In her classic 1969 book, On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families (Kübler-Ross 2014), Kübler-Ross identified many short-comings in the care...

What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject (...) that o is an instance of ‘x is F’ as she understands this, and hence evident that o is F. Seeing that o is F is thus a way of its being evident that o is F and is therefore a way of knowing that o is F. (shrink)

This article is the lead piece in a special report that presents the results of a bioethical investigation into chimeric research, which involves the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals and nonhuman animal embryos, including into their brains. Rapid scientific developments in this field may advance knowledge and could lead to new therapies for humans. They also reveal the conceptual, ethical, and procedural limitations of existing ethics guidance for human‐nonhuman chimeric research. Led by bioethics researchers working closely with an (...) interdisciplinary work group, the investigation focused on generating conceptual clarity and identifying improvements to governance approaches, with the goal of helping scholars, funders, scientists, institutional leaders, and oversight bodies (embryonic stem cell research oversight [ESCRO] committees and institutional animal care and use committees [IACUCs]) deliver principled and trustworthy oversight of this area of science. The article, which focuses on human‐nonhuman animal chimeric research that is stem cell based, identifies key ethical issues in and offers ten recommendations regarding the ethics and oversight of this research. Turning from bioethics’ previous focus on human‐centered questions about the ethics of “humanization” and this research's potential impact on concepts like human dignity, this article emphasizes the importance of nonhuman animal welfare concerns in chimeric research and argues for less‐siloed governance and oversight and more‐comprehensive public communication. (shrink)

I express some reservations about Hart and Hill's attempt to show that certain Scriptural passages show that God sometimes intends that sins occur, though I express sympathy for the view that God sometimes intends that sins occur.

Chris Hill’s consciousness Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9812-4 Authors Fred Dretske, 212 Selkirk, Durham, NC 27707, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

Critical discussion of Chris Hill's perceptual theory of pain.

Hill's views on visual experience are critically examined.

Thomas Hill, a leading figure in the recent development of Kantian moral philosophy, presents a set of essays exploring the implications of basic Kantian ideas for practical issues. The first part of the book provides background in central themes in Kant's ethics; the second part discusses questions regarding human welfare; the third focuses on moral worth-the nature and grounds of moral assessment of persons as deserving esteem or blame. Hill shows moral, political, and social philosophers just how valuable (...) moral theory can be in addressing practical matters. (shrink)

The Neo-Moorean Deduction (I have a hand, so I am not a brain-in-a-vat) and the Zebra Deduction (the creature is a zebra, so isn’t a cleverly disguised mule) are notorious. Crispin Wright, Martin Davies, Fred Dretske, and Brian McLaughlin, among others, argue that these deductions are instances of transmission failure. That is, they argue that these deductions cannot transmit justification to their conclusions. I contend, however, that the notoriety of these deductions is undeserved. My strategy is to clarify, attack, defend, (...) and apply. I clarify what transmission and transmission failure really are, thereby exposing two questionable but quotidian assumptions. I attack existing views of transmission failure, especially those of Crispin Wright. I defend a permissive view of transmission failure, one which holds that deductions of a certain kind fail to transmit only because of premise circularity. Finally, I apply this account to the Neo-Moorean and Zebra Deductions and show that, given my permissive view, these deductions transmit in an intuitively acceptable way—at least if either a certain type of circularity is benign or a certain view of perceptual justification is false. (shrink)

Looking out the window, I see that it's raining outside. Do I know that it’s raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell 2002, Turri 2010, Pritchard 2011, 2012) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can see p and not (...) know that p. In this paper, I argue that their arguments are unsuccessful. (shrink)

This stimulating collection of essays in ethics eschews the simple exposition and refinement of abstract theories. Rather, the author focuses on everyday moral issues, often neglected by philosophers, and explores the deeper theoretical questions which they raise. Such issues are: Is it wrong to tell a lie to protect someone from a painful truth? Should one commit a lesser evil to prevent another from doing something worse? Can one be both autonomous and compassionate? Other topics discussed are servility, weakness of (...) will, suicide, obligations to oneself, snobbery, and environmental concerns. A feature of the collection is the contrast of Kantian and utilitarian answers to these problems. The essays are crisply and lucidly written and will appeal to both teachers and students of philosophy. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers rate error theories poorly. We identify the arguments these philosophers invoke, and expose their deficiencies. We thereby show that the prospects for error theory have been systematically underestimated. By undermining general arguments against all error theories, we leave it open whether any more particular arguments against particular error theories are more successful. The merits of error theories need to be settled on a case-by-case basis: there is no good general argument against error theories.

