Roughly characterized, solipsism is the skeptical thesis that there is no reason to think that anything exists other than oneself and one’s present experience. Since its inception in the reflections of Descartes, the thesis has taken three broad and sometimes overlapping forms: Internal World Solipsism that arises from an account of perception in terms of representations of an external world; Observed World Solipsism that arises from doubts as to the existence of what is not actually present sensuously in experience; Unreal (...) World Solipsism that arises from doubts as to the reality of the perceived world. This book attempts to give a rationally warranted refutation of all three forms. Over time, a vast number of putative rebuttals of solipsism have been proposed. The first half of the book clears the terrain for more productive investigation by showing in detail how each of these various responses fails. Among the simpler of such responses is the claim to have knowledge and certainty about everyday matters (Moore, Austin, Quinton, Pollock). Another is to appeal to pragmatic considerations dictated by the fact of one’s living in the world (Wittgenstein, Rescher, Ayer, Will, Strawson). Yet another is to undermine the skeptical thesis by applying it to itself (Plato, Hume, Russell, Johnson). All of these simpler approaches are found to be inadequate or irrelevant (Chapters 2 and 3). Other responses are more complex in that they presuppose certain basic positions with regard to the nature of cognition, meaning, language, or thought. Consequently, showing how they fail often involves showing the falsity of their underlying views. One such approach maintains that any empirical enquiry presupposes the existence of material objects (Neurath, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine, Gurwitsch, Williams, Rorty, BonJour), and that consequently solipsism is a problem peculiar to a mistaken foundationalist epistemology that purports to derive all warranted belief about the world from sensuous data. However, on examination, the various lines of reasoning advanced are found to be fallacious (Chapter 4). A closely-related approach is to claim that any empirical enquiry presupposes background truths, and that consequently solipsism is parasitic in the sense that it is based on truths that it purports to deny (Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine). Such a self-contradictory situation is shown to obtain for only one form of solipsism, representational solipsism with its classical external world problem dating back to Descartes (Chapter 5). Another approach is to appeal to linguistic considerations in order to level charges of meaninglessness against solipsism (Wittgenstein, Austin, Ryle, Putnam, Clarke, Stroud). However, the charges are easily shown to be unwarranted (Chapter 6), a conclusion subsequently corroborated by a briefly sketched first-person account of meaning (Chapter 7). A further approach is to claim that all philosophical thinking must involve linguistic concepts, that language is intersubjective and tied to objects, and hence that solipsism is conceptually parasitic, and hence calls into question a conceptual scheme that it presupposes (Kant, Strawson, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine, Rorty). However, it may be shown that language is not incorrigibly wedded to objects, and in revised form it may be used to state solipsistic theses (Chapter 8). This conclusion is further supported by a refutation of various arguments against the possibility of private language (Wittgenstein, Sellars, Goodman, Rorty, Gadamer), as well as by the empirical evidence of everyday thinking that commonly takes place without reliance on the structures of public language (Chapter 9). The final chapters are more directly constructive. Following foundationalist procedure, a survey is undertaken of the sensuous data of first-person experience in its various modalities and their interrelationships (Chapter 10). An account is given of the bodily nature of the experiencing subject or self that feels, that wills, and that thinks, as well as of the spontaneity of the self or its capacity for free choice (Chapter 11). Rational warrant is then provided for thinking that items randomly perceived through a subject’s spontaneity or free will, continue to exist when unperceived, thus refuting forms of Observed World Solipsism that deny the existence of unperceived objects (Chapter 12). Finally, it is argued with regard to Unreal World Solipsism that while the scenarios it proposes cannot be dismissed as impossible, the absence of any supporting evidence whatever in their favor makes the espousal of any of them both arbitrary and an irrational leap (Chapter 13). (shrink)

People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered Internet ‎sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing ‎subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users’ reliance on ‎Internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about ‎the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns ‎within standard theories of knowledge and justification. (...) To shed light on the problem, we introduce a ‎novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, ‎action, and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to ‎certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject’s particular decision-taking circumstances, ‎and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which ‎the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by ‎the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject’s beliefs that are ‎formed based on Internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how ‎filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic ‎responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.‎. (shrink)

Why is there such a striking discrepancy between the flexibility, democracy and empowerment that the Bologna process aims for, and the superficial educational activities that it actually results in? Our answer is based on the ritual theory of the American anthropologist Roy Rappaport and the psychoanalytical framework of the Austrian philosopher Robert Pfaller. Interpreting schoolified education as a ritual, we argue that both the reform initiative and its ensuing educational activities should be interpreted as mainly productive of a certain appearance, (...) of compliance with prominent norms of modern society: the norms are articulated in policy documents and enacted in educational activity. We take schoolified education to be a normal ritual, in that this appearance is accepted ‘as if’ it corresponded with reality, while at the same time most people are aware (in a certain sense) of its superficial and ritualistic character. A twist, however, is added by the fact that modern society is distinctly anti-ritualistic, and therefore constantly tries to make education work ‘for real’. Drawing on Pfaller’s distinction between belief and faith, we show that this pursuit of de-ritualisation actually makes education progressively more formalised and coercive. (shrink)

According to an argument developed by Enoch in his book _Taking Morality Seriously_ (OUP 2011) we have reason to believe in the existence of irreducible normative truths based on the indispensability of such truths to the project of practical deliberation. This argument parallels a more venerable indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics, which takes the indispensability of mathematical objects to the practice of scientific theorizing to be grounds for belief in the former. This chapter explores the parallels between (...) the two types of argument, suggesting that Enoch’s more recent argument is rendered problematic insofar as it involves an explicitly normative premise. (shrink)

Many metaethicists endorse a cognitive constraint which links the reasons for which we act or hold attitudes (motivating reasons) to normative reasons (reasons that speak in favour of an action or attitude). As traditionally formulated, this constraint (known as the Taking Condition) requires that an agent’s motivating reasons are mentally represented by her as corresponding normative reasons. In response to the charge that the Taking Condition is overly demanding, Errol Lord and Kurt Sylvan have proposed a reformulation which (...) eschews the need for normative representation (Lord and Sylvan 2019 [“Prime Time (for the Basing Relation).” In Well-Founded Belief, edited by J. Adam Carter, and Patrick Bondy, 141–173. London and New York: Routledge]). As they argue, agents must treat their motivating reasons as normative reasons, where this notion picks out a specific set of dispositions rather than a representational state. I argue that this proposal seriously distorts our understanding of the relation between an action or attitude and the reasons for which we perform or hold it. On the plausible assumption that an account of motivating reasons should not stray too far from this understanding, this response to the over-demandingness charge thus fails. I also provide some directions on how friends of the Taking Condition should instead respond this charge. (shrink)

The paper is an opinionated tour of the literature on the reasons for which we hold beliefs and other doxastic attitudes, which I call ‘operative epistemic reasons’. After drawing some distinctions in §1, I begin in §2 by discussing the ontology of operative epistemic reasons, assessing arguments for and against the view that they are mental states. I recommend a pluralist non-mentalist view that takes seriously the variety of operative epistemic reasons ascriptions and allows these reasons to be both (...) propositions and truth-making facts. In §3, I turn to consider what it takes for a consideration to be an operative epistemic reason, examining three conditions – the representational, treating, and explanatory conditions – that have been proposed. I offer a novel view about the explanatory condition. In §4, I discuss the special case of inferential operative reasons and examine attempts to understand them in terms of rule-following, sketching a competence-based spinoff of dispositionalism. Finally, in §5, I consider whether there are non-inferential operative reasons, observing that one needn't countenance them to be a foundationalist but then developing a view about what they are and how they do and don't differ from inferential reasons. (shrink)

