., denationalization threatens to impair the egalitarian functions of citizenship. (shrink)

This paper examines the philosophical implications of organ transplantation through a comparative analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy’s and Francisco Varela’s post-transplantation writings. Drawing on their first-hand accounts as heart and liver transplant recipients, the paper explores how modern biotechnological interventions fundamentally transform our understanding of selfhood. The analysis reveals that post-transplantation life represents an unprecedented form of existence where traditional notions of self-knowledge and lived experience are radically disrupted. Unlike Michael Polanyi’s assertion that “we know more than we can tell,” transplant (...) recipients find themselves “knowing less than they can tell,” where self-understanding becomes mediated through external medical data. The paper argues that post-transplantation existence creates a unique form of solitude characterized by irreproducible, technologically-mediated life conditions that escape shared experiential and meaning frameworks. This transformation suggests a fundamental shift in conceptualizing the relationship between lived experience and scientific knowledge, where self-knowledge yields to the performativity of technological interventions and medical narratives. (shrink)

Catherine Malabou’s work on plasticity represents a new encounter with materiality. As a paradigm for conceptualizing the nature of change in non-teleological terms, plasticity endorses a theory of becoming based on matter’s own malleability rather than on unrealized potential. However, notably absent from her work is any direct engagement with Marx’s historical materialism, other than encouraging a “re-molding” and “re-forming” of his thought from plasticity’s perspective. This essay envisions what such re-molding may look like. It maps a strategy by drawing (...) on Malabou’s four aspects of plasticity (giving form, receiving form, explosion, and resistance) to trace the resemblance between plasticity and historical materialism. I suggest that labor, the prototypical Marxist concept, works plastically, building from the inherent malleability of the human rather than from pre-established principles. For the paradigm of plasticity, to re-form Marx, one must start with labor. (shrink)

Toxic positivity has emerged as a critical area of concern in the discourse on mental health and well-being. Despite its relevance, toxic positivity remains underexplored as a psychological construct, with limited empirical research, standard definitions, or validated measurement tools. This scoping review aims to conceptualise toxic positivity by addressing specific research questions: What is (are) the (1) definition; (2) dimensions; (3) antecedents; and (4) consequences of toxic positivity? The review includes both academic and grey literature published in English between January (...) 2011 and June 2024. Data from 59 selected studies were charted based on the Arksey and O’Malley framework. Using a narrative synthesis, toxic positivity was understood as a socially enforced and overgeneralised norm that compels the performance and pursuit of happiness across all situations, fosters biased cognitive appraisals toward unfailingly positive expectations, dismisses or minimises negative emotional experience, and inhibits the expression of genuine negative emotions. Four key dimensions were identified as emotional suppression, emotional invalidation, unrealistic optimism, and disingenuous happiness. Antecedents include sociocultural (social media influence, cultural and historical influences, societal expectations and misinterpretation of positive psychology traditions), and emotional factors (self-protection). The varied consequences discussed are at intrapersonal, interpersonal, and socio-cultural levels. (shrink)

Perestroika art did not simply epitomise a neo-romantic revival of avant-garde sensibility at the twilight of Soviet modernity; it subjected to aesthetic scrutiny the normative—rather than the negative—construction of sexuality. Two artistic phenomena, Konstantin Goncharov (1969–1998) and the Factory of Found Clothes (1995–2014), interrogated sexuality as a normative construct grounded in the aesthetics of bodily acts. In the textile practices of both Goncharov and the Factory, subjectivity emerged not as a coherent self but as a liminal formation—a non-self that, through (...) acts of self-possession and self-alienation, subtly infiltrated and expanded the very fabric of materiality. These artists experimented with textile art as a means of over-identifying with the artwork itself, endowing it with anthropomorphic qualities, personal attributes, and imagined biographies. As the body of the art object fused with that of an imagined heroine from a bygone world—the Gymnasium Girl—its aesthetically mediated subjectivity was eclipsed by a projected potential for transcendence. This process exposes the paradox of invoking art objects as vessels for reclaiming subjectivity within a world already saturated by objectification and alienation. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, psychological research has examined the stigma associated with “biomedical” models of mental illness. Credited with reducing blameworthiness, such models are also linked to negative outcomes such as prognostic pessimism and the desire for social distance. We argue that this research is hindered by an ambiguity in the notion of a “biomedical” framing, which conflates two ideas: a dysfunction-centered framing and a biogenic framing. We disentangle these concepts and highlight evidence that the dysfunction component of the (...) biomedical framing, rather than the biogenic component, drives the observed negative outcomes. We discuss implications for research and practice. (shrink)

