Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. The author underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the (...) illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.--. (shrink)

New technologies facilitate the enhancement of a wide range of human dispositions, capacities, or abilities. While it is argued that we need to set limits to human enhancement, it is unclear where we should find resources to set such limits. Traditional routes for setting limits, such as referring to nature, the therapy-enhancement distinction, and the health-disease distinction, turn out to have some shortcomings. However, upon closer scrutiny the concept of enhancement is based on vague conceptions of what (...) is to be enhanced. Explaining why it is better to become older, stronger, and more intelligent presupposes a clear conception of goodness, which is seldom provided. In particular, the qualitative better is frequently confused with the quantitative more. We may therefore not need “external” measures for setting its limits – they are available in the concept of enhancement itself. While there may be shortcomings in traditional sources of limit setting to human enhancement, such as nature, therapy, and disease, such approaches may not be necessary. The specification-of-betterment problem inherent in the conception of human enhancement itself provides means to restrict its unwarranted proliferation. We only need to demand clear, sustainable, obtainable goals for enhancement that are based on evidence, and not on lofty speculations, hypes, analogies, or weak associations. Human enhancements that specify what will become better, and provide adequate evidence, are good and should be pursued. Others should not be accepted. (shrink)

A contemporary of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) achieved recognition as a social philosopher during the three decades following World War II. He is best known for helping to establish philosophical anthropology as a discipline, which arose under his and Max Scheler's tutelage during the Weimar Republic and continues to exert influence over German thought. In The Limits of Community, Plessner presents the appeal and the dangers of rejecting modern society for the sake of the ideal (...) of community. The appeal, he suggests, is to escape the anonymity of mass society; the danger is the eventual loss of human dignity and the rise of an authoritarian politics based on violence and fanaticism. Social radicalism is born from the underside of modern society. It takes root among the disenfranchised and, especially, among the young. Attuned to the political undercurrents of his own society, Plessner anticipated the rise of German fascism nine years before its fateful emergence onto the world stage. Now that dissatisfaction with modern society is prevalent in the United States and elsewhere, appeals to the ideal of community can be heard once again in the communitarian critique of liberalism and in the politics of identity. What de Tocqueville identified as the tyranny of the majority represents an ever-present danger to the individual today. Written in 1924, The Limits of Community remains relevant today and will be of interest to scholars and students of German intellectual history and of political and social theory. (shrink)

Human beings seek to transcend limits. This is part of our potential greatness, since it is how we can realize what is best in our humanity. However, the limit-transcending feature of human life is also part of our potential downfall, as it can lead to dehumanization and failure to attain important human goods and to prevent human evils. Exploring the place of limits within a well-lived human life this work develops and defends an original account of limiting virtues, (...) which are concerned with recognizing proper limits in human life. The limiting virtues that are the focus are humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty, and they are explored in relation to four kinds of limits: existential limits, moral limits, political limits, and economic limits. These virtues have been underexplored in discussions about virtue ethics, and when they have been explored it has not been with regard to the general issue of the place of limits within a well-lived human life. The account of the limiting virtues provided here, however, is intended as a counter to other prominent approaches to ethics: namely, autonomy-centered approaches and consequentialist (or maximizing) approaches. This account is also used to address a number of important contemporary issues such as genetic engineering, distributive justice, cosmopolitanism vs. patriotism, and the ethical status of growth-based economics. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy there is much focus on conceptual engineering: the enterprise of revising and replacing concepts. In this talk, I focus on a theoretical issue that has not yet received much attention. What principled limits are there to this sort of enterprise? Are there concepts that for principled reasons cannot or should not be revised or replaced? Examples discussed include logical concepts and normative concepts.