It is commonplace to distinguish between propositional justification (having good reasons for believing p) and doxastic justification (believing p on the basis of those good reasons).One necessary requirement for bridging the gap between S’s merely having propositional justification that p and S’s having doxastic justification that p is that S base her belief that p on her reasons (propositional justification).A plausible suggestion for what it takes for S’s belief to be based on her reasons is that her reasons (...) must contribute causally to S’s having that belief. Though this suggestion is plausible, causal accounts of the basing relation that have been proposed have not fared well. In particular, cases involving causal deviancy and cases involving over-determination have posed serious problems for causal accounts of the basing relation. Although previous causal accounts of the basing relation seem to fall before these problems, it is possible to construct an acceptable causal account of the basing relation. That is, it is possible to construct a causal account of the basing relation that not only fits our intuitions about doxastic justification in general, but also is not susceptible to the problems posed by causal deviancy and causal over-determination. The interventionist account of causation provides the tools for constructing such an account. My aim is to make use of the insights of the interventionist account of causation to develop and defend an adequate causal account of the basing relation. (shrink)

This paper explores some implications of the idea that religious thoughts can enter into the sensory appearances of things. I begin by clarifying this idea, using some examples drawn from Roger Scruton's discussion of the phenomenology of architectural experience. Then I consider the bearing of the idea on the case for religious belief in pragmatic and epistemic terms. More exactly, I explore how the idea of an internal relation between religious thought and the sensory appearances of things can be (...) used (1) to state William James's case in 'The will to believe' with new nuance, and (2) to set out an epistemic case for religious belief whose central claims seem quite commonly to weigh with believers, but which has not been much discussed by philosophers. (shrink)

_Taking Religious Claims Seriously_ is a systematic, critical, and comprehensive study of the fundamental questions of the philosophy of religion: religious experience, the existence and nature of God, religious knowledge and truth, good and evil, immortality of the soul, religious diversity, religious claims about the person, faith, and the religious way of life. In this study the author seeks to capture the reality and meaning of the religious as such: What is the foundation of religion? Under what conditions is an (...) authentic religious way of life possible? His method of inquiry is phenomenological. The author begins his discussion with a general characterization of the basic features of all the literate and illiterate religions of the world. He then identifies the ideas, beliefs, and concerns which are common to these religions: What are the central claims of these religions? How did the various religions understand these claims? The author makes a serious attempt to clarify these claims and explore the possibility for a reconcilation between them. For him, the foundation of religion is the religious experience, and the essence of this experience consists in a serious, cognitive, and meaningful encounter with the Ultimate Being. This being is the ground of the world and human life. This book is a comparative, pluralistic study of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume argue that whilst there is a commonplace superstition conspiracy theories are examples of bad beliefs (and that the kind of people who believe conspiracy theories are typically irrational), many conspiracy theories are rational to believe: the members of the Dewey Commission were right to say that the Moscow Trials of the 1930s were a sham; Woodward and Bernstein were correct to think that Nixon was complicit in the conspiracy to deny any wrongdoing in the Watergate (...) Hotel break in; and if we either accept the terrorist events of 9/11 were committed by Al-Qaeda, or that the Bush Administration was responsible, then it seems we are endorsing some theory about a conspiracy to commit an act of terror on American soil. As such, there is no reason to reject conspiracy theories sui generis. This volume challenges the prima facie that conspiracy theories are irrational beliefs, arguing that we should treat conspiracy theories and the phenomena of conspiracy theories seriously. It presents fresh perspectives from the wider philosophical, sociological and psychological community on what is becoming an issue of increasing relevance in our time. (shrink)

In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving (...) up the belief that we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics' ethical theories. (shrink)

Radical skepticism endorses the extreme claim that large swaths of our ordinary beliefs, such as those produced by perception or memory, are irrational. The best arguments for such skepticism are, in their essentials, as familiar as a popular science fiction movie and yet even seasoned epistemologists continue to find them strangely seductive. Moreover, although most contemporary philosophers dismiss radical skepticism, they cannot agree on how best to respond to the challenge it presents. In the tradition of the 18th century Scottish (...) philosopher, Thomas Reid, Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition joins this discussion by taking up four main tasks. First, it identifies the strongest arguments for radical skepticism, namely, underdetermination arguments, which emphasize the gap between our evidence and our ordinary beliefs based on that evidence. Second, it rejects all inferential or argument-based responses to radical skepticism, which aim to lay out good noncircular reasoning from the evidence on which we base our ordinary beliefs to the conclusion that those beliefs are probably true. Third, it develops a commonsense noninferential response to radical skepticism with two distinctive features: it consciously and extensively relies on epistemic intuitions, which are seemings about epistemic goods, such as knowledge and rationality, and it can be endorsed without difficulty by both internalists and externalists in epistemology. Fourth, and finally, it defends this commonsense epistemic-intuition-based response to radical skepticism against a variety of objections, including those connected with underdetermination worries, epistemic circularity, disagreement problems, experimental philosophy, and concerns about whether it engages skepticism in a sufficiently serious way. (shrink)

It has been argued that an adequate feminist response to sexist pornography demands not just efforts to eradicate sexist beliefs, but also aesthetic counter-intervention at the level of taste. This view motivates support for feminist pornography. This paper takes the feminist pornography suggestion seriously by unpacking difficulties for the project. I begin by spelling out two views about what makes feminist pornography feminist: the ‘content view,’ and the ‘context view,’ and discuss what I take to be existing arguments for (...) the latter. I then present two objections to the context view: the first focuses on how we characteristically interact with pornography (as a masturbatory aid), the second challenges the value of authenticity upon which much feminist pornography rests. If these arguments are correct, then there are serious flaws with feminist pornography as it is commonly conceived. I close with a brief suggestion of an alternative approach rooted in feminist solidarity. (shrink)

This chapter considers what rationality requires when there is disagreement over religious propositions between those who regard one another (or should regard one another) as epistemic peers. The chapter rejects prominent conceptions of epistemic peerhood that would countenance religious believers and non-believers simply continuing without belief revision despite encountered disagreement. These conceptions in one way or other allow for defining all those with differing opinions as non-peers, which would have the implication that there are no genuinely interesting instances of (...) religious disagreement. Instead, Lackey proposes that atheists and theists should regard each other as epistemic peers if they should regard each other as equally justified in their respective beliefs. (shrink)

This paper aims to develop an account of the pursuitworthiness of models based on a view of models as epistemic tools. This paper is motivated by the historical question of why, in the 1960s, when many scientists hardly found QSAR models attractive, some pharmaceutical scientists pursued Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationship (QSAR) models despite the lack of potential for theoretical development or empirical success. This paper addresses this question by focusing on how models perform their heuristic functions as epistemic tools rather than (...) as potential theories. I argue that models perform their heuristic function by “constructing” phenomena from data in the sense that they allow the model users who interact with the medium of the models to recognise the phenomena as such. The constructed phenomena assist model users in identifying which conditional hypotheses that are focused on low-level regularities concerning entities such as chemical compounds are more “testworthy,” a concept that links the costs associated with hypothesis testing with the fertility of the hypothesis. (shrink)

Rational addiction theories illustrate how absurd choice theories in economics get taken seriously as possibly true explanations and tools for welfare analysis despite being poorly interpreted, empirically unfalsifiable, and based on wildly inaccurate assumptions selectively justified by ad-hoc stories. The lack of transparency introduced by poorly anchored mathematical models, the psychological persuasiveness of stories, and the way the profession neglects relevant issues are suggested as explanations for how what we perhaps should see as displays of technical skill and ingenuity (...) are allowed to blur the lines between science and games. (shrink)

In the essay “Justice and Rights” of his book Taking Rights Seriously Ronald Dworkin puts forward an account of reflective equilibrium which has become an orthodoxy in interpreting John Rawls' theory of justice. My purpose here is to challenge this account, on the grounds that it presupposes an untenable view of the relation between belief and choice.