Scientists studying fire-prone ecosystems have to contend with uncertainty stemming from causal complexity and conflicting aims, but they manage different types of uncertainty differently. I recommend that they instead adopt a common approach to uncertainty involving context-sensitivity and adaptive learning. Such an approach is consonant with insights from pragmatism and pluralism in philosophy of science and may even suggest a productive way to frame uncertainty while facilitating public trust.

In this paper, we explore questions of moral parenthood by setting up a critical encounter between accounts developed by bioethicists and the perspectives of prospective PACT (Pre-conception Agreement-Based Co-parenting Together-apart) parents. This particular approach attends to the ways in which reproductive decision-making often invokes meaningful moral work on the part of laypersons, and underscores both the affinity and situated differences between such “homegrown” moral work and that of academic professionals. We begin by outlining key positions in bioethical debates on moral (...) parenthood. Subsequently, we present findings from a qualitative study, offering an interpretative account of prospective PACT parents’ moral views and reasoning. Our analysis identifies two parental dimensions participants found particularly important: intention, which grounds a form of parenthood tied primarily to basic responsibilities (parent-by-intent), and proximity, which brings together meanings of physical, emotional, and epistemic closeness and was perceived as making one “more of a parent” (i.e. parent-by-proximity). In the discussion, we demonstrate how an encounter between these perspectives can unsettle assumptions underlying both and expand the horizons within which we deliberate about parenthood. Participants’ accounts highlight how parenthood may be understood as (at least in part) constructed and variable across different contexts, rather than an all-or-nothing status. At the same time, our findings show that their views and reasoning were frequently influenced by exclusionary norms. This challenges the ideal of inclusivity that many bioethical accounts and participants claim to endorse, and calls for further critical examination -- which is precisely what bioethicists can bring to the conversation. (shrink)

Christian Schemmel conceives the ideal of relational egalitarianism it as a halfway house between liberal egalitarianism and republicanism. The most important merit of his contribution is, however, that it gives flesh to the institutional demands of relational equality regarding to political participation, the distribution of income and opportunities, as well as healthcare. This paper suggests that a fourth domain is worth considering, namely: the workplace. After explaining why relational egalitarians should be concerned about workplace relationships, the paper presents two puzzles (...) for them. The first concerns the extent to which domination ceases to be such when employers are compelled by market forces to interfere with their subordinates. The second inquires about the best institutional arrangement to secure relational equality at work. The paper examines three possible alternatives and concludes that none of them offers a silver bullet against domination. (shrink)

From an epistemological standpoint, attributing sentience to non-human animals poses significant challenges. The apparatus that records the electrical activity of the brain can only demonstrate that a certain specific neurological state is taking place. It is impossible to empirically prove that an organism has subjective, qualitative consciousness. Whether an animal has this kind of consciousness is a matter of inference that requires assumptions beyond the methodological framework of science. In this article, I propose to simplify the methodology of judging sentience (...) in animals by assuming illusionism – the view that phenomenal properties of sensations do not exist but are a type of brain-generated illusion. To demonstrate how this approach could work, I present a model of pain sensation based on illusionism. By adopting the given model, we do not have to make empirically unverifiable inferences, because the illusion of subjective consciousness is a fully physical process accessible to intersubjective observation. As a result, the animal world is no longer divided into those animals that are conscious and those that are not, because in a sense none of them are. The boundary of the breakthrough – the appearance of the “inner light” – also disappears. The research program about phenomenal consciousness is explanatorily complete. (shrink)