Respect, Pluralism, and Justice is a series of essays which sketches a broadly Kantian framework for moral deliberation, and then uses it to address important social and political issues. Hill shows how Kantian theory can be developed to deal with questions about cultural diversity, punishment, political violence, responsibility for the consequences of wrongdoing, and state coercion in a pluralistic society.

The modal account of luck is the predominant account of luck in epistemology and ethics. In the first half of this paper, I discuss three possible interpretations of the modal account and raise objections to each. I then raise an objection to all plausible versions of the modal account, that is, that whether an event is lucky or the extent to which it is a matter of luck will depend on what initial conditions or features of the event one holds (...) constant across nearby possible worlds. However, there is often reasonable disagreement about what the relevant initial conditions of an event are, and the modal account of luck has no means of determining which description of the event is correct. As such, the modal account is subject to a kind of reference class problem, and the view cannot actually tell us the extent to which certain events are a matter of luck. (shrink)

The metaphor of weighing reasons brings to mind a single (double-pan balance) scale. The reasons for φ go in one pan and the reasons for ~φ go in the other. The relative weights, as indicated by the relative heights of the two pans of the scale, determine the deontic status of φ. This model is simple and intuitive, but it cannot capture what it is to weigh reasons correctly. A reason pushes the φ pan down toward permissibility (has justifying weight) (...) only insofar as it pushes the ~φ pan up toward impermissibility (has requiring weight). Thus, Single Scale is committed to Single Proportion (first pass): all reasons have the same proportion of justifying and requiring weight. Many normative theories reject Single Proportion, and they are not thereby confused about how to weigh reasons. One can be mistaken about the weight of a reason without being confused about how reasons are to be weighed. Single Scale is problematic, not because it appeals to the image of a scale, but because it appeals to the image of a single scale. We need two scales to capture what it is to weigh reasons correctly. (shrink)

Just as theory of representation is deficient if it can’t explain how misrepresentation is possible, a theory of computation is deficient if it can’t explain how miscomputation is possible. Nonetheless, philosophers have generally ignored miscomputation. My primary goal in this paper is to clarify both what miscomputation is and how to adequately explain it. Miscomputation is a special kind of malfunction: a system miscomputes when it computes in a way that it shouldn’t. To explain miscomputation, you must provide accounts of (...) computational behavior, computational norms, and how computational behavior can deviate from computational norms. A secondary goal of this paper is to defend an (quasi-)individualist, mechanistic theory of miscomputation. Computational behavior is narrowly individuated. Computational norms are widely individuated. A system miscomputes when its behavior manifests a narrow computational structure that the widely individuated norms say that it should not have. (shrink)

While fidelity is a crucial aspect of Jacques Derrida’s thinking as it pertains to issues of faith, ethics, and responsibility, this key position in deconstructionist discourse has hardly yet been brought to light. Less still have the biopolitical resonances of Derrida’s work, with its careful attention to the terms and stakes of life particularly in his later writing, been considered as a deconstructionist practice of fidelity and infidelity in its own right. In pursuing these threads, this essay argues that thinking (...) a deconstructionist ethics through fidelity and biopolitics makes possible the crafting of a new philosophical weave for catching our responsibilities to others – to the very otherness of life itself – that Derridean hospitality opens up. Taken together in this way, a deconstructionist fidelity to life otherwise, to a biopolitics to come, makes possible an infidelity to political order as we know it that explodes the limitations of biopolitical theory. In squinting, blinking, tearing up, and listening, the borders of life are blurred in an ambivalent ethics of a transness within which life itself is made to waver and arrive anew. (shrink)

There is a recent and growing trend in philosophy that involves deferring to the claims of certain disciplines outside of philosophy, such as mathematics, the natural sciences, and linguistics. According to this trend— deferentialism , as we will call it—certain disciplines outside of philosophy make claims that have a decisive bearing on philosophical disputes, where those claims are more epistemically justified than any philosophical considerations just because those claims are made by those disciplines. Deferentialists believe that certain longstanding philosophical problems (...) can be swiftly and decisively dispatched by appeal to disciplines other than philosophy. In this paper we will argue that such an attitude of uncritical deference to any non-philosophical discipline is badly misguided. With reference to the work of John Burgess and David Lewis, we consider deference to mathematics. We show that deference to mathematics is implausible and that main arguments for it fail. With reference to the work of Michael Blome-Tillmann, we consider deference to linguistics. We show that his arguments appealing to deference to linguistics are unsuccessful. We then show that naturalism does not entail deferentialism and that naturalistic considerations even motivate some anti-deferentialist views. Finally, we set out deferentialism’s failings and present our own anti-deferentialist approach to philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