At the centre of modern epistemology lurks the problem of scepticism: how can we know that the forms of our cognition are compatible with the world? How can we state success conditions for knowledge claims without somehow transcending our discursive and fallible nature as knowers? By distinguishing different forms of scepticism, Markus Gabriel shows how all objective knowledge relies on shared discourses and how the essential corrigibility of knowledge claims is a crucial condition of their objectivity. We should understand scepticism (...) not so much as posing a threat, but as offering a vital lesson about the fallibility of discursive thinking. By heeding this lesson, we can begin to reintegrate the solipsistic subject of modern epistemology back into the community of actual knowers. Taking his cue from Hegel, Wittgenstein and Brandom, Gabriel shows how intentionality as such is a public rather than a private phenomenon. He concedes that the sceptic can prove the necessary finitude of objective knowledge, but denies that this has to lead us into an aporia. Instead, it shows us the limits of the modern project of epistemology. Through an examination of different kinds of sceptical paradoxes, Gabriel not only demonstrates their indispensable role within epistemological theorising, but also argues for the necessary failure of all totalizing knowledge claims. In this way, epistemology, as the discipline that claims knowledge about knowledge, begins to grasp its own fallibility and, as a result, the true nature of its objectivity. The Limits of Epistemology will be of great value to students and scholars of philosophy. (shrink)

With increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in high-stakes contexts, a race for “trustworthy AI” is under way. However, Dorsch and Deroy (Philosophy & Technology 37, 62, 2024) recently argued that regardless of its feasibility, morally trustworthy AI is unnecessary: We should merely rely on rather than trust AI, and carefully calibrate our reliance using the reliability scores which are often available. This short commentary on Dorsch and Deroy engages with the claim that morally trustworthy AI is unnecessary and argues (...) that since there are important limits to how good calibration based on reliability scores can be, some residual roles for trustworthy AI (if feasible) are still possible. (shrink)

In this article, I analyse deterrence theory and argue that its applicability to cyberspace is limited and that these limits are not trivial. They are the consequence of fundamental differences between deterrence theory and the nature of cyber conflicts and cyberspace. The goals of this analysis are to identify the limits of deterrence theory in cyberspace, clear the ground of inadequate approaches to cyber deterrence, and define the conceptual space for a domain-specific theory of cyber deterrence, still to (...) be developed. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation of moral (...) responsibility responsibility (as defended by R. Jay Wallace) and how best to respond to it. The third and last reply is concerned with Christopher Bennett's criticism of Russell's views concerning "motivational scepticism" and the possibility of pure practical reasons. (shrink)

This book discusses the justifications and limits of cultural nationalism from a liberal perspective. Chaim Gans presents a normative typology of nationalist ideologies, distinguishing between cultural liberal nationalism and statist liberal nationalism. Statist nationalisms argue that states have an interest in the cultural homogeneity of their citizenries. Cultural nationalisms argue that people have interests in adhering to their cultures and in sustaining these cultures for generations. Gans argues that freedom- and identity-based justifications for cultural nationalism common in literature can (...) only support the adherence thesis, while the historical thesis could only be justified by the interest people have in the long-term endurance of their personal and group endeavors. The Limits of Nationalism examines demands often made in the name of cultural nationalism, such as claims for national self-determination, historical rights claims to territories and demands entailed by cultural particularism as opposed to cultural cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

The disjunctive theory of perception claims that we should understand statements about how things appear to a perceiver to be equivalent to statements of a disjunction that either one is perceiving such and such or one is suffering an illusion (or hallucination); and that such statements are not to be viewed as introducing a report of a distinctive mental event or state common to these various disjoint situations. When Michael Hinton first introduced the idea, he suggested that the burden of (...) proof or disproof lay with his opponent, that what was needed was to show that our talk of how things look or appear to one.. (shrink)

