This paper develops a logical theory that unifies all three standard types of argumentative attack in AI, namely rebutting, undercutting and undermining attacks. We build on default justification logic that already represents undercutting and rebutting attacks, and we add undermining attacks. Intuitively, undermining does not target default inference, as undercutting, or default conclusion, as rebutting, but rather attacks an argument’s premise as a starting point for default reasoning. In default justification logic, reasoning starts (...) from a set of premises, which is then extended by conclusions that hold by default. We argue that modeling undermining defeaters in the view of default theories requires changing the set of premises upon receiving new information. To model changes to premises, we give a dynamic aspect to default justification logic by using the techniques from the logic of belief revision. More specifically, undermining is modeled with belief revision operations that include contracting a set of premises, that is, removing some information from it. The novel combination of default reasoning and belief revision in justification logic enriches both approaches to reasoning under uncertainty. By the end of the paper, we show some important aspects of defeasible argumentation in which our logic compares favorably to structured argumentation frameworks. (shrink)

This article discusses how the results of infant research challenge the assumptions of the classical sciences of social behaviour. According to A.J. Bergesen, the findings of infant research invalidate Durkheim's theory of mental categories, thus requiring a re-theorizing of sociology. This article argues that Bergesen's reading of Emile Durkheim is incorrect, and his review of the infant research in fact invalidates his argument. Reviewing the assumptions of sociology in the light of the findings of infant research, it is argued that (...) the real challenge is to formulate a research strategy that combines the findings of the two sciences. (shrink)

This paper poses a constructive, evenhanded challenge to the idea that recent experimental work shows intuitions to be epistemically problematic. It is a challenge because it suggests that these experimental attacks neglect a considerable gap between intuitions and answers, and this neglect implies that we are at the present time unwarranted in drawing any negative conclusions about intuition’s epistemic status from the relevant empirical studies. The challenge is evenhanded because it does not load the dice by invoking an overly (...) narrow conception of intuition. Finally, the challenge is constructive: it is not an exercise in idle skepticism, but rather explores concrete implications and applications. These include (i) a practical lesson that may help experimentalists in their efforts to study intuitions empirically, (ii) methodological counsel that may help rationalists in their efforts to intuit responsibly, and (iii) a novel explanation of the relevant empirical studies that may actually support rather than undermine intuition’s epistemic status—perhaps, however, to the detriment of the epistemic status of answers. (shrink)

Why are personal attacks so powerful? In political debates, speeches, discussions and campaigns, negative character judgments, aggressive charges and charged epithets are used for different purposes. They can block the dialogue, trigger value judgments and influence decisions; they can force the interlocutor to withdraw a viewpoint or undermine his arguments. Personal attacks are not only multifaceted dialogical moves, but also complex argumentative strategies. They can be considered as premises for further arguments based on signs, generalizations or consequences. They (...) involve tactics for arousing emotions such as fear, hate or contempt, or for ridiculing the interlocutor. The twofold level of investigation presented in this paper is aimed at distinguishing the different roles that ad hominem have in a dialogue and bringing to light their hidden dimensions. The reasoning structure of each type of attack will be distinguished from the tactics used to increase its effectiveness and conceal its weaknesses. (shrink)

McMahan argues that justification defeats liability to defensive attack (which would undermine the thesis of the "moral equality of combatants"). In response, I argue, first, that McMahan’s attempt to burden the contrary claim with counter-intuitive implications fails; second, that McMahan’s own position implies that the innocent civilians do not have a right of self-defense against justified attackers, which neither coheres with his description of the case (the justified bombers infringe the rights of the civilians) nor with his views about rights (...) forfeiture, is unsupported by independent argument, and, in any case, extremely implausible and counter-intuitive; and third, that his interpretation of the insulin case confuses the normative relations between an agent’s justification and non-liability on the one hand and permissible or impermissible interference with the agent’s act on the other. Similar confusions, fourth, affect his discussion of liability to compensation. (shrink)

By drawing attention to these facts and to the relationship between Cantor’s and Husserl's ideas, I have tried to contribute to putting Frege's attack on Husserl "in the proper light" by providing some insight into some of the issues underling criticisms which Frege himself suggested were not purely aimed at Husserl's book. I have tried to undermine the popular idea that Frege's review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic is a straightforward, objective assessment of Husserl’s book, and to give some specific (...) reasons for thinking that the uncritical reading of Frege's review has unfairly distorted philosophers' perception of a work they do not know very well. (shrink)

The Luck Argument is among the most influential objections to the main brand of libertarianism about metaphysical freedom and moral responsibility. In his work, Alfred Mele [2006. Free will and luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press] develops - and then attempts to defeat - the literature's most promising version of the Luck Argument. After explaining Mele's version of the Luck Argument, I present two objections to his novel reply to the argument. I argue for the following two claims: (1) Mele's reply (...) is either otiose or undermined by his own defense of the Luck Argument from a different objection and (2) Mele's reply turns out to lack the form required to engage the step of the Luck Argument it targets. Having shown that the failure of Mele's novel attack is overdetermined, I close by defending a different (and, I believe, decisive) objection to the Luck Argument - which, as it happens, lurks right under Mele's nose. (shrink)