Ian Hacking has proposed a series of notions for analyzing the human sciences. In this paper, we explore his idea of the looping effect in relation to the classification of mental illnesses. While his proposal has met with objections, we believe that the notion of the looping effect retains significant value for critically analyzing the classification system of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In particular, we understand that the dynamics of interaction involved in the looping effect, (...) which are established between the diagnostic categories and the classified individuals, could shed light on the ongoing revision of some of the psychiatric diagnoses listed in this manual. The article begins by analyzing the notion of the looping effect in the context of classifications of mental illnesses. Next, we examine the distinction between indifferent and interactive kinds, their relationship to the looping effect, and the instability of certain psychiatric objects and categories. We then present some of the main objections raised to this Hackinian proposal, particularly those that question the general scope of the looping effect and its capacity to differentiate between human and natural kinds. Finally, we argue that, despite existing criticisms, the notion of the looping effect remains a fruitful conceptual tool for the critical analysis of the DSM, and fundamentally for explaining the recurrent revision of some of its diagnostic categories. (shrink)

There has been much discussion about the impact artificial wombs will have on debates in reproductive ethics. One area of discussion has been whether transferring fetuses to artificial wombs should be considered a form of birth, and, if so, whether killing or allowing them to die is infanticide. This article proposes two interventions into this debate. Much of it challenges a view espoused by Nick Colgrove, Daniel Rodger, and Bruce Blackshaw, who argue that birth occurs whenever fetuses are relocated from (...) in utero to ex utero environments. This view is shown to have problematic implications. This article’s later sections propose some more general recommendations for discussions about artificial wombs and infanticide. A common refrain among them is that artificial wombs are unlikely to alter drastically the morality of when it is permissible to kill a fetus-cum-infant by expanding the range of beings who can be victims of infanticide. (shrink)

In 1990, Congress established the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHP). The program has since expanded to cover numerous treatments and support services. It is hard to overstate how transformative RWHP has been, but hundreds of thousands of other people had died from the same condition White had, so why did politicians wait to enact serious AIDS health care? Bluntly, White’s AIDS education activism was sympathetic because he embodied a “moral innocence,” a quality the public did not usually extend to gay (...) men, intravenous drug users, or others who suffered from HIV/AIDS. I ask two questions about this delayed political support. First, are there any moral problems with appealing to moral innocence, even if it secures public support and medical care, by hierarchically ranking lives as more or less sympathetic? Second, can we reduce or eliminate these problems, or are they a necessary cost to getting the public to care about marginalized communities? (shrink)

In his new book, Darwall draws a principled distinction between attitudes of the will (including resentment, guilt, and blame) and attitudes of the heart (including anger, remorse, and gratitude), and argues that one cannot have any obligation to have the latter. Focusing on remorse, I argue that, pace Darwall, wrongdoers can be obligated to experience remorse for their wrongdoing. I begin by elucidating the distinct healing power of heartfelt remorse in repairing wrongs, by showing how it affirms what victims hold (...) most precious: their lives, their legitimate interests, and the significance of their loss. I then argue that wrongdoers have an obligation to feel remorse toward their victims, because they are obligated to fully understand the significance of their wrongs, which requires them to register what is precious to the victims. I further address Darwall’s two-fold objection to such an obligation. More generally, since our preciousness—which underpins attitudes of the heart—and our legitimate claims—which ground attitudes of the will—are deeply intertwined, with the latter ultimately dependent on the former, I question whether Darwall’s strict division of attitudes of the will as deontic and attitudes of the heart as non-deontic can be sustained. (shrink)

Recent work in bilateral logic has concerned itself with whether and to what extent strong negation, which "toggles" between assertion and denial, is definable in bilateral systems that lack it. This paper presents a number of results about the definability of strong negation in bilateral systems. First, I show that a constructive Nelson-style Sheffer stroke defines the strong negation of A as (A|(A|A))|A. The same stroke defines the constructive Nelson implication, thus providing a single-connective basis for the strong-negation-and-implication fragment of (...) N4. Second, I provide an exhaustive characterization of the eight combinations of a single "aggregative" connective and a single Nelson-style connective that suffice to jointly define strong negation, with neither defining it individually. One such combination is the material conditional together with constructive co-implication. Third, I show that a constructive and connexive Wansing-style Sheffer stroke (recently referred to as "connexive exclusion") likewise defines the strong negation of A as (A|(A| A))|A and also defines connexive implication. Fourth, I show that, unlike with the Nelson-style connectives, there are no combinations of Wansing-style and aggregative connectives that jointly define strong negation if neither connective defines it individually. (shrink)