This book offers a novel theory of childhood well-being as a social good. It re-examines our fundamental assumptions about parenting, parental authority, and a liberal society's role in the raising of children. The author defends the idea that the good of a child is inexorably linked to the good of society. He identifies and critiques the problematic assumption that parenting is an extension of individual liberty and shows how we run into problems in medical decision-making for children because of this (...) assumption. He develops an objective conception of what is good for a child in liberal society, drawing on the assumptions of liberty, and from here constructs a set of things that society and its members owe children. There are ways in which society should support and intervene in parental decisions to guarantee a child's well-being. Ultimately, raising children is a social activity that requires input from society. The author then applies this theory of childhood well-being to develop a framework for medical decision-making for children. He also uses practical examples, such as vaccinations, parental leave, and healthcare access, to demonstrate the implications of his theory for public policy. The Limits of Parental Authority: Childhood Wellbeing as a Social Good will be of interest to research and advanced students working in bioethics, political philosophy, and public health policy. (shrink)

Transparency has been proposed as a way of handling value-ladenness in machine learning (ML). This article highlights limits to this strategy. I distinguish three kinds of transparency: epistemic transparency, retrospective value transparency, and prospective value transparency. This corresponds to different approaches to transparency in ML, including so-called explainable artificial intelligence and governance based on disclosing information about the design process. I discuss three sources of value-ladenness in ML—problem formulation, inductive risk, and specification gaming—and argue that retrospective value transparency is (...) only well-suited for dealing with the first, while the third raises serious challenges even for prospective value transparency. (shrink)

Humeans take reality to be devoid of ‘necessary connections’: things just happen. Laws of nature are to be understood in terms of what ‘just happens’, not vice versa. Here the Humean needs some conception of what it is that ‘just happens’ – a conception of the Humean mosaic. Lewis’s Humeanism incorporates such a conception in the form of a Lewis-style metaphysics of objects, properties, and modality. Newer versions of Humeanism about laws of nature, such as the Better Best Systems approach, (...) typically reject such a Lewisian metaphysics, but it remains unclear what they can offer in its place. By exploring different candidate conceptions, this paper sheds light on the limits of Humeanism about laws of nature: not all conceptions of the Humean mosaic form a suitable basis for a Humean theory of laws. In fact, only a metaphysics roughly in line with Lewis’s will do. The paper ends with a tentative generalization of this result, thus pointing to the ‘limit’ of Humeanism in general: taking the Humean way of thinking to its limit results in a rejection of the whole idea of such a mosaic – and hence of Humean mosaic-based accounts of anything. (shrink)

The mind-body problem remains a central challenge in consciousness studies, with physicalist monism – the view that all mental phenomena are ultimately physical – serving as a dominant paradigm. This paper investigates the limits of physicalist monism in explaining subjective experience by adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates phenomenological philosophy and neuroscience. From the phenomenological perspective, first-person analyses reveal fundamental features of consciousness (such as qualia, intentionality, temporality, and embodiment) that resist reduction to purely physical processes. Neuroscientific findings, while (...) illuminating the neural correlates and functional mechanisms of mind, continue to confront the “hard problem” of explaining why brain activity is accompanied by an inner qualitative life. Through a critique that spans phenomenology’s rich descriptions of experience and neuroscience’s empirical insights, the paper argues that reductive materialist accounts fall short of bridging the explanatory gap between objective brain states and the lived reality of experience. This analysis carries significant implications for the mind-body problem and for consciousness research: a purely physical ontology appears insufficient to fully account for mind. The findings call for a more nuanced framework that accommodates the irreducible first-person dimension of consciousness, potentially through new philosophical models or integrative methodologies (e.g. neurophenomenology) that can more comprehensively address the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Venetian Red, an iron-oxide earth pigment long used as an invisible ground in Western painting, has underpinned realist image-making for more than five centuries. Technical literature documents its permanence and tonal stability, but its conceptual potential has been overlooked. This essay traces Venetian Red’s role from Renaissance Venice through Rembrandt, Chardin, Turner, and Robert Henri, showing how the pigment served illusion by disappearing. It then repositions Venetian Red as a contemporary strategy of Structural Omission: the deliberate construction of images that (...) build realism only to reveal its limits in the post-certainty era. By reactivating a material once trusted to stabilize representation, Structural Omission makes incompleteness structural rather than stylistic, countering today’s algorithmic drive toward seamless visual closure. -/- Author’s note: This essay approaches Venetian Red from the perspective of an artist rather than a technical pigment historian. It references well-documented historical uses of iron-oxide grounds to support a conceptual argument about Structural Omission, not to provide exhaustive conservation scholarship. (shrink)