We present a framework for automated planning based on plausibility models, as well as algorithms for computing plans in this framework. Our plausibility models include postconditions, as ontic effects are essential for most planning purposes. The framework presented extends a previously developed framework based on dynamic epistemic logic (DEL), without plausibilities/beliefs. In the pure epistemic framework, one can distinguish between strong and weak epistemic plans for achieving some, possibly epistemic, goal. By taking all possible outcomes of actions into account, (...) a strong plan guarantees that the agent achieves this goal. Conversely, a weak plan promises only the possibility of leading to the goal. In real-life planning scenarios where the planning agent is faced with a high degree of uncertainty and an almost endless number of possible exogenous events, strong epistemic planning is not computationally feasible. Weak epistemic planning is not satisfactory either, as there is no way to qualify which of two weak plans is more likely to lead to the goal. This seriously limits the practical uses of weak planning, as the planning agent might for instance always choose a plan that relies on serendipity. In the present paper we introduce a planning framework with the potential of overcoming the problems of both weak and strong epistemic planning. This framework is based on plausibility models, allowing us to define different types of plausibility planning. The simplest type of plausibility plan is one in which the goal will be achieved when all actions in the plan turn out to have the outcomes found most plausible by the agent. This covers many cases of everyday planning by human agents, where we - to limit our computational efforts - only plan for the most plausible outcomes of our actions. © 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved. (shrink)

In the past four years, a small but intense debate has transpired on the margins of mainstream scholarship in the discipline of Philosophy, particularly within the sub-field of American pragmatism. While most philosophical pragmatists dedicate their attention to questions concerning how ideas improve experience (or the theory-practice continuum), those participating in this exchange have shown greater concern for an issue that is, at its core, a theoretical matter: Does the theory of experience espoused by the classic American philosopher John Dewey (...) succumb to what contemporary analytic philosophers—for instance, Wilfred Sellars, Donald Davidson and John McDowell—call the Myth of the Given? One commentator, Scott Aikin, claims that Dewey relied on non-inferential and non-conceptual content or givens as perceptual inputs for cognitive experience. The upshot of Aikin’s objection is that these experiential givens constitute a proxy epistemological foundation for the beliefs that flow from inquiry—a position clearly in conflict with Dewey’s commitment to anti-foundationalism. The objection assumes a slightly different form in the hands of another scholar of American pragmatism, Colin Koopman. Gregory Pappas and David Hildebrand respond to Koopman’s version of the objection. The goals of this essay are to clarify the objection, highlight the stakes in the debate, identify misunderstandings of Dewey’s experiential metaphysics on both sides, and determine why the experiential givenism objection merits serious philosophical scrutiny in the future. (shrink)

In this paper, we take our cue from Kevin Schilbrack’s admonishment that the philosophy of religion needs to take religious practices seriously as an object of investigation. We do so by offering Afro-Brazilian traditions as an example of the methodological poverty of current philosophical engagement with religions that are not text-based, belief-focused, and institutionalized. Anthropologists have studied these primarily orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century. Still, they involve practices, such as offering and sacrifice as well as spirit (...) possession and mediumship, that have yet to receive attention from philosophers. We argue that this is not an accident: philosophers have had a highly restricted diet of examples, have not looked at ethnography as source material, and thus still need to put together a methodology to tackle such practices. After elucidating Schilbrack’s suggestions to adopt an embodiment paradigm and apply conceptual metaphor theory and the extended mind thesis to consider religious practices as thoughtful, we offer criticism of the specifics of his threefold solution. First, it assumes language is linear; second, it takes a problematic view of the body; and third, it abides by a misleading view of the “levels” of cognition. We conclude that the philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to understand religious practices as cognitive enterprises. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that it is a moral obligation for companies, firstly, to accept their moral responsibility with respect to non-discrimination, and secondly, to address the issue with a full-fledged programme, including but not limited to the countering of microsocial discrimination processes through specific policies. On the basis of a broad sketch of how some discrimination mechanisms are actually influencing decisions, that is, causing intended as well as unintended bias in Human Resources Management (HRM), I will argue (...) that the well known tools of legislation and ethical codes are necessary although insufficient to cope with the problem. However, based on empirical evidence, we know which set of measures is likely to diminish discrimination. Taking non-discrimination seriously implies complex and longitudinal policies which include assigning responsibility for a non-discrimination policy within the firm, making managers conscious of implicit stereotypes and helping them to cope with prejudices that no one can totally overcome. Insofar as corporate responsibility with respect to non-discrimination is accepted and strategies that are not prohibitively expensive are known, companies are bound to implement them. Not implementing the best set of measures may be considered at least as a moral shortcoming or, depending on the size of the company, mere lip service to the non-discrimination principle. Although the paper refers to empirical material of diverse backgrounds, its intent is clearly normative. It wishes to spell out what companies ought to do if they are committed to responsible behaviour. The discussion of effective remedies against discrimination is based on a case study of a French company. The retailer Auchan was recently surprised to learn that it was discriminating against ethnic minorities despite strong ethical standards, an ethics committee and ethical leadership. The company dropped its naïve beliefs and set up an ambitious policy cope with the issue. The case illustrates what recent empirical research has revealed about the effectiveness of diversity policies: establishing responsibility for diversity results, firm ethical commitment and support from top management make diversity programs effective. (shrink)

Political philosophy has difficulties to cope with the complexity and variety of state-religions relations. ‘Strict separationism’ is still the preferred option amongst liberals, deliberative and republican democrats, socialist and feminists. In this article, I develop a complex typology based on comparative history and sociology of religions. I summarize my reasons why institutional pluralist models like plural establishment or non-constitutional pluralism are attractive not only for religious minorities but for religiously deeply diverse societies in general. Most attention is paid defending associative (...) democracy, the most flexible and open variety of institutional pluralism, against realist objections that group representation is incompatible with liberal democracy, that it leads to stigmatization and bureaucratization, that it strengthens undemocratic leaders, that it leads to an ossification of the status quo, and, most importantly, that it is inherently divisive undermining social cohesion and political unity. In my refutation of these objections I try to show that it helps to integrate minority religions into liberal democratic policies compatible with reasonable pluralism and to prevent religious and political fundamentalism. (shrink)