Desde os anos 60, o paradigma cognitivista tornou-se central nos estudos da mente e da cognição. Uma suposição fundamental desse paradigma é a de que a cognição é a manipulação computacional de representações. O cognitivismo é consistente com a imagem tradicional da mente como algo interno que se realiza exclusivamente no cérebro. Contudo, a partir dos anos 80, uma série de críticas teóricas e empíricas começou a abalar essa suposição, dando origem às abordagens corporificadas da mente. Essas abordagens sustentam que (...) o corpo e as ações de um organismo constituem suas cognições. Em vez de pensar no organismo como algo que reage aos estímulos a partir de um programa interno, essas abordagens supõem que o organismo age no ambiente para conhecê-lo. Neste livro, eu apresento essa história a partir da abordagem ecológica da percepção. Após assinalar os três principais comprometimentos do cognitivismo clássico, a saber, o representacionalismo, o funcionalismo e o cerebralismo, eu mostro como a abordagem ecológica desafia cada um desses comprometimentos. Articulo, então, a concepção de mente e de cognição que a abordagem ecológica implica, e exploro as suas consequências epistemológicas. Em vez de uma epistemologia centrada no conhecimento proposicional, sustento que a epistemologia deve centrar-se na noção de habilidade. O livro faz parte da Coleção _Rumos da Epistemologia_, publicado pelo NEL/UFSC, e resulta da tese que submeti para promoção a professor titular na UFRGS em fevereiro de 2026. (shrink)

Background Since its inception over half a century ago, a defining attribute of palliative care philosophy has been an insistence that this approach intends to neither hasten death nor prolong life. A commitment to facilitate a ‘natural’ end-of-life trajectory is ubiquitous in palliative care discourse. However, as an increasing number of jurisdictions around the world legislate to allow assisted death, palliative care providers are having to re-evaluate the relevance of this commitment for the relational ethics of their practice. Research Aims (...) and Participants In this paper, we explore how a sample of Canadian specialist palliative care nurses reflected on this longstanding disciplinary ethic of never intending to hasten death amidst evolving professional and ethical responsibilities to support people who explore and choose medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Research Design A qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Canadian speciality palliative care nurses, conducted shortly after Canada legalized MAiD. We present an interpretive description through a framework of moral reflection; moral reflection consists of moral intuition, relational ethics, and moral coherence. Ethical Considerations Approval was granted from the Research Ethics Board of the University of Ottawa. Informed consent was obtained in writing and confirmed verbally at the time of each interview. We removed identifiers such as participant roles and geographic locations from interview quotes to protect confidentiality. Findings Across the different components of moral reflection, palliative care nurses negotiated their ethical positions amidst changes to end-of-life care. Conclusions Moral reflection and striving for moral coherence are ongoing processes; the goal is an engagement with moral plurality. As new jurisdictions consider and legalize MAiD, revisiting the early moral reflections of palliative care nurses can help nurses currently wrestling with similar ethical questions. (shrink)

This essay argues that Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence is best understood as a radical reworking of the Heraclitean image of the aiōn-child in fragment B52. Rather than treating eternal recurrence as either a wholly private invention or a direct derivation from Heraclitus, it shows that Nietzsche’s early engagement with the Ephesian thinker provides a decisive imagistic and conceptual horizon for the later doctrine. Particular attention is given to fragment B52 and to the intertwined motifs of child, play, innocence, and (...) dominion that organise its configuration of finitude. The essay argues that the Heraclitean aiōn should be read not merely as an abstract notion of eternity, but as a figure of finite temporality in which becoming, generation, and destruction are held together. On this basis, it contends that Nietzsche does not simply inherit a doctrine of recurrence from Heraclitus; rather, he radicalises the fragment’s core constellation into an existential doctrine of affirmation. Eternal recurrence thus emerges as neither a straightforward repetition of B52 nor an isolated innovation, but as Nietzsche’s transformation of the fragment’s imagistic and conceptual core into a post-Christian response to nihilism. (shrink)

