Ethics, Misc

Almost everyone allows that conditions can obtain that exempt agents from moral responsibility—that someone is not a morally responsible agent if certain conditions obtain. In his seminal Freedom and Resentment, Peter Strawson denies that the truth of determinism globally exempts agents from moral responsibility. As has been noted elsewhere, Strawson appears committed to the surprising thesis that being an evil person is an exempting condition. Less often noted is the fact that various Strawsonians—philosophers sympathetic with Strawson’s account of moral responsibility—at (...) least appear to have difficulty incorporating evil persons into their accounts of moral responsibility. In what follows, I argue that Strawson is not committed to supposing that being evil is an exempting condition—at least, that he can allow that evil persons are morally responsible agents. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that the concepts of evil and wickedness cannot be well grasped by those inclined to a naturalist bent, perhaps because evil is so intimately tied to religious discourse or because it is ultimately not possible to understand evil, period. By contrast, I argue that evil—or, at least, what it is to be an evil person—can be understood by naturalist philosophers, and I articulate an independently plausible account of evil character.

Typically, philosophers interested in evil have typically been concerned with reconciling (or not) the apparent existence of gratuitous suffering with the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient and supremely loving and caring Deity. Undeniably, ‘evil’ functions as a mass noun: note the intelligibility of asking “Why is there so much evil in the world?” But ‘evil’ sometimes functions as an adjective and is used variously to describe persons, actions, desires, motives, and intentions; Joel Feinberg even speaks of “evil smells.” In (...) what follows, I shall consider the relationship between evil actions, evildoers—that is, persons disposed to perform evil actions—and evil people. Roughly, I defend the simple thesis that being an evil person just is being an evildoer. (shrink)

Enosamento é um emaranhado de Nós que se expõe numa escrita vivencial, desde sensibilidades que se relatam num encadeamento racional, sim, mas também literário-simbólico-imaginativo-análogo que eticamente quer desde a dor com a Outra, desde a alteridade, do enlutamento... (esta reticência não é retórica) não expressar, explicar, dizer o que seriam os comportamentos éticos ou virtuosos, mas romper com qualquer possibilidade ontológica e possibilitar aproximações. Judith Butler nos auxilia neste movimento, de sentir como que as identidades nos aprisionam e a necessidade (...) de rompimento com elas para poder pensar-praticar políticas efetivas na transformação da atual ordem social Moderna, Capitalista, Liberal. (shrink)

Dependency is a keyword in disability studies. The article reviews the negative force of the term and why disability researchers and activists have made the case for the independence of disabled people. But dependency, I claim, is a feature of any human life and I argue that disability studies needs to neutralize the term and appropriate dependency as that which binds people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. I argue that we can acknowledge dependency and work toward an ideal of (...) "managed dependency.". (shrink)

Pursuing difficult long-term goals typically involves encountering substantial evidence of possible future failure. If decisions to pursue such goals are serious only if one believes that one will act as one has decided, then some of our lives’ most important decisions seem to require belief against the evidence. This is the puzzle of difficult action, to which I offer a solution. I argue that serious decisions to φ do not have to give rise to a belief that one will φ, (...) but can instead be accompanied by a hope to φ. Hope can motivate and rationalize the various actions that we associate with serious commitment. It can also account for the existence of special pressures to adopt an agential stance toward one’s future. Because hope can be cognitively rational when belief is not, there is no problematic tension between the ideal of epistemic rationality and the phenomenon of difficult action. (shrink)

Theories of moral desert focus only on the personal culpability of the agent to determine the amount of blame and punishment the agent deserves. I defend an alternative account of desert, one that does not focus only facts about offenders and their offenses. In this revised framework, personal culpability can do no more than set upper and lower limits for deserved blame and punishment. For more precise judgments within that spectrum, additional factors must be considered, factors that are independent of (...) the agent and the offense. I refer to this as the ‘partial conception’ of desert because takes facts about victims—their behavior, desires, and attitudes—into account for desert judgments. On my view, then, agents who are equally culpable may deserve different amounts of blame or punishment, depending on these victim-related factors. (shrink)