Several epistemologists reject Conciliationism on the basis that it self-undermines. They maintain that self-undermining positions are untenable. We argue that these attacks fail to show that there is something fundamentally wrong with Conciliationism. To this end, we examine carefully what the problem can be. First, we discard three inadequate diagnoses - we argue that being self-undermining neither shows that the view is false, nor that it defeats warrant in its favour, nor that it gives incoherent or inviable (...) advice. Second, we develop our own diagnosis, according to which the problem is that the very belief in Conciliationism constitutes a (potentially temporary) rational obstacle for endorsement of the view, which means that subjects are unable to exploit their warrant in favour of the view. Unlike extant positions, on our construal of the problem, conciliationists should not be seriously worried by it, for it is not a serious threat for the plausibility of the view. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a foundational inquiry into logical inferentialism with particular emphasis on the normative standards it establishes and the implications these pose for classical logic. The central question addressed herein is: “What is Logical Inferentialism & How do its Standards challenge Classical Logic?” In response, the study begins with a survey of the three principal proof systems that is, David Hilbert’s axiomatic systems and Gerhard Gentzen’s natural deduction and his sequent calculus, thus situating logical inferentialism within a broader proof-theoretic (...) landscape. The investigation then turns to the core tenets of logical inferentialism by focusing on the role of introduction and elimination rules in determining the meaning of logical constants. Through this framework, natural deduction is evaluated as a system that satisfies key inferentialist virtues including harmony, conservativeness and the subformula property. Ultimately, the paper presents challenges to classical logic from intuitionist and revisionist perspectives by arguing that certain classical principles fail to uphold inferentialist standards, consequently undermining their legitimacy within a meaning-theoretic framework. (shrink)

: This paper examines two features of Kant’s 1768 critique of Leibniz’ conception of space. Firstly, Leibniz’ proposed geometrical calculus called ‘analysis situs’; secondly, Leibniz’ relational conception of space. The main thesis of the paper is that Kant’s arguments are more powerful than generally recognized. With regard to the analysis situs, I will show that Kant was quite well informed about this proposed science and that his arguments severely undermine Leibniz’ claims to what it could perform. With regard to the (...) relational theory of space, Kant’s argument would require Leibniz to present a complex story about the relation between God’s act of creation and our spatial experience to defend his relational view, rather than using the simple principle of sufficient reason. (shrink)

The main point of our hypothesis “coloration undermines camouflage” is that many color patterns in plants undermine the camouflage of invertebrate herbivores, especially insects, thus exposing them to predation and causing them to avoid plant organs with unsuitable coloration, to the benefit of the plants. This is a common case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and a visual parallel of the chemical signals that plants emit to call wasps when attacked by caterpillars. Moreover, this is also (...) a common natural version of the well‐known case of industrial melanism, which illustrates the great importance of plant‐based camouflage for herbivorous insects and can serve as an independent test for our hypothesis. We claim that the enormous variations in coloration of leaves, petioles and stems as well as of flowers and fruits undermine the camouflage of invertebrate herbivores, especially insects. We assume that the same principle might operate in certain animal–parasite interactions. Our hypothesis, however, does not contrast or exclude other previous or future explanations of specific types of plant coloration. Traits such as coloration that have more than one type of benefit may be selected for by several agents and evolve more rapidly than ones with a single type of advantage. BioEssays 26:1126–1130, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article examines how Žižek’s analysis of “subjective” violence can be used to explore the ways in which media coverage of a terrorist attack is contoured and shaped by less noticeable forms of “objective” (symbolic and systemic) violence. Drawing upon newspaper coverage of the 2017 London Bridge attack, it is noted how examples of “subjective” violence were grounded in the externalization of a clearly identifiable “other”, which symbolically framed the terrorists and the attack as tied to and representative of the (...) UK Muslim community. Examples of “systematic” violence were most notable in the ideological edifice that underpinned this framing but also in the ways in which newspaper reports served to draw upon British values in the aftermath of the attack. This directed attention away from the contradictions within the UK, towards narratives that sought to “fix” these contradictions through eradicating the problem of “the other” and/or by violently protecting the British values “they” seek to undermine. As a consequence, newspaper coverage worked to uphold the illusion that “peace” could be achieved by eradicating terrorism through further forms of objective violence, including, internment without trial; the “ripping up” of human rights; and, closer surveillance of Muslim communities. Indeed, it was this unacknowledged violence that worked to maintain British values in the press’ coverage. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to examine whether there are morally defensible reasons for using or operating websites (called ‘booters’) that offer distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on a specified target to users for a price. Booters have been linked to some of the most powerful DDoS attacks in recent years. Design/methodology/approach The authors identify the various parties associated with booter websites and the means through which booters operate. Then, the authors present and evaluate the two arguments that they claim (...) may be used to justify operating and using booters: that they are a useful tool for testing the ability of networks and servers to handle heavy traffic, and that they may be used to perform DDoS attacks as a form of civil disobedience on the internet. Findings The authors argue that the characteristics of existing booters disqualify them from being morally justified as network stress testing tools or as a means of performing civil disobedience. The use of botnets that include systems without the permission of their owners undermines the legitimacy of both justifications. While a booter that does not use any third-party systems without permission might in principle be justified under certain conditions, the authors argue that it is unlikely that any existing booters meet these requirements. Practical/implications Law enforcement agencies may use the arguments presented here to justify shutting down the operation of booters, and so reduce the number of DDoS attacks on the internet. Originality/value The value of this work is in critically examining the potential justifications for using and operating booter websites and in further exploring the ethical aspects of using DDoS attacks as a form of civil disobedience. (shrink)