Both proponents and critics of Truth Deflationism have argued that, according to Truth Deflationism, truth is a use-independent feature of sentences. And this seems to entail a form of Meaning Deflationism, according to which deflationists can completely avoid metasemantic questions. Here I show that the only arguments for Use-Independence from Truth Deflationism require what I call Counterfactual Blindness: they are blind to the counterconventional reading of standard counterfactuals. I close by suggesting that Counterfactual Blindness also leads to gridlock in some (...) other philosophical debates, including debates over quasi-realism in metaethics and two-dimensionalism in the philosophy of language and mind. (shrink)

US law forbids foreigners from entering the United States without its approval. Violation of such law is subject to criminal punishment, which raises the question of whether the violation is morally wrong. In this Article, I will demonstrate that even under seriously unfavorable assumptions—(1) the United States is morally permitted to keep foreigners out and (2) there exists a moral obligation to follow some mala prohibita laws—it is nevertheless morally permissible for foreign citizens to cross the border without the approval (...) of the United States. The law prohibiting entry without approval is US malum prohibitum law, and moral obligations to follow US mala prohibita law attach to US citizens, not foreign citizens. (shrink)

Metcalf (2026) provides a productive commentary on our paper, ‘Is Undisclosed LLM Use Morally Wrong?’ (Sahebi & Montefiore, 2026). Metcalf characterises our view - the Faked-Competencies account - and argues that it fails to necessarily or sufficiently explain what is wrong about undisclosed LLM use. In its place, Metcalf endorses a pluralism of explanations involving, in addition to the Faked-Competencies Account, deceptions over care, and deceptions over one’s identity. In this commentary, we endorse these additions and welcome a pluralism of (...) explanations in capturing the wrongness of undisclosed LLM use. We also note a few points of difference between Metcalf’s analysis of this debate and how we understand it. (shrink)

In The Expressive Self, a contrast is established between two views of the self, alternatively based on the abilities for reflection and expression. In addition, the book defends the expressive view of the self, first because it avoids the incoherence to which the reflective view of the self falls prey; second, because it provides more clarity about three first-person puzzles (namely, Moore’s paradox, self-deception, and McKinsey’s paradox); and third, because it successfully meets potential challenges from self-reference and first-person authority.

In his latest book, The Complex Tapestry of Free Will (2024), Robert Kane builds on previous workof his in developing a novel libertarian position on free will. Alfred Mele (2017)presents a libertarian view that is argued to be superior to the view Kane heldat that time. Kane’s latest view avoids the main problem raised in Mele 2017, butother problems are raised for it here. It is argued that a version of the libertarianview presented in Mele 2017 that is modified to (...) match an important modificationKane makes in his own view is superior to Kane’s new view. Topics discussedinclude the nature of decision-making, necessary conditions for freely decidingto do something, problems luck apparently poses for deciding freely, being ableto decide what to do, and what agents are trying to do when they deliberateabout what to do. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to uncover motivations for the main premise that supports essential representationalism about perceptual experience (ER), namely the Immediacy thesis. ER claims that for every phenomenal property in the class Φ, there is some representational property R such that, necessarily, having Φ entails having R. The Immediacy thesis is that, roughly, the very phenomenal relation to the experience’s qualitative profile entails a representational relation to the qualitative profile of the represented object, and that these two profiles (...) are type-identical. In § 2, I clarify ER’s commitments. Then I attempt to uncover the role of the Immediacy thesis in the four arguments for representationalism: the argument from transparency (§ 3), the argument from inference to the best explanation (§ 4), the argument from perceptual seemings (§ 5), and the argument from perceptual capacities (§ 6). In § 7, I conclude by wrapping up the results of my analyses in §§ 3–6 and elaborating on the role of the so-called Immediacy thesis in the dialectic of representationalist arguments. (shrink)