What should we do when faced with powerful theoretical arguments that support a severe change in our personal beliefs and commitments? For example, what should new parents do when confronted by unanswered anti-natalist arguments, or two lovers vexed by social theory that apparently undermines love? On the one hand, it would be irrational to ignore theory just because it’s theory; good theory is evidence, after all. On the other hand, factoring in theory can be objectifying, or risks unraveling one's life, (...) fracturing one's identity or social relations. Sometimes, then, following the evidence where it apparently leads would mean not merely changing what we think but who we are. Some might say that there’s something right about the thought that theory can bear on what we ought to believe, it’s just that when we work with full beliefs, only then do we seriously risk having to substantially alter our doxastic economy when pressed by exceptional theoretical arguments. When we work with partial beliefs, however, this risk is greatly diminished. Others will say that we can advocate or champion revisionary positions whilst rationally retaining our pre-theoretical personal convictions. Still others will argue that we should adopt a Moorean posture towards the revisionary arguments. I argue that each response is inadequate, and argue instead that we are permitted to bracket certain kinds of theoretical evidence against our beliefs because of the personal and ethical risks born out of giving them serious consideration. In turn, some of philosophy's doxastic influence is constrained by its attendant ethical risks: the personal enjoys a partial insulation from the theoretical. I close by addressing what this means for practicing philosophers. (shrink)

Starting from two observations regarding nursing ethics research in the past two decades, namely, the dominant influence of both the empirical methods and the principles approach, we present the cornerstones of a foundational argument-based nursing ethics framework. First, we briefly outline the general philosophical–ethical background from which we develop our framework. This is based on three aspects: lived experience, interpretative dialogue, and normative standard. Against this background, we identify and explore three key concepts—vulnerability, care, and dignity—that must be observed in (...) an ethical approach to nursing. Based on these concepts, we argue that the ethical essence of nursing is the provision of care in response to the vulnerability of a human being in order to maintain, protect, and promote his or her dignity as much as possible. (shrink)

This chapter explores whether and when experience can be evidence. It argues that experiences can be evidence, and that this claim is compatible with just about any epistemological theory. It evaluates the most promising argument for the conclusion that certain experiences (e.g., seeming to see) are always evidence for believing what the experiences represent. While the argument is very promising, one premise needs further defense. The argument also depends on a certain connection between reasonable belief and the first person perspective.

The Beloved Self is about the holy grail of moral philosophy, an argument against egoism that proves that we all have reasons to be moral. Part One introduces three different versions of egoism. Part Two looks at attempts to prove that egoism is false, and shows that even the more modest arguments that do not try to answer the egoist in her own terms seem to fail. But in part Three, Hills defends morality and develops a new problem for egoism, (...) an epistemological problem. She shows that it is not epistemically rational to believe the most plausible versions of egoism. The first part of the book will be most relevant to those interested in moral theory, as it contains detailed discussions of recent interpretations of virtue ethics and especially of Kant's moral theory. The second and third part of the book turn to epistemology, particularly moral epistemology, and include an account of the relationship between knowledge and action, a new theory of moral understanding, and a discussion of the epistemically rational response to various kinds of disagreement. Hills also defends a new account of virtue and of morally worthy action. (shrink)

Annotation Up-to-date and accessible examination of scientific thinking about the nature of consciousness. Chris Nunn sets out the most exciting theoretical and experimental advances in this fast developing and controversial area.