The selected effects theory is supposed to provide a fully naturalistic basis for statements about what biological traits or processes are for without appeal to final causes or intelligent design. On the selected effects theory, biologists are allowed to say, for instance, that hindwing eyespots on butterfly wings serve to deflect predators’ attacks away from vital organs because a similar fitness-enhancing effect explains why eyespots themselves were favoured by natural selection and persisted in the population. This is known as (...) the explanatory dimension of the selected effects theory. According to it, appealing to the fitness-enhancing effect of a certain trait or process is sufficient to explain its current presence in a population, namely, why it persisted and still exists in that population. In this paper, however, I will call such a claim into question, and I will do so by discussing a mathematical Hawk-Dove example and a real case scenario taken from evolutionary biology, that of Perissodus microlepis. These are scenarios in which the selective filter does not allow variants with the highest fitness at a certain moment to prevail over their available alternatives. In similar cases, I will argue, citing fitness-enhancing effects does not represent an adequate explanation of what happens in the population, undermining the explanatory dimension of the selected effects theory. (shrink)

Most opposition to induced abortion turns on the belief that human fetuses are persons from conception. On this view, the moral status of the fetus alone requires those in a position to provide aid—gestational mothers—to make tremendous sacrifices to benefit the fetus. Recently, critics have argued that this pro-life position requires more than opposition to induced abortion. Pro-life theorists are relatively silent on the issues of spontaneous abortion, surplus in vitro fertilisation human embryos, and the suffering and death of born (...) persons due to lack of access to food, shelter and medical care. Colgrove et al call such arguments inconsistency arguments, arguing they ‘do not matter’ and mischaracterise them as ad hominem attacks. Here, I argue these are better understood as moral dilemmas. While some critics argue pro-life inaction is evidence that they do not really believe human fetuses are persons, I contend this inaction is likely the result of resolvable confusion rather than moral negligence. (shrink)

Several interpreters have evaluated the attempts of the eighteenth-century radical philosophes Denis Diderot and Baron d’Holbach to undermine religion by refuting its rationality as unsuccessful. This article will first present the radical philosophes’ main arguments against the rationality of religion and then suggest that although these arguments failed to convince their initial readers, based on Kierkegaard’s anti-rationalist conception of religion, their project was eventually successful.

The normativity of mental content thesis appears to have been the most influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. Paul Boghossian (2003, 2005) has developed an argument for the normativity of mental content on the basis of two premises, i.e. firstly, the normativity of the notion of belief and secondly, the priority of the notion of belief to the notion of desire. In his recent article Alexander Miller (2008) has criticised Boghossian’s argument for the normativity of mental content. To make the (...) objection against the normativity of content, Miller has argued that the second premise of Boghossian’s argument is since belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. My purpose in this paper is to show that content normativity thesis prevails Miller's attack. In order to establish the claim I will argue that content is normative even if belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. (shrink)

HRG has been criticized for being an ‘empty statement’ or tautology, for failing to yield predictions, and for failing to yield causal explanations of change. There is some justification for these charges, yet they do not undermine the value of HRG as an organizing framework. In response to the ‘tautology’ complaint, we should admit that HRG is tautology-like, in that it avoids detailed dynamical assumptions. But this is an advantage in an organizing framework, because it ensures its compatibility with a (...) wide range of more detailed models. In response to the ‘prediction’ complaint, we should concede that HRG is not very useful for prediction, but the role of an organizing framework is not predictive. In response to the ‘causal explanation’ complaint, this chapter argues that HRG, by organizing our thinking about ultimate causes, generates understanding of those causes. It also compares favourably to other possible organizing frameworks. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a significant moral difference between force applied against (imminent) attackers on the one hand and force applied against “threatening” people who are not (imminent) attackers on the other. Given that there is such a difference, one should not blur the lines by using the term “self-defense” (understood as including other-defense) for both uses of force. Rather, only the former is appropriately called self-defense, while for the latter, following German legal terminology, the term “justifying defensive (...) emergency” will be used here. The two justifications are not governed by the same criteria and thus lead to different results. The paper will proceed by providing first, in section (1), a brief sketch of the contours of the self-defense justification, putting particular emphasis on the necessity criterion. On the account presented here, the necessity criterion of the self-defense justification is particularly harsh on the aggressor (and thus not to be interpreted as literally requiring the employment of “the mildest means”) and its applicability is only triggered by an (imminent) attack, not by other kinds of threats. Section (2) will then further explain the differences between self-defense and justifying defensive emergency. A particularly important difference is that people who are subjected to justified self-defense cannot permissibly defend themselves, while people who are subjected to (extremely harmful or even lethal) justified defensive emergency measures can. Thus, in this latter case we have a “moral equality” (of sorts) of the involved parties: they can permissibly use force against each other. Section (3) will list and defend some conditions that a successful argument against the imminence requirement of the self-defense justification has to satisfy. In the light of these conditions, sections (4) to (7) will discuss a number of objections that have been adduced against the imminence requirement as well as proposals that have been made in support of alternative accounts. It will be argued that all these objections and proposals fail. Section (8) will provide a number of thought experiments in support of the claim that the harsh necessity criterion of the self-defense justification is only triggered by imminence while force against non-imminent threats can be justified with the help of the justifying emergency exemption, as well as for the claim that the justifying emergency exemption puts the person using preventive force against non-imminent threats on a shorter leash and makes him liable to counter-measures. Section (9) will explain the rationale for tying the applicability of the harsh necessity criterion of the self-defense justification to imminent attacks. Section (10) will discuss some special cases and show why they do not undermine the normative validity of this tie. (shrink)