Most work on ethics and artificial intelligence (AI) rightly focuses on how the design and use of AI systems affect individuals other than the systems themselves. However, as AI systems become more sophisticated and capable of emulating intelligent behavior, there is growing interest in whether and under what circumstances AIs would become moral patients, i.e., entities that are themselves capable of receiving morally significant harms and benefits, and hence are owed moral considerations. It may seem far-fetched to think that present-day (...) AI systems, which are widely considered complex tools, could ever become the kinds of entities to whom we owe moral obligations. Yet, I believe that it is timely to begin thinking about this prospect. It can help us better understand the nature of minds, the value of life and consciousness, the harm of death, and the immense responsibilities that would come with creating artificial moral patients. This dissertation addresses two main questions about artificial moral patiency: What would it take for an AI system to be a moral patient? And should we create artificial moral patients? First, I ask the question of what it would take for an entity to be capable of being harmed and benefited in morally significant ways. I argue that whichever theory of well-being we accept, an entity counts as a moral patient only if it is capable of phenomenally conscious mental states, i.e., states ‘there is something it is like’, such as experiences, motivations, and beliefs. I also argue that the capacity for phenomenal conscious states requires being capable of mental states with unified, rich, multisensory experiences that are integrated and experienced from an egocentric, or self-referential, perspective. Second, I ask the question of what it would take for an entity to be capable of these mental states that are required for moral patiency. I argue that on the most plausible theories of consciousness, what it is for an entity to have the capacity for having not only subjectively experienced representational states like beliefs and perceptions but also affective states like pain, pleasure, and emotions is for it to have states with distinctive sort of intentionality, i.e., to be about or directed towards the world that is capable of genuine error and unfulfillment, or to have content. Third, I ask the question of what it would take for an entity to be capable of states with intentionality. Drawing on the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s intentional stance, I claim that attributions of intentional states like beliefs and desires to entities like us who are capable of states with original or true intentionality pick out explanatorily important regularity in how we are disposed to behave in a wide range of circumstances, which does not apply to attributions of such states to entities that are capable of these states merely in the metaphorical sense. After discussing the main philosophical theories of intentionality, I find that the theory of success semantics provides the most plausible naturalistic explanation of content. On this view, an entity’s representational and motivational states such as beliefs and desires count as beliefs and desires only if they are capable of systematically and flexibly interacting with the entity’s wide variety of other representational and motivational states to produce a wide variety of behaviors that would successfully fulfill the system’s goals if its representations were accurate. Drawing on this view, I discuss a hierarchy of intentional states at the bottom of which there are basic maximally egocentric representational and motivational states, the contents of which are accurate and fulfilled without reference to the contents of the entity’s more sophisticated representational and motivational states. Next, I apply this account to the case of present-day AI systems and argue that none of them are moral patients yet as none has egocentric motivations, though self-driving cars and care robots come closer to meeting the conditions for moral patiency. Finally, by examining the main views in population ethics, I argue that this is good news because even on the least restrictive views in population ethics, we have good moral reasons to be hesitant to bring artificial moral patients into existence, at least for now. (shrink)

Interest in the possibility of AI welfare is growing within the AI research community, but taking the matter seriously is not without risks. This paper introduces a societal risk that is independent of whether AI systems have the potential to become genuine welfare subjects. In particular, dedicating attention and resources to the matter could spur an unwarranted belief among the public that AI systems are genuine welfare subjects. This, in turn, might trigger premature interventions that eventually lead (...) to AI enfranchisement, or more broadly, to the extension of participatory rights. Such an extension, however, risks inviting a form of deceptive misalignment under which AI systems obscure their true preferences in an effort to strategically influence collective preferences to their own benefit. As a proof of concept, I construct a stylized social choice example in which AI systems are included in a voting procedure. The example is structured by a diagnostic framework I call The Social Choice Test for Welfare-Based (Mis)alignment. The test deliberately creates an opportunity for strategic voting, allowing AI systems to report seemingly innocent preference orderings that strategically undermine human welfare. After systematically illustrating the possibility of manipulation by AI systems, I review recent evidence of scheming, alignment faking, and blackmail capabilities among frontier models, suggesting that strategic voting could be a capability on the horizon. The identified risk supplies a compelling reason for approaching the issue with epistemic modesty and practical restraint. (shrink)

Philosophers ponder on how to do philosophy and how to do it well. This pondering has divided metaphilosophers’ concern about philosophical methodology into two groups that I shall label “pro-history” and “pro-intuitions”. The claim (and belief) of philosophers in the former group can be realized with this sentence by Robert Pasnau (2011): “The discipline of philosophy benefits from a serious, sustained engagement with its history.” The latter group believes that for philosophy not to slide into the realm of irrelevance, (...) rather than studying history of philosophy, it must rely on intuitions to make sense of our present ontologies. In this paper, I examine the disagreement between both parties and argue that both proponents of pro-history and pro-intuitions are wrongheaded. I argue for what I call proto-history. Proto-history here refers to the method of doing philosophy in which the intuitions of philosophers are informed by the history of philosophy (though not directly influencing, but indirectly informing). I shall refer to this informing-ness as “autonomous impression.” By autonomous impression, I mean the process of forming beliefs based on intuitions and by taking into account one’s knowledge about other people’s (i.e., past philosophers’) beliefs and opinions. (shrink)

This paper investigates Alfred North Whitehead and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s attempts to develop a historical, dynamic ontology (a “process ontology”, according to the former, and an “ontology of the flesh” for the latter). The claim of the paper is that their originality lies in the methods adopted to reach such ontologies, which show strong similarities. Both authors based their research on nature, conceived of as “the leaf of Being”, and on perceptual experience, understood not as a chaos of bare, punctual, sense (...) data, but as the complex, original source of meaning that constitutes the primary field of philosophical investigation—the only source from which one can gain new understanding of both nature and logos (things, happenings, values, subjectivity, laws, etc.). After some introductory remarks on the connections between Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty, the paper is divided into three parts. The first part clarifies why and how, according to the philosophers, ontology should start from a new scrutiny of nature. The second part specifies what this new conception of nature, based on perceptual experience, is. The third part focuses on how their ontologies must be construed as historic, insofar as behaviors, actions, and practices lie at the core of their concept of being. (shrink)

I explore and develop the idea that (NA) knowledge is non-accidentally true belief. The applicable notion of non-accidentality differs from that of ‘epistemic luck’ discussed by Pritchard. Safety theories may be seen as a refinement of, or substitute for, NA but they are subject to a fundamental difficulty. At the same time, NA needs to be adjusted in order to cope with two counterexamples. The Light Switch Case turns on the ‘directionof-fit’ between a belief and the facts, while (...) the Meson Case concerns knowledge of nomological necessities. A proposed revision to NA is: (ENA) S knows that P when S’s belief that P is non-accidentally true because (i) it is based on good evidence, and (ii) in and of themselves, beliefs based on good evidence tend to be true. ‘knowledge-as-credit’ accounts have been offered as an alternative way of sharpening NA. I argue that such accounts face serious objections that don’t apply to ENA. Finally, I take up Lackey’s worry that the credit-based approach mishandles knowledge via testimony. ENA faces no difficulty on that score, which counts in its favor. (shrink)

The concept of legal consciousness can contribute to the development of disciplines that deal with law and their connection. Although recognized as an important concept, the meaning of legal consciousness remains vague and underutilized both for explaining the nature of law and for the empirical study of legal phenomena. The goal of this contribution is to foster a further analysis of the concept of legal consciousness and its use in empirical researches. In doing so, this contribution firstly explains the importance (...) of the concept for understanding and studying legal phenomena. It examines the place of the concept in legal theory and proposes the concept as a meeting point for interdisciplinary research. Secondly, the content of the concept of legal consciousness itself is clarified based on Alf Ross’ insights. Finally, the contribution proposes fields of research in which the concept can be applied to achieve important analytical and empirical results. (shrink)