In Algorithms & Autonomy, Rubel, Castro, and Pham (hereafter RCP), argue that the concept of autonomy is especially central to understanding important moral problems about algorithms. In particular, autonomy plays a role in analyzing the version of social contract theory that they endorse. I argue that although RCP are largely correct in their diagnosis of what is wrong with the algorithms they consider, those diagnoses can be appropriated by moral theories RCP see as in competition with their autonomy based theory. (...) Most notably, proponents of consequentialism and virtue ethics can appropriate RCPs insights. This is good news because RCP’s social contract theory is vulnerable to a well known class of counterexamples. The most significant contribution of RCP, if I am right, is in their identification, presentation, and evaluation of concrete cases involving algorithms and not in the more controversial claims about theoretical ethics that RCP themselves see as central to what they are doing. (shrink)

It is plausible that the universe exists: a thing such that absolutely everything is a part of it. It is also plausible that singular, structured propositions exist: propositions that literally have individuals as parts. Furthermore, it is plausible that for each thing, there is a singular, structured proposition that has it as a part. Finally, it is plausible that parthood is a partial ordering: reflexive, transitive, and anti-symmetric. These plausible claims cannot all be correct. We canvass some costs of denying (...) each claim and conclude that parthood is not a partial ordering. Provided that the relevant entities exist, parthood is not anti-symmetric and proper parthood is neither asymmetric nor transitive. (shrink)

Husserl and Cantor were colleagues and close friends during the last 14 years of the nineteenth century, when Cantor was at the height of his creative powers and Husserl in the throes of an intellectual struggle during which he drew apart from people and writings to whom he owed most of his intellectual training and drew closer to the ideas of thinkers whose writings he had not been able to evaluate properly and had consulted too little. I study ways in (...) which Husserl and Cantor might be said to have been alike, while pointing to dissimilarities between them. In particular, I discuss how their ideas overlapped and crisscrossed with regard to mathematics and philosophy, Platonic idealism, abstraction, empiricism, psychologism, actual consciousness and pure logic, Frege’s reviews of their works, metaphysics and mysticism, sets, arithmetization, strange and imaginary numbers and manifolds. I conclude that Cantor was among those of his mentors from whose ideas Husserl drew away and Lotze and Bolzano were among those to whose ideas he drew closer. (shrink)

Kevin Hill presents a highly original study of Nietzsche's thought, the first book to examine in detail his debt to the work of Kant. Hill argues that Nietzsche is a systematic philosopher who knew Kant far better than is commonly thought, and that he can only be properly understood in relation to him. Nietzsche's Critiques will be of great value to scholars and students with interests in either of these philosophical giants, or in the history of ideas generally.

Chris Stewart’s account of his experiences after purchasing a farm in Andalusia, in an isolated farmhouse in the mountains adjacent to Granada, are far from the traditionally bucolic depictions of a pastoral landscape, in which the drawbacks of agricultural life become unquestionably compensated by the bliss of life in nature. Even though, as the title indicates, he seems to be a born romantic and optimist, undefeated by the inconveniences of a life without the everyday commodities of a First-World country (...) in the twenty-first century, his memoir narrative is soon balanced by his own testimony, which provides a realistic counterbalance to Stewart’s initial idealistic portrayal of life in rustic Alpujarras. Nonetheless, as this article intends to demonstrate, it is precisely this necessary demystification of the rural setting prevailing in certain areas in Andalusia that becomes crucial for the establishment of an essential complicity with the audience, thereby trained to appreciate—and even become enthralled by—the reality of the rural surroundings which the contemporary reader can no longer envision as merely a place of “vales and hills” softly covered by “a host of golden daffodils”. El relato que lleva a cabo Chris Stewart acerca de sus experiencias tras adquirir una finca en Andalucía, en un lugar apartado de la sierra lindante con Granada, se aleja de las descripciones bucólicas de paisajes pastorales en los que las desventajas de la vida agrícola quedaban incuestionablemente compensadas por el gozo de la vida en mitad de la naturaleza. Incluso pese a que, tal y como el título de su novela indica, Chris Stewart parece ser un romántico y un optimista de nacimiento, que no se deja vencer por los inconvenientes de una vida sin las comodidades cotidianas de un país del primer mundo en el siglo xxi, su memoria-narrativa se ve inmediatamente equilibrada por su propio testimonio, que proporciona un contrapunto realista al idealizado retrato inicial de la vida en las rústicas Alpujarras. No obstante, como el presente artículo pretende demostrar, es precisamente esta necesaria desmitificación del entorno rural de ciertas zonas de Andalucía lo que resulta crucial para poder establecer una esencial complicidad con el lector, que llega, de este modo, a valorar, e incluso, a sentirse fascinado, por la realidad del contexto agrario, el cual deja ya de percibir meramente como un lugar de «valles y colinas» delicadamente cubierto por «una cohorte de dorados narcisos». (shrink)