As library collections and services have increasingly moved from print to digital, much of the work that used to be done by libraries themselves with regard to creating, maintaining, and managing the systems that hold collections and facilitate user access to them is now done primarily by vendors. This change to the information services landscape for academic libraries is the occasion not only of technical and procedural challenges, but also some internal conflicts concerning the ethical demands of the library profession. (...) This essay examines the ways in which these conflicts become acute and obvious when attention is paid to the way in which attempts to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are undermined by the handover of library services to vendors, even when—or perhaps especially when—those vendors use their control of content and platforms to commodify diverse content instead of making the necessary systemic changes required by truly effective EDI efforts. (shrink)

This paper proposes a concept of justice for future people that is mindful of Indigenous critiques of the so-called »Anthropocene«. I first review these critiques, which suggest that motivating pro-futural care by dreading an impending climate crisis tends to betray a privileged, often settler-colonial perspective. The beneficiaries of colonialism now have the »luxury« of viewing the environmental crisis as one that lies mostly in the future, while many Indigenous communities have been living with such a crisis for a long time. (...) I then review various Indigenous accounts of intergenerational relations, in which I find the wide-spread claim that present generations owe to descendants because they received gifts from ancestors as well as the land. I elaborate this view as what I call asymmetrical reciprocity among generations. The final section argues that this view can help to demarginalize the future: above all, by disallowing a linear view of time according to which a focus on the future permits the neglect of the past. Hence, climate ethics and intergenerational justice must face the history of colonialism. (shrink)

This paper argues that hate differs from mere disliking in terms of its “depth,” which is understood via a notion of “othering,” whereby one rejects at least some aspect of the identity of the target of hate, identifying oneself as not being what they are. Fleshing this out reveals important differences between personal hate, which targets a particular individual, and impersonal hate, which targets groups of people. Moreover, impersonal hate requires focusing on the place hate has within particular sorts of (...) communities, enabling a further important distinction between “insider” and “outsider” hate in terms of whether the hater includes members of the targeted group within a particular community or rejects them as “beneath” membership in that community. (shrink)

In this paper, I first consider three possible explanations for why celebrities typically apologise publicly and sometimes also include their fans among the targets of their apology. I then identify three moral dangers of celebrity apologies, the third of which arises specifically for fan-targeted apologies, and each of which teaches us important lessons about the practice of celebrity apologies. From these individual lessons, I draw more general lessons about apologies from those with elevated social positions and the powers they are (...) associated with. (shrink)

The last line of the nine movie Skywalker Saga in Star Wars has Rey, a Palpatine, claim that she is actually Rey Skywalker. By looking at theories of friendship we can make sense of this final line in the movies by showing that Rey is indicating that she is knowingly adopting the values associated with the community of the Jedi and the many friends she has made in The Resistance.