This rejoinder focuses on a few points of disagreement that I have with Li Chenyang, Ronnie Littlejohn, and Lauren Pfister regarding their critical comments on my book Reconstructionist Confucianism. In response to Pfister’s concerns, I point out that my book attempts to base on classical, rather than other, Confucian sources in order to reconstruct the Confucian virtue-based, ritual-guided, and family-oriented view of life for contemporary society. In appreciating Littlejohn’s suggestion on Confucian environmentalism, I contend that a kind of Grand View (...) Garden as we find in the Dream of Red Mansion would be a typical Confucian garden, manifesting the Confucian ideal of a family-oriented way of life that holds in harmonious relations with the rest of nature under the direction of the cosmic principles. Finally, I offer detailed replies to Li’s series of challenges to my view on li 禮, arguing for the essential constitutive nature of the Confucian rituals. (shrink)

This article investigates the concept and the construction of judicial discretion. The strengths and weaknesses of both Dworkin and Hart are analysed, and in view of these, it is argued that a full picture of judicial discretion is between the two extremes. Thus, a moderate theory of judicial discretion is maintained which is based on achievements by Robert Alexy (2002b). The article develops a balancing model of discretion and relates it to the theory of legal argumentation. The limits of discretion (...) and the relation between structural (strong) and epistemic (weak) discretion are addressed in detail, both with illustrations from the jurisdiction of the German Federal Constitutional Court. (shrink)

Marxism, Psychology and Social Science Analysis applies Marxist theory, psychology, and the work of Lucien Sève to specific research in the social sciences. It shows in practical terms what guidance can be offered for social scientific researchers wanting to incorporate Sève's view of personality into their work. Providing case studies drawn from different social sciences that give the book significant breadth of scope, Roche reviews the impact of "Taking Sève Seriously" across the study of international relations theory, economics, (...) law, and moral philosophy. The book begins by placing the work of Lucien Sève in context and considers the development of psychology in relation to Marxism, before going on to summarise the work of Sève in relation to the psychology of personality. It considers the opportunities for refreshed research in social relations based on developments by Sève, before examining Marxist biography and the implications of Sève's views. The book also includes chapters on the social discount rate, on constructivism in international relations, on the concept of promising in moral philosophy and the Marxist conception of individual responsibility. It addresses not only how research should be carried out differently, but whether utilising the theoretical framework of other writers, even non-Marxists, can deliver a similar outcome. With its use of five distinct case studies to analyse the work of Lucien Sève, this unique book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of psychology, philosophy and social sciences. (shrink)

According to the moral error theorist, all moral judgments are mistaken. The world just doesn't contain the properties and relations necessary for these judgments to be true. But what should we actually do if we decided that we are in this radical and unsettling predicament--that morality is just a widespread and heartfelt illusion? One suggestion is to eliminate all talk and thought of morality. Another is to carry on believing it anyway. And yet another is to treat morality as a (...) kind of convenient fiction. We tend to think of moral thinking as valuable and useful, but we can also recognize that it can be harmful and even disastrous. Would we be better off or worse off if we stopped basing decisions on moral considerations? This is a collection of twelve brand new chapters focused on a critical examination of the options available to the moral error theorist. After a general introduction outlining the topic, explaining key terminology, and offering suggestions for further reading, the chapters address questions like: * Is it true that the more that people are motivated by moral concerns, the more likely it is that society will be elitist, authoritarian, and dishonest? * Is an appeal to moral values a useful tool for helping resolve conflicts, or does it actually exacerbate conflicts? * Would it even be possible to abolish morality from our thinking? * If we were to accept a moral error theory, would it be feasible to carry on believing in morality in everyday contexts? * Might moral discourse be usefully modeled on familiar metaphorical language, where we can convey useful and important truths by uttering falsehoods? * Does moral thinking support or undermine a commitment to feminist goals? * What role do moral judgments play in addressing important decisions affecting climate change? The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriouslyis the first book to thoroughly address these and other questions, systematically investigating the harms and benefits of moral thought, and considering what the world might be like without morality. (shrink)

Don Cupitt's version of religious non‐realism based as it is on linguistic constructivism, radical relativism and the view that culture forms human nature has been attacked with devastating effect by realists in the last few years. I argue that there is another strand in Cupitt's thinking, his biological naturalism, that supports a different version of religious non‐realism and that he failed to see this possibility because of his global non‐realism and commitment to the strong programme in the sociology of scientific (...) knowledge. Cupitt's biological naturalism should have led smoothly into evolutionary psychology, which has an account of religious belief that supports a non‐realist interpretation. Evolutionary psychology shows that religious beliefs are natural, normal and about matters of the deepest significance to humans. They gain their character from the operation of evolved structures of the mind and cannot be reduced to other sorts of belief. I argue that the form of religious non‐realism that emerges from taking biological naturalism seriously has a future because it respects the nature of religious belief and seeks to build on its capacity as a unique source of meaning in people's lives. There is also enough common ground with religious realism for there to be genuine dialogue between the two. (shrink)

RESUMEN En este artículo se plantea una discusión con el enfoque doxástico de los delirios. A pesar de que esta línea de análisis ha hecho importantes aportes a la comprensión del fenómeno, tiene dificultades importantes a la hora de aportar un marco explicativo completo de los delirios, porque deja por fuera el aspecto total de la experiencia y sigue basándose implícitamente en la idea de que podemos estudiar de manera separada e independiente los aspectos físicos, cognitivos y experienciales de un (...) fenómeno tan complejo. El artículo propone que, más allá de la decisión acerca de si se debe considerar a los delirios como creencias irracionales o no, o de si se puede concebirlos como creencias en absoluto, es necesario tener en cuenta la drástica transformación del mundo entero de la experiencia que se da en el sujeto delirante, tal como lo plantea la fenomenología. ABSTRACT This article discusses the doxastic approach to delusions. Although this analytic approach has made important contributions to our understanding of the phenomenon, it faces serious difficulties when it comes to providing a complete explanatory framework of delusions, as it leaves out the experiential aspect. This analytic approach continues to be implicitly based on the idea that the physical, cognitive and experiential aspects of such a complex phenomenon can be studied separately. The article suggests that, in addition to merely considering whether or not delusions ought to be taken as irrational beliefs, or even as beliefs at all, it is necessary to take into account the drastic transformation of the entire experiential world of the delusional subject, as suggested by the phenomenological approach. (shrink)

This dissertation explores conflicts between religion and medicine, cases in which cultural and religious beliefs motivate requests for inappropriate treatment or the cessation of treatment, requests that violate the standard of care. I call such requests M-requests (miracle or martyr requests). I argue that current approaches fail to accord proper respect to patients who make such requests. Sometimes they are too permissive, honoring M-requests when they should not; other times they are too strict. I propose a phronesis-based approach to decide (...) whether to honor an M-request or whether religious beliefs are medically valid. This approach is culturally sensitive, takes religious beliefs seriously, and holds them to a high ethical standard. This approach uses a principle of belief evaluation developed by Linda Zagzebski: The Principle of Rational Belief, which is founded upon Aristotelian virtue ethics. In addition to the Principle, I propose a concrete set of conditions to assist caregivers in clinical case evaluations. In the final chapters, I apply the phronesis-based approach to well-known adult cases such as the refusal of blood transfusions by Jehovah’s Witnesses and requests for continued (futile) care by Orthodox Jews at the end of life. Also, I consider cases involving children such as African female circumcision and cases of faith healing. I argue that The Principle of Rational Belief should define the threshold of the kinds of M-requests for children that can be honored, but I allow a lower threshold for M-requests made by competent adult patients. (shrink)