Pluralism is an inevitable reality in the contemporary world, posing a challenge for regional cultures as they navigate coexistence with diverse cultures. In this paper, I explore how Confucianism can respond to this challenge. I begin by critically assessing two influential proposals. Joseph Chan’s perfectionist approach grounds state action in universally recognizable goods independent of any comprehensive doctrine, thereby aiming to secure pluralism, but risks severing Confucian values from their cultural roots. Sungmoon Kim’s perfectionist approach, by contrast, although it claims (...) to accommodate pluralism, requires that political values satisfy the Confucian intelligibility condition, and thereby opens itself to charges of sectarianism. To move beyond this impasse, I introduce the framework of explanatory metaphysics, which conceives metaphysics as the ongoing tracking of moral reality through human practices and experiences. On this basis, I argue that a form of Confucian perfectionism developed from Chan’s approach can accommodate pluralism while meeting the intelligibility condition, provided it adopts an explanatory metaphysical orientation. Because different cultural traditions can track the same moral reality through their own explanatory frameworks, pluralism emerges as a structural feature rather than a concession. (shrink)

Many of the standard arguments for moral expressivism also seem to apply to the domain of taste. One standard argument turns on the apparent possibility of moral disagreement without any disagreement in belief. This suggests that moral disagreements and taste disagreements are best understood as disagreements in attitude. This presents the expressivist with a dilemma. Taste disagreements are paradigmatic examples of so-called faultless disagreements, whereas moral disagreements are not faultless. But if moral and taste judgments are attitudinal states, then the (...) disagreement intuitions in the different domains should be uniform, which they are not. Eriksson (2016) argues that moral judgments are attitudinally more complex than taste judgments and that this explains the difference. Pietroiusti (2021) argues that Eriksson’s suggestion is unpersuasive. This paper develops and defends a view in the spirit of Eriksson’s suggestion against Pietroiusti’s arguments. (shrink)

This article examines the gender pay gap in Hollywood as a paradigmatic case of inequality among the super-rich. While the issue has gained visibility through public interventions by actresses such as Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Lawrence, and Emma Watson, its moral significance is not immediately obvious, given that it concerns highly privileged individuals. Nevertheless, the case raises questions central to two ongoing philosophical debates: the normative status of extreme wealth and the role of celebrities in public moral discourse. Building on current (...) work in expressivist theory, the article asks whether the equal pay claims of super-rich celebrities can be justified. The article reconstructs two possible versions of the Disrespect Argument—the Insider and Outsider Variants—and argues that neither proves adequate. The conclusion is that, despite their initial plausibility, these expressivist arguments fail to yield a normatively determinate basis for grounding Hollywood celebrities’ claims to pay equality. (shrink)

Accusations of humblebragging have become increasingly common in recent years, and the phenomenon of humblebragging has been widely studied in disciplines ranging from psychology to linguistics. By contrast, philosophical discussion of humblebragging has been virtually non-existent. In this paper, I aim to remedy this neglect and to demonstrate that humblebragging raises significant philosophical issues. In particular, I focus on answering two central questions concerning the nature and ethics of humblebragging. First, what is humblebragging? Second, why is humblebragging often viewed as (...) especially egregious compared to other forms of self-promotion? (shrink)

This article explores the ethical, cognitive, and epistemic stakes of introducing smart-hive technologies (such as Hiveopolis project) into honeybee colonies (Apis mellifera). These robotic structures supplemented with artificial intelligence algorithms and other technological alterations are discussed here not as merely monitoring devices but as an active part that bridges and enhances the remaining two organic elements. The paper proposes a portrayal of a biohybrid with a triadic structure consisting of bees, humans, and technology. This depiction foregrounds whole-organism interactions and emphasizes (...) the emergent character of such hybrids, which are more than the sum of their parts. Situated within the framework of embodied cognition, this development is examined through an enactivist lens. Adhering to this perspective, cognition arises through a dynamic organism–environment coupling, together bringing forth the world. Ethical concern cannot be separated from its cognitive counterpart; questions of responsibility, care and consent are inscribed in the very structure of such coupling. (shrink)

It is my pleasure to respond to three thoughtful commentaries on A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness in this issue (Veit 2023a). The commentaries by Pober (2025), as well as Barrett and Fischer (2025), both focus on the relationship between valence, common currencies of value, and consciousness, and so I will largely respond to their arguments together. Afterwards, I will respond to the commentary by Kohda (2025) which raises distinct concerns about my gradualist approach to consciousness and proposes (...) an alternative thesis for understanding the evolution of self-awareness, drawing on his experimental work on mirror self-recognition in fish. (shrink)

That some mutually beneficial exchanges could be impermissibly exploitative is generally thought to be incompatible with welfarism – a perspective emphasising the moral value of satisfied preferences. The present article argues that both perspectives can be reconciled by turning Kaldor-Hicks inefficiency into a necessary condition for exploitation. The ensuing account provides a parsimonious answer to the so-called exploitation problem, at the cost of accurate intuition tracking.