We present a new proposal for what to do at limits in the revision theory. The usual criterion for a limit stage is that it should agree with any definite verdicts that have been brought about before that stage. We suggest that one should not only consider definite verdicts that have been brought about but also more general properties; in fact any closed property can be considered. This more general framework is required if we move to considering revision theories (...) for concepts that are concerned with real numbers, but also has consequences for more traditional revision theories such as the revision theory of truth. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a revival of scientific, political and philosophical discourse concerning the notion of ecological limits. This article provides a conceptual overview of descriptive ecological limit claims—i.e. claims that there are real, biophysical limits—and reviews work in political and social philosophy in which such claims form the basis of proposals for normative limits. The latter are classified in terms of three broad types of normative theorising: distributive justice, institutional/legal reform, and the good life. Within these (...) three categories, the article reviews normative proposals for limits on both aggregate‐level and individual‐level ecological exploitation. It also considers the relevance of political and ideological facts to the normative analysis of ecological limits, raising methodological questions about how normative theorists should respond to a world facing escalating ecological challenges. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers we have developed what we call the DEKI account of scientific representation, according to which models represent their targets via keys. These keys provide a systematic way to move from model-features to features to be imputed to their targets. We show how keys allow for accurate representation in the presence of idealisation, and further illustrate how investigating them provides novel ways to approach certain currently debated questions in the philosophy of science. To add specificity, (...) we offer a detailed analysis of a kind of key that that is crucial in many parts of physics, namely what we call limit keys. These keys exploit the fact that the features exemplified by these models are limits of the features of the target. (shrink)

This volume responds to the growing interest in finding explanations for why moral claims may lose their validity based on what they ask of their addressees. Two main ideas relate to that question: the moral demandingness objection and the principle "ought implies can." Though both of these ideas can be understood to provide an answer to the same question, they have usually been discussed separately in the philosophical literature. The aim of this collection is to provide a focused and comprehensive (...) discussion of these two ideas and the ways in which they relate to one another, and to take a closer look at the consequences for the limits of moral normativity in general. Chapters engage with contemporary discussions surrounding "ought implies can" as well as current debates on moral demandingness, and argue that applying the moral demandingness objection to the entire range of normative ethical theories also calls for an analysis of its (metaethical) presuppositions. The contributions to this volume are at the leading edge of ethical theory, and have implications for moral theorists, philosophers of action, and those working in metaethics, theoretical ethics and applied ethics. (shrink)

This chapter distinguishes between different uses of mathematical limits in physics and determines the conditions under which an infinite limit should be understood as giving rise to an “infinite idealization,” intended as a misrepresentation of the target system by way of introducing an infinite system. It points out that when infinite limits are used as infinite idealizations they can lead one to the Paradox of Infinite Limits, which allegedly poses a threat to scientific realism. In particular, this (...) depends on whether the idealization is _essential_ for the explanation of the physical phenomenon under investigation. Instead, other uses of infinite limits such as approximations and abstractions do not raise any substantial problem for scientific realism. The chapter also argues that, even in the case of “essential idealizations,” there are ways of coping with the alleged incompatibility between infinite idealizations and scientific realism, which ultimately rely on empirical considerations. (shrink)

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue in recent work that “semiotic” or “symbolic” objections to markets are unsuccessful. I counter-argue that there are indeed some semiotic limits on markets and that anti-commodification theorists are not merely expressing disgust when they disapprove of markets in certain goods on those grounds. One central argument is that, contrary to what Brennan and Jaworski claim, semiotic arguments against markets do not depend fundamentally on meanings that prevail about markets. Rather, they depend on the (...) meanings that attach to various goods, meanings that give us moral bases on which to make judgments about their prospective commodification. (shrink)