This commentary is part of a symposium on my book 'Getting Our Act Together: A Theory of Collective Moral Obligations' (Routledge, 2021). Here, I respond to the members of the North American Society for Social Philosophy’s 2022 Book Award Committee. I discuss whether most moral theory is individualistic, arguing that “traditional ethical theories” - meaning the traditions of Virtue Ethics, Kantian ethics as well as consequentialist ethics - certainly are. All of these focus on what individual agents ought to do (...) or how they ought to be. The commentators wonder whether any substantive moral theory can accommodate the idea of collective obligations? I suggest that one of my conditions for collective moral obligations is incompatible with objectivist versions of act-utilitarianism, which require moral agents to choose the option that actually maximises utility. Having said that, core elements of my account of collective moral obligations can be used with any substantive theory. Further, the theory—in its entirety—can be used with several substantive theories, including versions of all the major types of moral theory. How common are collective obligations? On my understanding, as fundamentally social thinkers, we are fairly flexible at switching between the we-mode and the I-mode, and will regularly respond to contextual cues for framing collective action scenarios. As such, I am not worried that there would be too few circumstances under which we have all-out collective obligations. What is more, we can generate such obligations by providing contextual cues for others that prompt them to frame situations as opportunities for joint action and to perform contributory actions. Another question raised by the commentators was if for having collective obligations it is crucial that we believe others will contribute? My answer is that such obligations do not necessarily depend on having positive evidence that concrete others are or will be contributing. Having said that, where we have positive evidence that others will not contribute and in particular where we know that their failure to contribute will unilaterally undermine the possibility of success of any collective action (as in strict joint necessity cases) this may undermine collective obligations. On my theory, what happens if people disagree on what is morally best? On my view, where such divergence between moral positions comes as a result of disagreement between morally motivated, reasonable, and well-informed people it undermines their collective obligation. Finally, are there “negative” collective duties? Yes, in fact collective harm cases can be conceived of as generating “negative” duties to collectively refrain from generating these kinds of harms, including our obligations to mitigate climate change through reducing greenhouse emissions. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers rely almost exclusively on quantitative surveys that potentially misrepresent participants’ multifarious judgments. To assess the efficacy of qualitative methods in experimental philosophy and reveal limitations with quantitative surveys, a study was conducted on the Kantian principle that ‘ought implies can’, which limits moral obligation to actions that agents can do. Specifically, the think aloud method and a follow-up interview were employed in a modified version of a prominent experiment that recorded participants’ judgments of ability, blame, and obligation using (...) quantitative surveys. The modified version produced quantitative results similar to the original experiment along with qualitative data that reveal that the surveys fundamentally misrepresented participants’ judgments. The qualitative transcripts from 40 participants are analyzed to show that ‘ought implies can’ judgments are complex and multifarious, that ‘ought implies can’ judgments are misrepresented by quantitative survey questions, and that the majority of participants uphold or preserve ‘ought implies can.’ The results suggest that experimental philosophers can more accurately capture judgments by using qualitative methods, and that studies which rely on quantitative surveys possibly misrepresent participants’ judgments. (shrink)

This article ("Looting or Sharing?") is located at the intersection of societal and ecological discourses, and analyzes local actions from the perspective of digital ethics. The case study is centered around a public bookcase (or free library) in a neighborhood in the Ruhr area, a post-industrial and partly impoverished metropolitan district in Germany. The rather banal local actions - people take books from the public bookcase as is the proclaimed objective of having such an institution in the first place - (...) eventually morph into highly polarized discussion threads on a local social media platform that are charged with bitter accusations of "looting" (i.e., allegations of some people taking out too many books) and rife with outrage (i.e., allegations of some people selling books taken from the free library on secondary markets). This debate reflects a conflict that points to larger social divisions and rifts. This is analyzed empirically (via a discourse analysis) and philosophically (drawing on Aristotle as well as contemporary debates on moralism). When the free sharing of books, i.e., the recycling of otherwise unused goods, gets scandalized by some residents of the neighborhood as "looting," as the accusations on social media proclaim, this conflict suggests a self-referential moralism among the online discussants. Epistemic fallacies combined with irrational counterfactual claims lead to immoderate hypercriticism. This is a finding that can be observed in many online debates and points to larger disruptions in the digital arena. (shrink)

One way to think about the philosophical significance of hatred is to consider doctrines that are characterised by feelings of hatred. A good candidate is misanthropy, which is often conceived as an attitude of hatred directed at humankind at large. I start by sketching a working account of misanthropy as a critical verdict or judgment on the contemporary condition of humankind as it has become. The criticism is directed at the array of vices and failings that are ubiquitous and entrenched (...) within the wider structures of human life, rather than those of individual persons. In one of its forms, misanthropy manifests itself in feelings of hatred for those entrenched failings and the patterns of awful behaviour which they motivate and sustain - for instance, the figure that Kant called the "enemy of mankind", or the radical eco-misanthropes who populated much American radical environmentalism of the 1980s, with their calls to 'tear down' the 'whole human world'. I then argue that such hateful 'enemies of mankind' represent only one among a set of modes of misanthropy. These have more peaceable affective and practical profiles that offer us forms of misanthropy without hatred. If so, we can think philosophically about hate in relation to misanthropy and about the potential scope of hatred. Thinking about the entrenched vices and failings constitutive of our life as it has become offers a way of intelligibly hating something as large as 'humanity'. But there are other responses to those vices and failings than hatred. I end by speculating that although hateful misanthropy tends to dominate discussions of misanthropy, historically it is the least common. That, itself, might tell us something about the sustainability of hatred. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 45-52, January 2022.