This article examines a very specific way in which self-determination of older individuals is being undermined in the context of digitalization that is often overlooked in the philosophical debate. After a few brief remarks on the role of ethics in the debate about digitalization and the connection between aging and digitalization, a contextual definition of self-determination and one of its preconditions – namely, authenticity – is provided. In the course of examining the definition and role authenticity in the debate, it (...) is emphasized that, contrary to what is commonly suggested in the literature on digitalization, self-determination cannot only be expressed by “pulling the plug” and refusing to use technology. The aim is to demonstrate that, under certain conditions, the non-use of technology by older individuals can also be seen as the result of limited self-determination and is therefore problematic. To prevent this, greater social awareness is needed regarding the problems resulting from the spread of negative prejudices and narratives of old age. (shrink)

Christopher Devlin Brown’s The Hope and Horror of Physicalism: An Existential Treatise (2024) is a novel contribution to analytical existentialism. The book is divided into three parts. In Part 1, Brown examines the existential consequences of two broad kinds of physicalism, distinguished by their characterization of the physical: via negativa physicalism and theory-based physicalism. He then argues that the existential consequences of via negativa physicalism are more existentially severe than those of theory-based physicalism. In Part 2, he examines how we (...) ought to respond to the existential consequences of via negativa physicalism if it is true. In Part 3, he defends a version of via negativa physicalism, Russellian physicalism, arguing that it offers the most plausible response to the hard problem of consciousness. I first argue for the two-fold point that Brown mischaracterizes the theory-based approach to physicalism, and that when it is properly characterized we can see that it is just as existentially severe as via negativa physicalism. Then, I point out some gaps and omissions in Brown’s discussion of how we should respond to those existential consequences. Finally, I argue that the via negativa approach to characterizing the physical is inadequate, and that Brown’s attempt to make a case that Russellian physicalism offers the most plausible response to the hard problem is unsuccessful. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical reflection on two distinctive theses proposed by Peregrin in his book Normative Species. First, it challenges his hypothesis that implicit normative attitudes ground the ultimate anthropological difference – one that fundamentally separated humans from other animals, and made possible other distinctively human accomplishments. Second, it questions his naturalistic view that normative claims do not express any truth-apt contents that science could not express.

Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is a method to confirm self-awareness in animals. Recently, it has been documented that small cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus) identify their mirror reflection as own image via self-face recognition, suggesting fish have mental image of self-face, and have private self-awareness. Thus, existence of self-awareness will not be restricted to animals of large brain and phylogenetically close to humans. This document will be disproof for main evolutionary models of animal self-awareness: e.g. the gradualist view hypothesis (de Waal, 2019), (...) assuming that large brained animals with phylogenetical closeness to humans would have several levels of self-awareness. This hypothesis is likely to be supported by many researchers including Veit (2023). It is suggested, however, that many studies of MSR would potentially conceive false-negative, and the interpretation of results of MSR-tests that used the traditional mark-test in various animals would misled the evolutionary views of self-awareness in vertebrates. I propose “self-awareness homology hypothesis” that self-awareness in vertebrates will go back to ancestral bony fish in Paleozoic era (450 Mya) at latest. (shrink)

Agent-relative consequentialism uses the theoretical framework of consequentialism to capture the constraints favored by deontologists. Christopher Howard has recently argued that agent-relative consequentialism is implausible because it can only capture such constraints at the expense of getting other normative facts incorrect. In this reply, I argue that Howard’s objection to agent-relative consequentialism fails because it rests on faulty intuitions that arise from a misunderstanding of basic structural features of agent-relative consequentialism.