James Stacey Taylor, in his book Markets With Limits, argues that Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski, in their book Markets Without Limits, systematically mischaracterize the views of the anti-commodification theorists they are critiquing, attributing to them positions (e.g., semiotic essentialism and an asymmetry thesis) that they do not hold. Further, Taylor offers an anti-commodification hypothesis of his own to explain why talented academics like Brennan and Jaworski could fall into such systematic mistakes – namely, that the intrusion of (...) market norms into academia incentivizes scholars to prioritize original arguments in prominent venues over careful fact-checking. I argue that Taylor is correct in charging that Brennan and Jaworski have gotten their opponents’ views wrong; and I show how their subsequent replies to Taylor’s criticisms have been unconvincing. I also argue, however, that Taylor may be over-hasty in identifying the likely causes of their errors. (shrink)

In response to critiques of rights as moralistic and depoliticising, a literature on the political nature and contestability of rights has emerged. In this view, rights are not merely formal, liberal and moralistic imperatives, but can also be invoked by the excluded in a struggle against domination. This article examines the limits to this practice of rights-claiming and its implication in forms of domination. It does this by returning to Marx’s blueprint for the critique of subjective rights. This engagement (...) with Marx will, however, take a particular form. I will read Marx first through the eyes of Claude Lefort and thereafter against Lefort. The latter’s critique of Marx still constitutes the strongest case against the dismissal of subjective rights. Introducing a reading of Lefort into the argument allows us to discover what is dead and what is well alive in the Marxist theory of rights. What is dead, I will argue, is Marx’s early conception of subjective rights as ideology and illusion. However, the more mature Marx developed a theory and critique of the legal form that is able to explain why the politics of rights—despite its undeniable advances—has not been able to overcome certain forms of domination. (shrink)

In this article, we illuminate the affective phenomenon of loneliness by exploring the question of how it relates to love and other forms of friendship. We reflect in particular on the question of how different forms of loneliness are relevant to human existence. Distinguishing three forms of loneliness, we first introduce two border cases of loneliness: unfelt loneliness in which one’s individuality is denied and one therefore cannot feel lonely; and existential loneliness in which the possibility of intimacy and existential (...) communication are denied and one therefore cannot but feel lonely. We then turn to loneliness that occurs within intimate friendships—even the most intimate ones. In our analysis, we pay attention especially to the role of communication. In order to do so, we repeatedly turn to poetic expressions of loneliness. We argue that loneliness cannot reflect only the absence or partial failure of communication but also the inherent limits of communication. These limits in turn point back to the nature of human existence and love itself. (shrink)

A.W. Moore presents eighteen of his philosophical essays, written since 1986, on representing how things are. He sketches out the nature, scope, and limits of representation through language, and pays particular attention to linguistic representation, states of knowledge, the character of what is represented, and objective facts or truths.

With narrow exception, physicians’ treatment of incapacitated patients requires the consent of health surrogates. Although the decision-making authority of surrogates is appropriately broad, their moral authority is not without limits. Discerning these bounds is particularly germane to ethically complex treatments and has important implications for the welfare of patients, for the professional integrity of clinicians, and, in fact, for the welfare of surrogates. Palliative sedation is one such complex treatment; as such, it provides a valuable model for analyzing the (...) scope of surrogates’ moral authority. Guidelines for palliative sedation that present it as a “last-resort” treatment for severe and intractable suffering yet require surrogate consent in order to offer it are ethically untenable, precisely because the moral limits of surrogate authority have not been considered. (shrink)

Does scientific knowledge have limits? This chapter tries to answer this question by first investigating the distinct nature of scientific knowledge, as contrasted with other kinds of knowledge. Two plausible proposals are considered: scientific knowledge as high-grade knowledge and scientific knowledge as objectifying knowledge. The chapter then investigates what these two proposals entail for the question of whether scientific knowledge is limited. It turns out that, on both proposals, there are in-principle limits to what can be known scientifically. (...) This spells trouble for any forms of scientism denying this. (shrink)