Personal attacks, which might convey damaging accusations, can take either an explicit or an implicit form. When they are communicated implicitly, they are referred to as insinuations. Their implicit nature is said to allow speakers to evade responsibility, preserve their public image, or even conceal argumentative weaknesses. In previous studies, we found that insinuated ad hominem arguments supporting disagreement made speakers appear more persuasive and trustworthy than explicit ones. However, further exploratory analyses of our data revealed that the advantage (...) of insinuated over explicit ad hominem arguments was either only present or more pronounced when the personal attack was fallacious. This distinction between explicitness and fallaciousness—and their possible interaction—had not been accounted for in earlier work. To investigate this interaction more systematically, we conducted four preregistered experiments examining the combined effects of explicitness and fallaciousness in ad hominem arguments. Results indicate that there is no significant interaction between fallaciousness and implicitness, regardless of whether the personal attack targets the proponent’s expertise or character. While the often-assumed persuasive benefits of insinuation do not consistently emerge—and may even undermine argumentative support in the context of disagreemen—insinuation confers social advantages, as the speaker is perceived as more trustworthy overall. Moreover, valid arguments are consistently preferred over fallacious ones—not only when it comes to supporting disagreement, but also in shaping how the speaker is perceived. This suggests that while pragmatic subtleties, such as insinuation, can enhance perceived trustworthiness, argumentative soundness remains a central criterion in both rhetorical and interpersonal judgments. (shrink)

This article proposes that the Trump administration is “postfascist”. Postfascism combines some aspects of the thought architecture of both neoliberalism and fascism. Along with neoliberalism, it embraces a distinctive human anthropology of atomised individuality conducive to competitive “free” markets. Unlike neoliberalism, and in common with fascism, it exhibits key characteristics of authoritarian populism – “othering” perceived “enemies of the people” (“liberal” elites, intellectuals, feminists, LGBT), undermining established scientific knowledge and expertise, and the embrace of an authoritarian “strongman”. Unlike fascism, (...) it does not formulate its own political anthropology and unique vision of a new society but borrows from neoliberalism and seeks to preserve (rather than challenge) its basic vision of society as an aggregate of competing “individual capital enterprises”. This unique synthesis of ideas is what I call “a dialectic of rationality-irrationality”. Adopting the methodology of Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of fascism, the ideational approach to populist studies, and adapting Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism, I propose that Trumpian postfascism is a form of “irrational-rationality”. It adopts neoliberalism’s rational goals (which uses scientific rationality borrowed from Popper’s critical rationalism to argue for markets as spontaneous orders with their own ordering capacities). But it is also the beneficiary of some of its irrational methods which stem from the idea of market spontaneity (the anti-politics of traducing liberal democratic principles of popular sovereignty and deliberative participation, and undermining human and environmental protections). My argument is that postfascism – with its attacks on liberal democracy, its anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism – dovetails with the “irrational” outworkings of neoliberalism. It is therefore post-fascist in that it adopts some of the thought architecture of fascism, but post-fascist in that it operates with a baseline rationality borrowed from neoliberalism about the atomised nature of human beings and the importance of protecting “free” markets. (shrink)

The attack on perfectibilism in T. R. Malthus's Essay on Population (1798) is methodologically hollow. Malthus presents himself as a Newtonian empiricist, yet his analysis of equalitarian society is entirely abstract. Godwinian equality is debunked by means of a thought experiment. Malthus fails to take note of a variety of historical instances of equalitarian social practice (Sparta, the Moravians, and so on), thus undermining his empiricist posture. This deficiency in the critique of equality is remedied, to some degree, in (...) the fifth edition of the Essay (1817), where Malthus finally cites some of the historical evidence relevant to an assessment of equalitarianism. (shrink)

This book attacks the assumption found in moral philosophy that social control as such is an intellectually and morally destructive force. It replaces this view with a richer and deeper perspective on the nature of social character aimed at showing how social freedom cannot mean immunity from social pressure. The author demonstrates how our competence as rational and social agents depends on a constructive adaptation of social control mechanisms. Our facility at achieving our goals is enhanced, rather than undermined, (...) by social control. The author then articulates sources, contracts, and degrees of legitimate social control in different social and historical settings. Drawing on a wide range of material in moral and political philosophy, law, cognitive and social psychology, anthropology and literature, Professor Schoeman shows how the aim of moral philosophy ought to be to understand our social character, not to establish fortifications against it in the name of rationality and autonomy. (shrink)

The most prominent recent attack on compatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility is the so-called manipulation argument, which presents an allegedly responsibility-undermining manipulation case and then points out that the relevant facts of that case are no different from the facts that obtain in an ordinary deterministic world. In a recent article in this journal, however, Matt King presents a dilemma for proponents of this argument, according to which the argument either leads to a dialectical stalemate or else is (...) dialectically infelicitous. In this article I clarify the structure of the manipulation argument and construct a response to King’s dilemma. (shrink)