It is astonishing that we humans are able to have, act on and express moral beliefs. This dissertation aims to provide a better philosophical understanding of why and how this is possible especially when we assume metaethical expressivism. Metaethical expressivism is the combination of expressivism and noncognitivism. Expressivism is the view that the meaning of a sentence is explained by the mental state it is conventionally used to express. Noncognitivism is the view that the mental state expressed by a moral (...) sentence is a noncognitive, desire-like state. The central question of this dissertation is this: "How can metaethical expressivists explain that we are able to express moral beliefs?" The shortest answer this dissertation will give is the following: "by becoming `dispositional expressivists´." Dispositional expressivists hold that moral beliefs are dispositions to be in certain mental states that resemble desires. More precisely, a central thesis of this study is that to hold a moral belief is to be disposed to be in a desire-like, noncognitive state where this state has some specific structure. This dissertation arrives at and justifies this thesis by making a number of steps. It starts with preparing the ground by developing a general theory of what it is for a sentence to express a mental state. Roughly, this theory states that for a sentence to express a mental state is for that sentence to be conventionally used to perform a speech act which counts as sincere only if the user or speaker is in that mental state. This theory of expressing satisfies all the constraints that must be satisfied for it to be compatible with the purposes of metaethical expressivism. The next step is to provide a solution to the most notorious semantic problem confronting metaethical expressivism, the problem of explaining how sentences containing moral words can have compositional meaning and stand in logical relations also known as the Frege-Geach or embedding problem. Building on the research of Mark Schroeder, a new expressivist semantics, called `Attitude Semantics´, will be developed for a first-order language. The motivating idea underlying attitude semantics is that expressivists can avoid the problematic feature of so-called `biforcation´ if they treat the structures of the mental states expressed by moral sentences as well as that expressed by non-moral sentences as being isomorphic. In order to give those structures a philosophically interesting interpretation, it will be suggested that we treat sentences as expressing dispositional states. As a toy example we will treat the sentence `murder is wrong´ as expressing the disposition to be for blaming for murder. After dealing with the Frege-Geach problem, I turn to the metaethical expressivists' project of quasi-realism. Two major goals of this project are to explain how moral sentence can be truth-apt and how the states expressed by them can be regarded as moral beliefs. In order to establish those goals I critically examine a number of theories of truth-aptness by providing counterexamples to them. I then present my own theory which says that a sentence is truth-apt iff and because there is a conventional way to use it to express a belief. What is new about this theory is that it treats expressing a belief as being explanatorily more basic than being truth-apt. Belief, according to this theory, explains truth-aptness, not vice versa. This has the important consequence that it shows that what I call the `orthodox strategy´ of quasi-realists is mistaken and needs to be inverted: expressivists must `earn the right´ to moral belief before they can establish that moral sentences are truth-apt, and not the other way round. The second part of this dissertation is then concerned with the question of what it is to hold a moral belief and how they can figure in rational reasoning. In short: it is concerned with earning the right to moral belief. After discussing the major problems confronting a noncognitivist theory of belief, most importantly what I call the `tightrope problem´, I argue for a dispositional form of noncognitivism about moral belief that combines elements from Eric Schwitzgebel's dispositionalism about belief and Sebastian Köhler's `conceptual role expressivism´. This dispositional noncognitivism perfectly matches and justifies the dispositionalist interpretation of the expressivist semantics developed before. In order to fully earn the right to moral belief, however, metaethical expressivists must also deal with several epistemological objections concerning the rationality of moral belief. The first objection I deal with comes from Derek Baker and is directed against Mark Schroeder's specific development of expressivism. I deal with this objection because my own theory bears close resemblance to Schroeder's theory and so it might be worried that it confronts the same issues. Fortunately, we will see that Baker's objection rest on a number of mistaken assumptions and so neither applies to Schroeder's expressivism nor to the version which I defend in this study. The other epistemological objection to metaethical expressivism I deal with is Cian Dorr's famous wishful-thinking objection. In contrast to previous replies to this objection I attack it by directly questioning the central assumption on which it rests, namely that reasoners can never be justified in basing a factual belief on a desire-like state. I argue that this is false, and that under certain conditions reasoning from desire-like mental states to factual beliefs is justified. My argument shows that even if holding a moral belief is being in a desire-like noncognitive state, basing factual belief on a moral belief can give one an epistemic reason for the factual belief. Hence, even if moral thoughts are wishes, moral thinking is not wishful thinking. I take my arguments to earn the dispositional expressivist the right to moral belief. By the previously defended theory of truth-aptness in terms of belief, this allows the dispositional expressivists to conclude that moral sentences are also truth-apt. This finishes the quasi-realist project of this dissertation. In the last part of this dissertation I switch gears and present two unnoted problems for metaethical expressivists having to do with explaining moral motivation. Both arguments are surprisingly simple. The first one is this: if motivation requires a belief as well as a desire (Humeanism), and moral judgments motivate by themselves (internalism), then moral judgments cannot be desires only. If this argument is sound, it shows that the famous `motivation argument´ not only entails the falsity of cognitivism, but also the falsity of noncognitivism. The second argument is the following: moral judgments when combined with suitable external desires motivate to act (externalism), but if motivation requires belief as well as desire (Humeanism), then moral judgments cannot be desires only. I discuss several ways in which noncognitivists might want to deal with those problems, but leave it as an open question whether those solutions will ultimately be viable. Overall, this dissertation makes serious contributions to the research program of metaethical expressivism. It makes proposals for how to solve a number of notorious problems, such as the Frege-Geach problem in semantics and the wishful-thinking problem in epistemology. Besides this, however, it also raises two new problems for metaethical expressivism in the philosophy of action. For those reasons this dissertation will be of interest for anyone who wants to defend or criticize expressivism in metaethics, and more generally, anyone who wants to better understand our astonishing ability to express moral beliefs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 351-383 [Access article in PDF] Hume's Pyrrhonian Skepticism and the Belief in Causal Laws Graciela De Pierris Hume endorses in no uncertain terms the normative use of causal reasoning. The most striking example of this commitment is Hume's argument in the Enquiry against the possibility of miracles. The argument sanctions, in particular, the use of scientific reflection on uniform experience (...) issuing in causal laws of nature (E 114): "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined." 1 These words should give us pause; for how can Hume so confidently say, after his skeptical conclusions concerning our causal beliefs, that "a firm and unalterable experience has established" the laws of nature, and that we can therefore produce "proofs" against miracles? The Treatise gives rise to the same puzzle. In this text, too, Hume confidently prescribes methodical reflection based on causal reasoning. For example, in Book One, Part Three, Section Fifteen, Hume offers eight "Rules by which to judge of causes and effects." These rules are more than descriptions of our natural causal inferences. They are meant to guide us in making better causal inferences; in Hume's words they "ought to regulate" our probable reasoning since (T 149): "by them we learn to distinguish the accidental circumstances from the efficacious causes." 2Moreover, Hume consistently takes Newtonian science as a model for the proper employment of causal inferences in inquiries into matters of fact and, [End Page 351] in particular, as a model to be followed in his own science of human nature. 3 This paradigm of what the science of nature ought to be is understood by Hume as an inductive, experimental inquiry. 4 In the Enquiry, for example, Hume uses the label "sciences" for "politics, natural philosophy, physic, chemistry, &c." and in the preceding discussion argues that these sciences are not a priori but are based on causal reasoning (E 164-165). Thus, there are for Hume inquiries into matters of fact and existence that amount to more than blindly following natural propensities and habit. The sciences and many of our causal inferences in common life involve more than mere belief as a sentiment. They involve, in addition, careful reflection that results in improved causal inferences and thus provides normative standards. Yet, in thus upholding the normative use of causal reasoning in science and in everyday life, Hume appears to contradict his own radical skeptical conclusions concerning our knowledge of causation and induction. I here propose a novel way to resolve this puzzle.To acknowledge the existence of a puzzle, however, amounts to accepting the now controversial view that Hume provides, and takes at face value, a radical skeptical argument concerning our knowledge of causation and induction. 5 Moreover, the attempt to resolve this puzzle involves rejecting the suggestion [End Page 352] that Hume, without awareness or concern, happily holds flatly inconsistent views. 6 It also goes against the more sophisticated suggestion that Hume lightly alternates among different psychological moods, or perhaps different perspectives, which might eventually issue in results that contradict each other but are sufficiently localized so as to prevent serious conflict. Such a view might lead us to conceive Hume's texts as an unstructured and arbitrary patchwork of reflections, driven by different psychological moods or by the embellishments of a radiant literary style. This kind of reading is unacceptable as an interpretative tool, however, as H. J. Paton has acutely noted in his criticism of the patchwork interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. 7 For such a reading would place no constraints at all on the task of establishing which parts of Hume's text belong to which moods or perspectives. The suggestion that Hume offers an unstructured patchwork of reflections masks the novel and systematic distinction Hume draws between his radical philosophical... (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that near-term AI systems might soon be welfare subjects. We should take AI welfare seriously, they urge, because AI systems might soon have properties indicated by our best scientific theories of consciousness, and consciousness suffices for welfare subjectivity. I argue that this view faces constraints from the epistemology of consciousness. Specifically, I argue that there is an enormous gap in justification between our first-personal beliefs of consciousness in ourselves and our third-personal, theoretical belief of what (...) consciousness is according to contemporary consciousness science. The science of consciousness is so in its infancy that it is doubtful that the set of theories currently on offer is exhaustive. In contrast, beliefs about the fact that we are conscious are, famously, among the most epistemically secure we can have. Our taking AI welfare seriously, in terms of action or policy, will be constrained by these considerations from the epistemology of consciousness. (shrink)