This paper reviews the contemporary discussion on the epistemological and ontological effects of Big Data within social science, observing an increased focus on relationality and complexity, and a tendency to naturalize social phenomena. The epistemic limits of this emerging computational paradigm are outlined through a comparison with the discussions in the early days of digitalization, when digital technology was primarily seen through the lens of dematerialization, and as part of the larger processes of “postmodernity”. Since then, the online landscape (...) has become increasingly centralized, and the “liquidity” of dematerialized technology has come to empower online platforms in shaping the conditions for human behavior. This contrast between the contemporary epistemological currents and the previous philosophical discussions brings to the fore contradictions within the study of digital social life: While qualitative change has become increasingly dominant, the focus has gone towards quantitative methods; while the platforms have become empowered to shape social behavior, the focus has gone from social context to naturalizing social patterns; while meaning is increasingly contested and fragmented, the role of hermeneutics has diminished; while platforms have become power hubs pursuing their interests through sophisticated data manipulation, the data they provide is increasingly trusted to hold the keys to understanding social life. These contradictions, we argue, are partially the result of a lack of philosophical discussion on the nature of social reality in the digital era; only from a firm metatheoretical perspective can we avoid forgetting the reality of the system under study as we are affected by the powerful social life of Big Data. (shrink)

This open access book is about exploring interesting borderline cases of art. It discusses the cases of gustatory and olfactory artworks, proprioceptive artworks, intellectual artworks, as well as the vague limits between painting and photography. The book focuses on the author’s research about what counts as art and what does not, as well as on the nature of these limits. Overall, the author defends a very inclusive view, 'extending' the limits of art, and he argues for its (...) virtues. Some of the limits discussed concern our senses, some concern vagueness and fuzzy boundaries between different types of works of art, some concern the amount of human intention and intervention in the process of creation of an artwork, and some concern the border between art and science. In these various ways, by understanding better such borderline cases, Benovsky suggests that we get a better grip on an understanding of the nature of art. (shrink)

The normative principle that every individual is equally entitled to continued life is a subject of debate in ethics, health economics and policy. We reconsider this principle in the context of setting priorities for healthcare interventions. When applied without restriction, the principle overlooks quality of life concerns entirely. However, we contend that it remains ethically relevant in certain situations, particularly when patients suffer from conditions unrelated to the therapeutic areas and treatments under consideration. Thus, we defend the principle while also (...) emphasizing the need for its application within tight limits. (shrink)

In this paper, the epistemological and conceptual limits of our ability to conceive and reason about future possibilities are analyzed. It is argued that more attention should be paid in futures studies on these epistemological and conceptual limits. Drawing on three cases from philosophy of science, the paper argues that there are deep epistemological and conceptual limits in our ability to conceive and reason about alternatives to the current world. The nature and existence of these limits (...) are far from obvious and become visible only through careful investigation. The cases establish that we often are unable to conceive relevant alternatives; that historical and counterfactual considerations are more limited than has been suggested; and that the present state of affairs reinforces its hegemony through multiple conceptual and epistemological mechanisms. The paper discusses the reasons behind the limits of the conceivability and the consequences that follow from the considerations that make the limits visible. The paper suggests that the epistemological and conceptual limits in our ability to conceive and reason about possible futures should be mapped systematically. The mapping would provide a better understanding of the creative and critical bite of futures studies. (shrink)

This paper examines the structural conditions under which legal responsibility can be justifiably assigned, especially in cases where the subject is cognitively, psychologically, or ontologically incapable of moral judgement. Using the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance), we analyze the foundations of legal judgement and show that when judgement is not structurally possible, traditional frameworks of liability collapse. We then propose criteria for structurally legitimate substitution of legal responsibility, outlining the ethical limits of legal personhood in cases involving infants, Al (...) systems, and mentally incapacitated individuals. (shrink)