Nietzsche vehemently attacks the traditional conception of the unitary self. This essay tries to show that some of the undermining of that conception had already been done in Schopenhauer’s work. We should not ignore the obvious fact that while Nietzsche is a philosopher of cultures, classes and epochs, Schopenhauer’s view of knowledge and ethics remains firmly ahistorical. 1 Nevertheless, if we first try to inhabit Schopenhauer’s point of view, we can look forward to Nietzsche and illuminate him from (...) one (partial) perspective. 2 For Nietzsche’s opposition to Schopenhauer’s conceptions of the subject and of the will is interwoven with more positive debts to his predecessor’s philosophy, and he by no means fully overcomes its problems and tensions. (shrink)

Many Enlightenment freethinkers undermined the immortality of the soul by declaring that it could not be demonstrated by philosophy, and that its origins were inseparable from ancient superstition. Historians have argued that the key masterminds behind this particular historical-critical attack were the deists Charles Blount and John Toland. However, overemphasis on deist critiques has fostered the idea that it was rare to write about the history of the soul in the seventeenth century. In reality, historical accounts of the immortal soul (...) were ubiquitous in this period. These histories included all the elements in deist histories that scholars have since deemed dangerous. I argue that writing a history of pagan belief in the soul was therefore not an intrinsically subversive move. Instead, Blount and Toland’s histories reworked narratives already available in mainstream scholarship on ancient paganism. It has now become common to argue that anticlerical arguments were forged in orthodox erudition. But if deists were not saying anything different to their contemporaries, why did their work raise such an outcry? I contend that their radical characters, the broader context of their respective oeuvres, and the circumstances in which their works circulated played a critical role in their reception. (shrink)

Frankfurt has attacked the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise, And he has thereby sought to undermine the traditional debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists. The role that the principle plays in this debate is clarified. Frankfurt's type of argument is then assessed for its implications concerning both the principle and the debate. It is argued that the debate, Even if not the principle, May well emerge intact.

Recently, Widerker has attacked Fischer’s contention that one could use Frankfurt-type counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities to show that even from a libertarian viewpoint an agent might be morally responsible for a decision that he could not have avoided. Fischer has responded by: (a) arguing that Widerker’s criticism presupposes the falsity of Molinism and (b) presenting a version of libertarianism which avoids Widerker’s criticism. Here we argue that: (i) Fischer’s first response is unconvincing and undermines Molinism itself; (ii) (...) the version of libertarianism he presents is fallacious, and (iii) even on the version of libertarianism he proposes, avoid ability remains a necessary condition for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Stove attempts to undermine Hume's argument on induction by denying Hume the claim that induction presupposes the uniformity of nature. I argue that Stove's attack on Hume's argument fails. *A paper from which the present piece was derived was read at the Hume Symposium. Flinders Medical Centre, South Australia, in July 1990, where George Couvalis and David Gauthier made helpful criticisms of my argument.

President Trump verbally attacked human rights in his campaign rhetoric in 2016, leading many to believe that he would undermine the role of human rights in US foreign policy as President. I examine whether or not President Trump’s anti-human rights rhetoric manifested in US foreign policy by analyzing potential changes in how human rights were considered in foreign aid allocations under the Trump Administration. While President Trump had a number of executive tools at his disposal to exert control over foreign (...) aid allocation, he would still have had to overcome considerable bureaucratic and legislative inertia in order to implement his anti-human rights agenda in US foreign aid. I demonstrate that he was unsuccessful in overcoming this inertia, at least in the first 2 years of his Administration (the years for which data is currently available). If anything, human rights received more consideration under President Trump than under President Obama. (shrink)

In this book the metaphysical system of Graham Harman is presented in lucid form, aided by helpful diagrams. In Chapter 1, Harman gives his most forceful critique to date of philosophies that reject objects as a primary reality. All such rejections are tainted by either an undermining or overmining approach to objects. In Chapters 2 and 3, he reviews his concepts of sensual and real objects. In the process, he attacks the prestige normally granted to philosophies of human (...) access, which Harman links for the first time to the already discredited Menos Paradox. In Chapters 4 through 7, Harman brings the reader up to speed on his interpretation of Heidegger, which culminates in a fourfold structure of objects linked by indirect causation. In Chapter 8, he speculates on the implications of this theory for the debate over panpsychism, which Harman both embraces and rejects. In Chapters 9 and 10, he introduces the term ontography as the study of the different possible permutations of objects and qualities, which he simplifies with easily remembered terminology drawn from standard playing cards. (shrink)

Generic generalizations such as ‘mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus’ or ‘sharks attack bathers’ are often accepted by speakers despite the fact that very few members of the kinds in question have the predicated property. Previous work suggests that such low-prevalence generalizations may be accepted when the properties in question are dangerous, harmful, or appalling. This paper argues that the study of such generic generalizations sheds light on a particular class of prejudiced social beliefs, and points to new ways in (...) which those beliefs might be undermined and combatted. (shrink)