International Political Theory focuses on the point where two fields of study meet - International Relations and Political Theory. It takes from the former a central concern with the 'international' broadly defined; from the latter it takes a broadly normative identity. IPT studies the 'ought' questions that have been ignored or side-lined by the modern study of International Relations and the 'international' dimension that Political Theory has in the past neglected. A central proposition of IPT is that the 'domestic' and (...) the 'international' cannot be treated as self-contained spheres, although this does not preclude states and the states-system from being regarded by some practitioners of IPT as central points of reference. This Handbook provides an authoritative account of the issues, debates, and perspectives in the field, guided by two basic questions concerning its purposes and methods of inquiry. First, how does IPT connect with real world politics? In particular, how does it engage with real world problems, and position itself in relation to the practices of real world politics? And second, following on from this, what is the relationship between IPT and empirical research in international relations? This Handbook showcases the distinctive and valuable contribution of normative inquiry not just for its own sake but also in addressing real world problems. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smith of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by a distinguished pair of specialists in their respective fields. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of the original Reus-Smit and Snidal The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by a pair of scholars drawn from alternative perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions. (shrink)

A timely, well-grounded analysis that reveals an inconvenient truth: we can't save capitalism and save the planet.

The authors survey some debates about the nature and structure of physical theories and about the connections between our physical theories and naturalized metaphysics. The discussion is organized around an “ideal view” of physical theories and criticisms that can be raised against it. This view includes controversial commitments regarding the best analysis of physical modalities and intertheory relations. The authors consider the case in favor of taking laws as the primary modal notion, discussing objections related to alleged violations of the (...) laws, the apparent need to appeal to causality, and the status of probability. The “ideal view” includes a commitment that fundamental physical theories are explanatorily sufficient. The authors discuss several challenges to recovering the manifest image from fundamental physics, along with a distinct challenge to reductionism based on acknowledging the contributions of less fundamental theories in physical explanations. (shrink)

It has been suggested that we turn to solar geoengineering to counter global warming, which would consequently transform the relationship of terrestrial plant-life to the sun. This is an article not about geoengineering as such, but instead what is called photosynethics, or, thinking about our moral relationship to the light – in particular, as it is mediated by plants. Working from within but then extending the idea of responsibility found in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, it is argued here that, (...) since the plant cultivates the conditions of life on earth by photosynthesis, its relationship to the sun is then a relation of giving to others that is properly moral. The plant’s existence is an exposure so out of kilter with human ways of understanding existence that it interrupts our own and brings us into a relation of responsibility. It is concluded that rather than redirecting the sun’s radiation, we should turn to plants to reconsider how we live with the light on a heating planet. This first means separating moral responsibility from human vision so that we might encounter light on its own terms, and not simply as an element of rationality or sentiment or discipline. (shrink)

Philosophies of Difference engages with the concept of difference in relation to a number of fundamental philosophical and political problems. Insisting on the inseparability of ontology, ethics and politics, the essays and interview in this volume offer original and timely approaches to thinking nature, sexuate difference, racism, and decoloniality. The collection draws on a range of sources, including Latin American Indigenous ontologies and philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Mills, and Eduardo Viveiros (...) de Castro. -/- The contributors think embodiment and life by bringing continental philosophy into generative dialogue with fields including plant studies, animal studies, decoloniality, feminist theory, philosophy of race, and law. Affirming the importance of interdisciplinarity, Philosophies of Difference contributes to a creative and critical intervention into established norms, limits, and categories. Invoking a conception of difference as both constitutive and generative, this collection offers new and important insights into how a rethinking of difference may ground new and more ethical modes of being and being-with. Philosophies of Difference unearths the constructive possibilities of difference for an ethics of relationality, and for elaborating non-anthropocentric sociality. -/- The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in Australian Feminist Law Journal. (shrink)

Public arguments can be good or bad not only as a matter of logic, but also in the sense that speakers can do good or bad things with arguments. For example, hate speakers use public arguments to contribute to the subordination of their targets. But how can ordinary speakers acquire the authority to perform subordinating speech acts? This is the ‘Authority Problem’. This paper defends a solution inspired by McGowan’s (Australas J Philos 87:389–407, 2009) analysis of oppressive speech, including against (...) concerns raised by McGowan (Just words: On speech and hidden harm, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019) herself. A deflated kind of authority can be gained from the hate speaker’s standing in a norm-governed ‘activity of oppression’. We should be wary about engaging with such speakers in public argument. Even if we counter their arguments, we may still elevate their standing within that activity and so enable them to perform more pernicious speech acts than was previously possible. (shrink)