Una de las características principales del desarrollo de la modernidad ha sido el encubrimiento de los fines naturales de la técnica. En este artículo profundizamos en esa desnaturalización, que ha hecho de la tecnología un elemento susceptible de estar al servicio de un poder deshumanizante. Sostenemos que este proceso ha llevado al oscurecimiento de una visión natural del ser humano que evita fundamentar la integración de su vida con el bien de la sociedad. Por tanto, se percibe en la actualidad (...) un desgajamiento entre los fines naturales de la humanidad y los elementos técnicos que solo puede ser corregido por el potenciamiento de los vínculos dentro de una comunidad. Con este marco, analizamos los problemas que derivan del planteamiento moderno desde las perspectivas antropológica, ética y sociológica. (shrink)

Against a certain contemporary style of thinking that wishes to go beyond finitude entirely, I propose a finite praxis modeled after Jean-Luc Nancy’s finite thinking. I argue that the desire to imm...

Humor is unlike other forms of communication because its content is not meant literally. Like acts of play, humor is not intended to be taken at face value. As a consequence, the assumptions and rules that govern normal conversation do not apply. Humor therefore depends upon both the speaker and the audience fully understanding that what was communicated should be treated in this unique way. The play frame refers to this shared understanding about the nature of the communication. Analyzing whether (...) a communication falls within the play frame may help us better understand not only whether the communication can be deemed non-serious or serious, but also whether it can be treated uniquely as merely the speaker’s attempt at play or as a typical instance of literal speech for which the speaker can be deemed ethically responsible. (shrink)

With few exceptions, the field of Eastern Christian studies has primarily been concerned with historical-critical analysis, hermeneutics, and sociology. For the most part it has not attempted to bring Eastern Christian philosophy into serious engagement with contemporary thought. This volume seeks to redress the matter by bringing the Eastern Christian tradition into a meaningful dialogue with contemporary philosophy. It boasts a diverse group of scholars―specialists in ancient philosophy, analytic philosophy, and continental philosophy―who engage with a wide range of pressing issues. (...) Among other things, it addresses such topics as contemporary atheism, the metaphysics of action, religious epistemology, the philosophy of language, bioethics, the philosophy of race, and human rights. In so doing, it aims to introduce contemporary readers to unique perspectives and novel arguments often overlooked by mainstream anglophone philosophy. (shrink)

This book argues that it can be both reasonable and appropriate to adopt a certain kind of misanthropy. The author defends a cognitivist version of misanthropy, an attitude whose central feature is the judgment that humanity is morally bad. Misanthropy is often dismissed on moral grounds. Many people hold that malice toward human persons is problematic and vulnerable to moral objections. In this book, the author advocates for cognitivist misanthropy. He defends an Asymmetry Thesis, according to which a morally bad (...) deed carries more weight than a morally good deed, even if the harm of the former is exactly equal to the benefit of the latter. He makes the case that being misanthropic in the cognitivist sense is morally permissible and compatible with a broad range of moral reasons for action. He also considers the role of misanthropy in environmental thought, arguing that charges of misanthropy against certain "non-anthropocentric" views do not have the force they are typically thought to carry. Finally, the author investigates the practical implications of adopting cognitivist misanthropy, asking what living with such an attitude would involve. A Philosophical Defense of Misanthropy will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in ethics and the philosophy of human nature. (shrink)

Addresses a common criticism of Williams' so-called "Necessary Boredom Thesis," arguing that the criticism misconstrues the kind of boredom that Williams is worried about. Then offers an independent reason to worry about the Necessary Boredom Thesis, given the relevant construal of boredom. Finally, develops a weaker version of Williams' worries about choosing to live an immortal existence, arguing that immortality threatens to undermine our ability to stand for the things in our lives.