Larmore aims to recover three forms of moral complexity that have often been neglected by moral and political philosophers. First, he argues that virtue is not simply the conscientious adherence to principle. Rather, the exercise of virtue apply. He argues - and this is the second pattern of complexity - that recognizing the value of constitutive ties with shared forms of life does not undermine the liberal ideal of political neutrality toward differing ideals of the good life. Finally Larmore agrues (...) for what he calls the heterogeneity of morality. Moral thinking need not be exclusively deontological or consequentialist, and we should recognize that the ultimate sources of moral value are diverse. The arguments presented here do not attack the possibility of moral theory. But in addressing some of the central issues of moral and political thinking today thay attempt to restore to that thinking greater flexibility and a necessary sensitivity to our common experience. (shrink)

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such (...) theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light. (shrink)

A novel account of virtue signaling and what makes it bad has recently been offered by Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke. Despite plausibly vindicating the folk’s conception of virtue signaling as a bad thing, their account has recently been attacked by both Neil Levy and Evan Westra. According to Levy and Westra, virtue signaling actually supports the aims and progress of public moral discourse. In this paper, we rebut these recent defenses of virtue signaling. We suggest that virtue signaling only (...) supports the aims of public moral discourse to the extent it is an instance of a more general phenomenon that we call norm signaling. We then argue that, if anything, virtue signaling will undermine the quality of public moral discourse by undermining the evidence we typically rely on from the testimony and norm signaling of others. Thus, we conclude, not only is virtue signaling not needed, but its epistemological effects warrant its bad reputation. (shrink)

An abstract framework for structured arguments is presented, which instantiates Dung's ('On the Acceptability of Arguments and its Fundamental Role in Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Logic Programming, and n- Person Games', Artificial Intelligence , 77, 321-357) abstract argumentation frameworks. Arguments are defined as inference trees formed by applying two kinds of inference rules: strict and defeasible rules. This naturally leads to three ways of attacking an argument: attacking a premise, attacking a conclusion and attacking an inference. To resolve such attacks, preferences (...) may be used, which leads to three corresponding kinds of defeat: undermining, rebutting and undercutting defeats. The nature of the inference rules, the structure of the logical language on which they operate and the origin of the preferences are, apart from some basic assumptions, left unspecified. The resulting framework integrates work of Pollock, Vreeswijk and others on the structure of arguments and the nature of defeat and extends it in several respects. Various rationality postulates are proved to be satisfied by the framework, and several existing approaches are proved to be a special case of the framework, including assumption-based argumentation and DefLog. (shrink)

According to what may be called PERMANENT, blameworthiness is forever: once you are blameworthy for something, you are always blameworthy for it. Here a prima facie case for this view is set out, and the view is defended from two lines of attack. On one, you are no longer blameworthy for a past offense if, despite being the person who committed it, you no longer have any of the pertinent psychological states you had at the time of the misdeed. On (...) the other, you can cease to be blameworthy if you sufficiently experience guilt or remorse, suffer enough punishment, or are forgiven for your misdeed. Although several points made in support of the second challenge are accepted, they are entirely consistent with PERMANENT. Neither line of attack, as so far presented, undermines the plausibility of this view stemming from the prima facie case. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is largely defensive. I aim to discuss some problems for moral error theory and to offer plausible solutions. A full positive defense of moral error theory would require substantial investigations of rival metaethical views, but that is beyond the scope of this essay. I will, however, try to motivate moral error theory and to clarify its commitments. Moral error theorists typically accept two claims – one conceptual and one ontological – about moral facts. The conceptual (...) claim is that moral facts are or entail facts about categorical reasons (and correspondingly that moral claims are or entail claims about categorical reasons); the ontological claim is that there are no categorical reasons – and consequently no moral facts – in reality. I accept this version of moral error theory and I try to unpack what it amounts to in Section 2.1 In the course of doing so I consider two preliminary objections: that moral error theory is (probably) false because its implications are intuitively unacceptable (what I call the Moorean objection) and that the general motivation for moral error theory is self-undermining in that it rests on a hidden appeal to norms. The above characterization seems to entail the standard formulation of moral error theory, according to which first-order moral claims are uniformly false. Critics have argued that the standard formulation is incoherent since – by the law of excluded middle – the negation of a false claim is true. Hence if ‘Torture is wrong’ is false, ‘Torture is not wrong’ is true. Contrary to what moral error theorists contend, then, moral error theory seems to carry first-order moral implications that by the theory’s own lights are uniformly false. In Section 3 I suggest a formulation that is consistent with the standard formulation of moral error theory, free of first-order moral implications, and subject to no logical difficulties. In Section 4 I consider and rebut Stephen Finlay’s recent attack on moral error theory. According to Finlay the conceptual claim is false because all moral claims – and indeed all normative claims – are, or should be understood as, relativized to some moral standard or system of ends. Moral error theorists thus attribute to ordinary speakers an error that simply isn’t there. I argue that Finlay’s view has some very implausible implications and that it does not avoid commitment to various forms of error theory. This becomes especially clear when we focus on fundamental moral claims. In Section 5 I consider the worry that error theorists’ rejection of categorical reasons proves too much; in particular, the worry that error theorists’ qualms about categorical reasons apply equally to claims about hypothetical reasons, that is, claims to the effect that there is reason to take the means to one’s ends. In my view error theorists such as Mackie and Joyce have failed to pay due consideration to this problem. What the challenge establishes, I submit, is that error theorists cannot just take for granted that hypothetical reasons are metaphysically unproblematic; they must offer an account of hypothetical reasons that shows that they are. I argue that the only plausible account available to error theorists is one according to which claims about hypothetical reasons reduce to non-normative claims about relations between means and ends. (shrink)