Jaroslav Peregrin’s project in Normative Species: How Naturalized Inferentialism Explains Us is to provide an account of the emergence of normativity. He takes the project to be essential for understanding the kind of creatures we are, namely, normative creatures whose lives are governed by rules. My focus in this response is on linguistic meaning, and on the kind of explanation of language that Peregrin puts forward. While I agree that meaning depends on the intersection of many cognitions, I have doubts (...) about some aspects of Peregrin’s conception of this intersection. (shrink)

Balanced epistemic reasons for beliefs that p and ¬p combine towards a prohibition on either belief while balanced reasons for two incompatible actions combine to permit either action. This “combinatorial contrast” needs explaining. After showing that a straightforward explanation is inadequate, I consider various accounts for this contrast. Stephanie Leary’s explanation is insufficient for prohibitive balancing of epistemic reasons due to its lack of reasons for suspension. John Brunero’s explanation incorporates reasons for suspension but cannot accommodate reasons against suspension. A (...) general point, which applies to any explanatory attempt that focuses on prohibitive balancing, is that a successful explanation for prohibitive balancing needs reasons for suspension that are both strong enough and weak enough to give correct verdicts. Tucker’s explanation is also prone to doubts from this general requirement, as well as other problems, including those similar to those found in the previous two explanations. (shrink)

In this paper, I present some comments on Jaroslav Peregrin’s Normative Species. Although I agree with much of what Peregrin says, my comments focus on disagreements. After summarizing some key aspects of Peregrin’s naturalistic account of norms, I raise three questions. I criticize Peregrin’s anti-realism about normativity and his use of Sellars’s distinction between the manifest and the scientific image.

We put some pressure on the utility of the pathological complexity thesis by considering the challenge of nonconscious mentality. Here’s the problem in a nutshell. Suppose we grant Veit’s view that “hedonically felt valence is the best explanation of how animals came to deal with [pathological] complexity and thus how consciousness gradually evolved.” It remains an open question as to when pathological complexity reached the point where there was a fitness advantage for individuals with the capacity for hedonically felt valence. (...) So, if Veit wants to say, for instance, that consciousness arose at some era, then he owes us a story about why conscious valenced states have more explanatory power in that era than nonconscious valenced states. But Veit doesn’t provide that story. Instead, he bases his timeline for the origin of consciousness on evidence of valence simpliciter—not conscious valence. (shrink)

This is a précis of my book Normative species. The point of departure of the book is inferentialism – the doctrine foreshadowed by Sellars and brought to full fruition by Robert Brandom, according to which language, but also other specifically human amenities, presuppose rules or are directly decomposable into various complexes of rules. It seems, indeed, that rules have managed to erect spaces within which we humans assumed our “unnatural” forms of life and which differentiate us so much from other (...) animals. From this viewpoint, rules and complexes of rules start to look as something like the true key to our peculiar nature. (shrink)

[COMMENTARY on Walter Veit's "A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness"] The framework Veit introduces for animal consciousness turns on finding and articulating its evolutionary origins. Veit argues that consciousness first evolved as affective experience in the Cambrian period. His argument centers around the plausible need of organisms in the Cambrian for a common currency of subjective valuation. I argue that such an adaptive pressure is unlikely to result in affective experience. I review other processes that instantiate common currencies (...) of subjective valuation: unconscious (non-experiential) affect and the reward learning system and argue that each is likely to have evolved prior to affective experience. (shrink)

Challenging the tendency to fixate on rigid definitions of interdisciplinarity, this essay highlights the nuanced nature of interdisciplinarity as embedded within broader concepts like knowledge, science, discipline, and disciplinarity. We begin by positioning the discussion, outlining two prevalent logics underlying current conceptualizations of interdisciplinarity. By addressing the limitations and flaws inherent in these logics, we propose a dynamic logic that views interdisciplinarity as a process of evolving, interconnected dimensions. Rather than predefined frameworks, interdisciplinarity is conceptualized as continuous, multidimensional dynamics that (...) unfold through practice. Accordingly, we advocate for a pluralistic, constructivist, and holistic perspective that acknowledges the heterogeneity and complexity of interdisciplinary efforts.1. (shrink)