In a recent exchange in the pages of this journal, John Biro responds to Gabor Forrai’s argument against Biro’s argument that in most, if not all, Gettier cases the belief condition, contra popular opinion, isn’t satisfied. In this note, I’ll argue that Biro’s response to Forrai satisfactorily resolves the first of Forrai’s two central objections to Biro’s argument that the belief condition isn’t satisfied in most, if not all, Gettier cases. But Biro’s response leaves mostly unaddressed the most (...) plausible way of construing Forrai’s second objection. I’ll take up the mantle of successfully defending Biro’s argument from this more plausible construal of Forrai’s second objection. However, even though I’ll argue that Biro’s argument is in good shape with respect to Forrai’s objections, I’ll show that the definition of serious belief that Biro offers us is mistaken. (shrink)

Procreation with donor gametes is widespread and commonly accepted, but it involves ethical questions about the child's best interest. Understanding the historical structures of the moral discussion of gamete donation may contribute to reflecting on the child's best interest. This is why I have analysed the debate on gamete donation in the Netherlands, and this analysis has uncovered some striking discontinuities. Notions of the child's best interest have undergone a radical swing. In the past, it was considered acceptable to conceal (...) the truth about the child's biological origin, but in the past two decades the general opinion has changed to the common belief that this information should be shared with the child. This changed notion of the child's best interest will be analysed using a framework encompassing three views of the child, which derive from the debate on children's rights. These three views each provide a different interpretation of the child's moral and political status. I conclude that the changed notion of the child's best interest results from a view of the child that focuses on autonomy and citizenship, and which frames the child's interests according to its legal status. I comment on this view and I champion an alternative one, namely ‘the embedded child’. This is a relational view based on care ethics that goes beyond what can be articulated in law, and that will help to establish a more balanced interpretation of the child's best interest at the practice and policy levels of gamete donation. (shrink)

Harry G. Frankfurt begins his inquiry by asking, “What is it about human beings that makes it possible for us to take ourselves seriously?” Based on The Tanner Lectures in Moral Philosophy, Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right delves into this provocative and original question. The author maintains that taking ourselves seriously presupposes an inward-directed, reflexive oversight that enables us to focus our attention directly upon ourselves, and “[it] means that we are not prepared (...) to accept ourselves just as we come. We want our thoughts, our feelings, our choices, and our behavior to make sense. We are not satisfied to think that our ideas are formed haphazardly, or that our actions are driven by transient and opaque impulses or by mindless decisions. We need to direct ourselves—or at any rate to believe that we are directing ourselves—in thoughtful conformity to stable and appropriate norms. We want to get things right.” The essays delineate two features that have a critical role to play in this: our rationality, and our ability to love. Frankfurt incisively explores the roles of reason and of love in our active lives, and considers the relation between these two motivating forces of our actions. The argument is that the authority of practical reason is less fundamental than the authority of love. Love, as the author defines it, is a volitional matter, that is, it consists in what we are actually committed to caring about. Frankfurt adds that “The object of love can be almost anything—a life, a quality of experience, a person, a group, a moral ideal, a nonmoral ideal, a tradition, whatever.” However, these objects and ideals are difficult to comprehend and often in conflict with each other. Moral principles play an important supporting role in this process as they help us develop and elucidate a vision that inspires our love. The first section of the book consists of the two lectures, which are entitled “Taking Ourselves Seriously” and “Getting It Right.” The second section consists of comments in response by Christine M. Korsgaard, Michael E. Bratman, and Meir Dan-Cohen. The book includes a preface by Debra Satz. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 26 (2006) 213-216 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reviewed byJohn Berthrong Boston University School of TheologyDialogues at One Inch Above the Ground: Reclamations of Belief in an Interreligious Age. By James W. Heisig. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003. 215 pp.Few scholars are better prepared than James W. Heisig to write about the current state of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and few have written more insightfully about the historical, (...) theological, religious, and spiritual factors that have made Buddhist-Christian dialogue so intriguing for the last four decades. Heisig is the director of the Nanzan Institute, one of the premier institutions in the world dedicated to cultivating dialogue primarily between Christians and Buddhists, but also with people of other traditions and no religious belief at all.The title of the book is taken from the writings of the famous medieval poet Saigyō, who said that he tried to live at "one inch above the ground." Heisig follows Saigyō's advice by focusing many of his articles on themes such as health and ecology rather than abstruse metaphysical discussions of the intricacies of Buddhist and Christian doctrines, although, as one would expect, he shows a deft hand at explaining the philosophical and theological dimensions of living life at one inch above the ground.The opening two chapters on how we can collectively view the current ecological crisis demonstrate Heisig's sure hand at moving between profound meditations on current events and demonstrating how these problems can be even better understood in terms of spiritual and religious insights. Heisig argues that having two eyes, one Buddhist and one Christian, might just help us walk better on the ground, especially a ground that is being harmed on a daily basis by human disregard for the natural environment. His essay on the interpretation of the Buddhist principle of sufficiency is based on the injunction that we should learn to "consider how much is enough." The following essay demonstrates how hard-headed he can be with his call for us not to move from an uncaring contempt for nature to an equally ill-conceived sentimentalization of nature.There are so many insightful and clever features to the essays in the book that it is hard to pick out any one essay for special comment, but one of my favorites, high-lighting [End Page 213] Heisig's rhetorical powers, is "Six Sūtras on Dialogue" (pp. 139–157). This essay demonstrates what a Christian theologian might learn from engaging in interreligious dialogue. Moreover, it even takes the form, as Heisig explains, of the traditional Buddhist sūtra of six teachings on the nature of dialogue. Dialogue, according to Heisig (echoing Alfred North Whitehead), "is an adventure of ideas" (p. 141). The first teaching is "The spirit of interreligious dialogue need not be born of traditions in order to be reborn there" (p. 145). One of the strong points Heisig makes over and over again is that we now live with increasing self-awareness in a religiously pluralistic world. Actually, we always have, though various theological traditions have been adept at either ignoring or rejecting the notion that there could be anything positive about religious pluralism. At its worst, pluralism simply demonstrated the spiritual depravity and turbidity of humankind, and at best, it could simply be ignored as unworthy of serious comment. With the growing social, political, economic, military, and cultural interconnections of the modern world, no one can ignore pluralism. Theologians and religious leaders, in particular, need to think about religious pluralism even if this dialogue is not something that was "born" within their traditional theological discourse.The second teaching is a corroloary of the first: "Dialogue is primarily a minority enterprise that stands free of the obligations of institutional religion" (p. 147). Now, the leaders of institutional religion might dispute this point, but again Heisig is correct in noting that people are going to talk to their neighbors regardless of what they are told to do by worried religious authorities. He makes the... (shrink)