Abusing Science is a manual for intellectual self-defense, the most complete available for presenting the case against Creationist pseudo-science. It is also a lucid exposition of the nature and methods of genuine science. The book begins with a concise introduction to evolutionary theory for non-scientists and closes with a rebuttal of the charge that this theory undermines religious and moral values. It will astonish many readers that this case must still be made in the 1980s, but since it must, Philip (...) Kitcher makes it irresistibly and forcefully. Not long ago, a federal court struck down an Arkansas law requiring that "scientific" Creationism be taught in high school science classes. Contemporary Creationists may have lost one legal battle, but their cause continues to thrive. Their efforts are directed not only at state legislatures but at local school boards and textbook publishers. As Kitcher argues in this rigorous but highly readable book, the integrity of science is under attack. The methods of inquiry used in evolutionary biology are those which are used throughout the sciences. Moreover, modern biology is intertwined with other fields of science—physics, chemistry, astronomy, and geology. Creationists hope to persuade the public that education in science should be torn apart to make room for a literal reading of Genesis. Abusing Science refutes the popular complaint that the scientific establishment is dogmatic and intolerant, denying "academic freedom" to the unorthodox. It examines Creationist claims seriously and systematically, one by one, showing clearly just why they are at best misguided, at worst ludicrous. (shrink)

Is modus ponens valid for the indicative conditional? McGee [1985] famously presents several alleged counterexamples to this inference rule. More recently, Kolodny and MacFarlane [2010] and Willer [2010] argue that modus ponens is unreliable in certain hypothetical contexts. However, none of these attacks undermines an informational conception of logic on which modus ponens is valid.

Objective consequentialism is often criticized because it is impossible to know which of our actions will have the best consequences. Why exactly does this undermine objective consequentialism? I offer a new link between the claim that our knowledge of the future is limited and the rejection of objective consequentialism: that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and we cannot produce the best consequences available to us. I support this apparently paradoxical contention by way of an analogy. I cannot beat Karpov at chess in (...) spite of the fact that I can make each of many series of moves, at least one of which would beat him. I then respond to a series of objections. In the process I develop an account of the ‘can’ of ability. I conclude with some remarks about the bearing this attack has on subjective consequentialism. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders some themes and arguments from my earlier paper “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos.” That work is often considered to be part of a cluster of papers attacking “luck egalitarianism” on the grounds that insisting on luck egalitarianism's standards of fairness undermines relations of mutual respect among citizens. While this is an accurate reading, the earlier paper did not make its motivations clear, and the current paper attempts to explain the reasons that led me to write the (...) earlier paper, assesses the force of its arguments, and locates it in respect to work of Richard Arneson and Elizabeth Anderson. The paper concludes by bringing out what now appears to be the main message of the earlier paper: that the attempt to implement an “ideal” theory of equality can harm the very people that the theory is designed to help. (shrink)

Traditional ideas about the basic nature of humanity are under attack as never before. The very attributes that make us human--free will, the permanence of personal identity, the existence of the soul--are being undermined and threatened by the current revolution in the science of the mind. If the mind is the brain, and therefore a physical object subject to deterministic laws, how can we have free will? If most of our thoughts and impulses are unconscious, how can we be morally (...) responsible for what we do? The Problem of the Soul shows the way out of these seemingly intractable paradoxes. Framing the conflict in terms of two dominant visions of the mind--the "manifest image" of humanistic philosophy and theology, and the scientific image--renowned philosopher Owen Flanagan demonstrates that there is, in fact, common ground, and that we need not give up our ideas of moral responsibility and personal freedom in order to have an empirically sound view of the human mind. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to rescue the holist position on corporate agency (CA) from indignities heaped upon it by friends and enemies alike. Two general criticisms strike at the core of the position: the charge of ‘material failures’ (that the corporate agent lacks a proper material presence) and the charge of illusion (that the intentionality of the corporate agent consists in the intentionality of the members). Both attack the holist position on metaphysical grounds, logically prior to any claims (...) of agency; if these charges cannot be answered then much of the CA literature collapses.The article begins by outlining the criticisms and a holist account of corporate agents that incorporates and transcends earlier offerings on corporate agency from French, List and Pettit, and others. It then addresses the charge of material failures, demonstrating that the holist corporate agent is a material entity (nothing ‘ghostly,’) and arguing that neither its scattered nature nor its dependency on voluntary participation undermines that status. It closes by addressing the charge of illusion, demonstrating that the common charge of double-counting member intentionality is false. Both charges arise from the same misreading of the holist position, which ignores the metaphysics of the corporate agent. (shrink)