Does the failure of others to comply with collective duties create duties for us to step in and do their share? Defenders of the so-called duty to take up the slack answer this question in the positive. Against their view, defenders of fair shares argue that we only have a duty to contribute our fair share to discharging the collective duty. This paper offers a partial vindication of Liam Murphy’s account of fair shares. I argue that three common objections to (...) fair shares fail to rebut Murphy’s account. On the reading I propose, fair shares may ground as – or more – extensive duties towards third parties as the duty to take up the slack. In addition, fair shares provides something that defenses of slack-taking tend to omit – an account of the limits of our nonideal duties. The paper highlights previously overlooked aspects of Murphy’s account and paves the way for future discussions about slack-taking in the domain of global politics. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume discuss, in different styles and to various extents, a relatively neglected theme in philosophy. This theme is the limits of intelligibility or, in the editor’s...

This paper aims to address the difficulties of high school students in bridging their computational understanding with their visualization skills in understanding the notion of the limits in their calculus class. This research used a pre-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design research on 62 grade 10 students enrolled in the Science, Technology, and Engineering Program (STEP) in one of the public high schools in Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines. A series of remedial sessions were given to help them understand the function values, (...) one-sided limits, limits of a function, and its discontinuities with the aid of the GeoGebra. Results revealed that there is a significant improvement in their mathematics performance before and after the remediation, t(61) = -19.99, p<.05. The real-time feedback provided by the drawing interface of GeoGebra has provided the students the insights into how objects behave in geometrical space, bridging their understanding in locating the values shown by the computational algebraic processes. Additionally, the significant difference in the achievement reveals a large effect size (Cohen’s =2.54) which could be accounted for by the remediation using interactive activities in the GeoGebra. (shrink)

While moral arguments for limiting market expansionism proliferate, a fundamental question has been left unanswered: the moral limits of what, exactly? Moral Limits of Markets (MLM) theorists tend to employ different terms – markets, putting a price tag, buying and selling – interchangeably and inconsistently to describe the phenomenon they are troubled by. I clarify this ambiguity by offering a novel taxonomy of different dimensions of exchange I identify as the sources of the normative concerns of most MLM (...) arguments: Alienation, Commodification, Marketization, Privatization. This taxonomy allows us to better understand why and what about ‘markets’ should be limited. (shrink)

I offer a contribution to recent work on Margaret Macdonald (1903–1956), a prolific though largely unknown figure in the history of analytic philosophy who applied Wittgensteinian insights to a broad range of issues. Here I examine the development of Macdonald's views with respect to idealism and conventionalism, through the application of a conceptual distinction between limits and limitations found in discussions of the same issue as it appears in the work of Wittgenstein. I show that Macdonald rejected both Platonism, (...) idealism, and conventionalism in her doctoral thesis, and that she subsequently viewed these positions as specimens of nonsense issued under the misapprehension that necessary truths admit of justification. (shrink)

The world we live in is filled with massive problems, like climate change, racism and animal suffering. This motivates the idea of ‘moral discretion’: since it is impossible for us to address all of these problems, we get to choose which ones to fight. We think moral discretion is worth taking seriously – we cannot and should not do it all. Yet, we also think the case for moral discretion faces problems. These stem from tensions that arise between an acknowledgment (...) of inefficacy and a concern for demandingness. In light of these problems, we suggest that if we do enjoy moral discretion of the relevant form, it is subject to more limits than previously thought. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the current use of ethical artificial intelligence (AI), argues that there are ideological limits to it, and discusses these limits. The topic is of particular relevance to research on the social implementation of AI systems, as ideological underpinnings are not easy to identify and ideology research is underrepresented in research on AI phenomena. The first section analyzes what counts as ethical in ethical AI systems. The second section classifies the dimensions of the ethical in AI (...) systems, highlights their interrelationships and applies forness as a key concept that helps narrow the focus on the ideological component of ethical AI. The third section describes the presence of ideology in ethical AI and clarifies the limits it imposes on AI as a general phenomenon that undoubtedly has the potential to contribute to a more humane society, but is severely constrained by ideology. (shrink)