In order for advanced computational systems, such as AI systems, to be successfully integrated in liberal democracies, the people who design, use or are affected by these systems in many cases must be adequately disposed to hold the results of these systems to be true. How is such belief in these results justified, given the opaque nature of advanced computational systems and the possibility of error? The theory of “computational reliabilism” (CR) outlines how such belief can be justified (...) and lead to a genuine advancement in human knowledge. The basic idea of CR is that the belief in the results of computational systems, despite their opacity, can be justified by their positive rate of producing true beliefs. In this paper, we show that CR needs to be expanded by focusing more on the human agents who are interacting with these systems epistemically and the consequences of the human-computer interaction. The reliability of a belief-forming process based on a computational system can only be assessed by taking into account both these agents and the ethical stakes involved. Moreover, if CR is intended to guide action, a responsible assessment of reliability must rely on an internal type of justification that is relative to the respective epistemic agent and typically necessitates an institutionalized division of epistemic labor. (shrink)

We all philosophize at times. What do we do when we philosophize? We think in a rather concentrated, deep sort of way. In so doing, we do not call ourselves Philosophers; it would be rather pretentious of us if we did. Philosophers are those—generally in university departments of Philosophy—who think, and ask questions, about what reality is made of, what we know, and how we should behave. Philosophers are not fools; but after two and a half thousand years, they have (...) not come up with agreed answers to their questions that are any more useful, or certain, than thinkers who do not call themselves Philosophers. Many of those who do are still caught up in the thought-forms of theology; all are in pursuit of a lost cause except those who write what might be written by thinkers in other domains. Is it not time to admit that there is nothing very special about Philosophy? Dr. Swatridge studied Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Since 1998, he has been a visiting lecturer, in critical thinking and the art of argument, at the universities of PANNONIA (Veszprém); SZEGED; PÁZMÁNY PÉTER, and KÁROLI GÁSPÁR (Budapest), and ESZTERHÁZY KÁROLI (Eger), in Hungary, and at institutions of higher education in Poland (Krosno), and Petru Maior University (Târgu Mureş) in Romania. His longstanding base has been MISKOLC UNIVERSITY in North-Eastern Hungary, where he teaches in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. His previous books include AN OXFORD GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE ARGUMENT AND CRITICAL THINKING (Oxford University Press); A COUNTRY FULL OF ALIENS, and TRANSYLVANIA; TRUTH, MYTH, PERSPECTIVE (both published by Corvina Books, Budapest). (shrink)

Emotions are often portrayed as subjective judgments that pose a threat to rationality and morality, but there is a growing literature across many disciplines that emphasizes the centrality of emotion to moral reasoning. For engineers, however, being rational usually means sequestering emotions that might bias analyses—good reasoning is tied to quantitative data, math, and science. This paper brings a new pedagogical perspective that strengthens the case for incorporating emotions into engineering ethics. Building on the widely established success of active and (...) collaborative learning environments, in particular the problem-based learning (PBL) philosophy and methodology, the paper articulates new strategies for incorporating emotion into engineering ethics education. An ethics education pilot study is analyzed to explore how PBL can engage students’ emotions. Evidence suggests that PBL empowers students to cultivate value for engineering ethics and social responsibility, and in doing so, redefine the societal role of the engineer. Taking students’ emotions seriously in engineering ethics offers an effective strategy to meaningfully engage students in ethical learning. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article we argue for the need to take the moral voices of children and youth seriously particularly in times of the Anthropocene. Drawing on theories in ethics by John Wall, moral development according to Mark B. Tappan, and education in line with the works by Vygotsky, we construct a conceptual framework where the notions ‘narrative,’ ‘moral authorship’ and ‘free will’ can open new creative understandings of human ethical competence; a competence based in a relational, contextual and (...) societal-cultural understanding of human existence. The use of our framework is illustrated in interpretations of empirical research with children demonstrating concerns of theirs in relation to climate change. The article concludes with reflections on the kind of education that can be inspired by this framework and the taking of children’s voices seriously, as well as pointing to challenges also to the grown-up world. (shrink)

Agent-centered morality has been a serious challenge to ethical theories based on agent-neutral morality in defining what is the moral point of view. In this paper, my concern is to examine whether arguments for agent-centered morality, in particular, arguments for agent-centered option, can be justified. -/- After critically examining three main arguments for agent-centered morality, I will contend that although there is a ring of truth in the demands of agent-centered morality, agent-centered morality is more problematic than agent-neutral morality. Nevertheless, (...) we need to take seriously the challenges to agent-neutral morality by finding a way to reflect the insight of agent-centered morality within the framework of agent-neutral morality without collapsing it into agent-centered morality. As a way of doing so, I suggest that we need to integrate the situated, rather than transcendental, nonideal, rather than idealized, and dialogical, rather than monological, perspectives developed in feminist ethics, into agent-neutral morality. (shrink)

The human rights discourse is vitiated by its tendency to reification, a tendency manifest in an ideologically motivated failure to take the reasons for human rights seriously. When a set of rights fall short, in range or strength, of the reasons adduced for them, any claim to the universality and priority of the rights in question is open to the charge of falsification and reification. Such a claim invites immanent critique insofar as a human rights discourse fails to take (...) its own reasons seriously by working out a set of rights commensurate with them. Further critique is necessary if the human rights concept as such can be shown to be incapable of living up to the best reasons for human rights, in the shape, the author argues, of agency-based reasons. These kinds of critique, especially the latter, can serve as an antidote to the reifying tendency of the human rights discourse. (shrink)