Fictionalism has long presented an attractive alternative to both heavy-duty realist and simple eliminativist views about entities such as properties, propositions, numbers, and possible worlds. More recently, a different alternative to these traditional views has been gaining popularity: a form of deflationism that holds that trivial arguments may lead us from uncontroversial premisses to conclude that the relevant entities exist — but where commitment to the entities is a trivial consequence of other claims we accept, not a posit to explain (...) what makes the relevant claims true. The deflationist’s trivial arguments, however, have been attacked by fictionalists, who suggest that the ontological conclusions we get from these arguments should not be taken as serious ontological assertions at all, but rather as implicitly in the context of a fiction or simulation. This paper examines the fictionalist’s criticisms of ‘easy’ arguments for numbers, properties, and other entities, and concludes that they beg the question against the deflationist and so do not undermine the deflationist’s position. Close attention to the argument also reveals a crucial disanalogy between overtly fictional discourse and discourse about numbers, properties, and so on, which undermines the case for fictionalism. Finally, I argue that the motivations for fictionalism (particularly those based in its ability to offer a good account of the discourse) are served as well or better by deflationism. Overall, this gives us reason to think that deflationism may provide a preferable approach for those looking for an alternative to both traditional realism and traditional eliminativism. (shrink)

Most of us have been brought up on the idea that moral theories divide as they are, at the root, either deontological or consequentialist. A new point of division has been emerging that places deontological and consequentialist theories together against theories of virtue, or a conception of morality constrained at the outset by the requirements of the “personal.” In a series of important essays Bernard Williams has offered striking arguments for the significance of the personal in moral thought based on (...) the role of integrity in human activity and character. His criticisms of both Kantian and utilitarian theories for their deep-seated tendencies to undermine the integrity of persons brings to a new level of seriousness and subtlety long-standing complaints against these theories—the invasive do-gooding of utilitarianism, the coldness and severity toward normal human concerns of Kantian theory. Although Williams is inclined to find the sources of the attack on integrity in these different features of the two traditional theories, in the end his complaint against both of them turns on their demand that the moral agent submit himself to the authority of impartial value. (shrink)

Explanation has played myriad roles in truthmaker theory. The notion of explanation is sometimes thought to give content to the very idea of truthmaking, and is sometimes used as a weapon to undermine the entire point of truthmaker theory. I argue that the notion of explanation is dialectically useless in truthmaker theory: while it’s true that truthmaking offers a form of explanation, this claim is theoretically unilluminating, and leaves truthmaker theorists vulnerable to various kinds of attack. I advocate an alternative (...) approach to truthmaker theory that downplays the role of explanation, and show how it releases the enterprise from a variety of problematic commitments that have troubled truthmaker theorists. The “ontology-first” approach to truthmaking that I advocate not only restores the initial impulse behind truthmaking, but also has a number of theoretical advantages. Most prominently, it dodges the infamous problem of negative existentials, and lessens truthmaker theory’s dependence on contentious intuitive judgments about both explanation and truthmaking. (shrink)

Academic freedom and societal respect for science have been decreasing in the past years in the wake of growing nationalism, authoritarianism, and fundamentalism. Even in liberal democracies, science has been attacked by anti-science movements. One of the reasons for the weakening credibility of scientific knowledge is its exaggerated use in framing policy questions. Conflicts about interests and values are transformed into controversies about the validity and relevance of studies and data. Since scientific knowledge is a foundation of liberal democratic knowledge (...) societies, a refusal to recognize it as a legitimate basis of decision-making undermines democratic deliberation and societal participation. We propose Wissenschaftsreflexion as a specific approach to addressing the challenges posed by the influence of science on political and social affairs and the unfavorable response to this influence by parts of developed knowledge societies. Wissenschaftsreflexion is integrative in collaborating with the various home disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences, and explicitly normative in judging the conditions and limitations of scientific advice and in taking liberal democracies as the basis of rational, fact-based policy decisions. The academic system alone cannot defend the appropriate use of scientific knowledge against unfounded threats. Attacks should be recognized as a general societal and political challenge and not be treated as merely a concern of scientists and the science system. Scientific knowledge, scholarship, and the science system need to be protected against unfounded assaults to be able to fulfill the societal tasks assigned to them in liberal democratic knowledge societies. (shrink)

This paper argues that the current scholarship of radical politics primarily bannered by Christopher Ryan Maboloc is a misappropriation of the postMarxist political project of Mouffe and Laclau. Drawing primarily both on Mouffe’s and Laclau’s work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics and an interview with Chantal Mouffe herself, the paper argues how the post-Marxist radical political project of Mouffe and Laclau fails to theoretically fit to the style of governance and regime of Duterte. Fundamental to the (...) idea of radical democratic politics is the task of radicalizing liberal democracy. However, as discussed in the paper, liberal democracy is a project whose very institutions and processes Duterte and his regime have undermined and attacked. Under Duterte’s regime, radical democracy lost the conditions for its flourishing, rendering its own impossibility. (shrink)

Kant's remark may sound harsh to our modern sensibility but it raises an issue that is central to an understanding of Nietzsche's critique of "the democratic movement of our times" (BGE 203) and, thus, to an understanding of Nietzsche's salience for contemporary democratic theory. This issue is self-respect—and, more generally, the topic of duties to oneself. The relationship between this issue and democratic theory may not appear a wholly obvious one but, on Nietzsche's account, it is crucial to the kind (...) of equality that is expressed by democratic practices. Nietzsche's concern, I'll argue, is that "the democratic movement of our times" expresses a levelling mode of equality that undermines the conditions of self-respect in the relevant sense. Consequently, the aim of this article will be to elucidate Nietzsche's understanding of self-respect, to clarify the grounds on which he attacks "the democratic movement of our times" and to consider the relationship between these arguments and his advocacy of the agon as a model of cultural and political relations. It concludes by drawing out the implications of this interpretation of Nietzsche for democratic theory. (shrink)