For decades, much literature on causality has focused on causal processes and causal reasoning in the natural sciences. According to a relatively new trend however, such research on causality remains insufficient because of its refusal to accept a certain degree of pluralism within the concept, a pluralism that is evident in how we use ideas of cause and effect in everyday life. I will build on work in this latter trend, following philosophers like G. E. M. Anscombe and N. Cartwright. (...) I explore the limits of the concept of causality by determining the extent to which our ideas can remain consistent as we stretch this concept along two dimensions, one concerning the maximizing of the effect and the other the maximizing of explanatory depth. Dealing with the cause of the universe, such an investigation touches upon some issues in current empirical cosmology and revisits some classic arguments regarding philosophy of religion and the Platonic notion of participation. The results indicate that the use of current conceptual, logical and analytic tools can deliver new insights that are useful especially for those interested in how causality in the natural sciences links with causality in everyday life. (shrink)

While philosophers have been studying the phenomenon of tolerance for quite a long time and fruitfully, cancel culture has aroused philosophical interest relatively recently. The article reveals the essential connection between the need to make exceptions to the tolerance guideline in order to achieve social justice and the appeal to the cancel culture as inherent in a modern democratic society, in which there are developed information and communication technologies and the corresponding power of influence of social networks. The ethical and (...) social positions of both those who support the cancel culture and those against whom it is directed are analyzed. The need for an involved study of the situation of oppressed social groups is specified in order to achieve an epistemological position sufficient for adequate ethical judgments regarding the parties to the conflict in the situation of cancellation. It is revealed that the partial success of identity politics is due to the fact that it begins to use the cancel culture to stigmatize opponents and apply the principle of toxicity to those who are not direct perpetrators of a gross violation of social justice. It is proven that the cancel culture can excessively exceed the limits of tolerance and in this case cause a counter-reaction with the demand to cancel those who abuse the cancel culture. It is argued that within the framework of its justified and adequate application, not only does cancel culture act as an effective tool for restoring social justice, it is also capable of generating socially beneficial collective ecstatic states and facilitating the creation of constructive, emotionally rich shared experiences. There is noted that the cancel culture as a joint proactive public position contributes to the development of civil society and needs its institutionalization for its further normalization. (shrink)

Many normative theories in business ethics articulate the ethical responsibilities that companies have but fail to specify the ethical responsibilities that companies do not have. This omission can create the misleading impression that companies’ ethical responsibilities are unlimited, leading to both normative and practical problems. This article addresses this gap by exploring the limits of companies’ ethical responsibilities. Using corporate social contract theory, it identifies two sets of boundary principles that delineate when companies no longer have an ethical responsibility (...) to act or to refrain from acting. By advancing a bounded business ethics approach, the article argues that business ethics is not only about what the ethics of business should be but also about what it should not be. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a scientific and philosophical movement that proposes to overcome, through new technologies, the restrictions imposed on us by our biological condition. Some transhumanists assume that the struggle against natural limits could lead to a radical change in our body or even to its replacement. Other authors, such as Nicholas Agar, propose a moderate enhancement that does not exceed the framework of what we understand to be human. In this article, I will offer a plausible interpretation of the (...) project of human enhancement from a Thomistic perspective. To carry out my analysis, I will focus on three fundamental metaphysical and anthropological questions: How do advocates of radical enhancement understand the relationship between limits, imperfections and evils in human nature? How is this relationship understood from moderate positions? And Is any of these proposals compatible with Aquinas’ anthropology? I will conclude that the identification of limits with imperfections and evils assumed by radical positions is incompatible with Aquinas’ anthropology. Nevertheless, this does not entail that any bio-modification is unacceptable. Aquinas’ peculiar metaphysics, together with its anthropology in which the natural, the supernatural and the preternatural realms intertwine, can offer an interesting framework to assess the human enhancement project. (shrink)