In this paper, we introduce an enactive account of loving as participatory sense-making inspired by the “I love to you” of the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. Emancipating from the fusionist concept of romantic love, which understands love as unity, we conceptualise loving as an existential engagement in a dialectic of encounter, in continuous processes of becoming-in-relation. In these processes, desire acquires a certain prominence as the need to know (the other, the relation, oneself) more. We build on Irigaray’s account of (...) love to present a phenomenology of loving interactions and then our enactive account. Finally, we draw some implications for ethics. These concern language, difference, vulnerability, desire, and self-transformation. (shrink)

Bringing together literary scholars, computer scientists, ethicists, philosophers of mind, and scholars from affiliated disciplines, this collection of essays offers important and timely insights into the pasts, presents, and, above all, possible futures of Artificial Intelligence. This book covers topics such as ethics and morality, identity and selfhood, and broader issues about AI, addressing questions about the individual, social, and existential impacts of such technologies. Through the works of science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Stanislaw Lem, Ann Leckie, Iain (...) M. Banks, and Martha Wells, alongside key visual productions such as Ex Machina, Westworld, and Her, contributions illustrate how science fiction might inform potential futures as well as acting as a springboard to bring disciplinary knowledge to bear on significant developments of Artificial Intelligence. Addressing a broad, interdisciplinary audience, both expert and non-expert readers gain an in-depth understanding of the wide range of pressing issues to which Artificial Intelligence gives rise, and the ways in which science fiction narratives have been used to represent them. Using science fiction in this manner enables readers to see how even fictional worlds and imagined futures have very real impacts on how we understand these technologies. As such, readers are introduced to theoretical positions on Artificial Intelligence through fictional works as well as encouraged to reflect on the diverse aspects of Artificial Intelligence through its many philosophical, social, legal, scientific, and cultural ramifications. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz continue in the tradition of Plato with their work on the role of education in a just society. Both argue that a just society depends on education enabling citizens to realize democratic or civic equality and that this equality depends on sufficiency in the distribution of educational goods. I agree that education is important to preparing democratic citizens, but I disagree about the plausibility of sufficiency here, especially in the educational context. My argument is two‐fold: (...) I first reconsider a generic positional goods objection to educational inequality, I then argue that plausible sufficientarian replies to this objection fail insofar as they are premised on an impoverished conception of class and power that treats all statuses more like socio‐cultural traits when they should instead be referencing the material conditions someone has inside a social structure. One cannot bring an individual X into the halls of power and simultaneously have X represent or compensate those who are presently disadvantaged in the way that X had formerly been disadvantaged. In short, we should worry about the realistic possibility of securing and sustaining a civic‐minded elite because elites have the power and motivation to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us. For the sufficientarian story to work, we need more that explains the realistic possibility of a benevolent ruling elite, until then, democratic equality seems to be better realized by aiming for equal educations, adequacy isn't enough. (shrink)

The definitive ethics resource. By the time the second edition is published, it will have more than 850 entries (more than 200 revised since the first edition), averaging more than 4,000 words. Authors are known authorities, coming from more than 30 countries from all six inhabited continents. Essays were double-blind reviewed.

Karl Pfeifer distinguishes between humor used extraneously in the delivery of philosophical content and humor intrinsic to the content itself: “Enlivening the delivery isn’t the same as enlivening the content of the delivery.” Using examples from topics in philosophy of mind and moral philosophy he illustrates how humor can be used to make certain ideas more engaging and memorable for students. He also gives an example of what to avoid.

Mitochondrial replacement techniques are designed to allow couples to have children without passing on mitochondrial diseases. Recently, Giulia Cavaliere and César Palacios-González argued that prospective parents have the right to use MRTs to pursue genetic relatedness, such that some same-sex couples and/or polygamous triads could use the process to impart genetic relatedness between a child and more of its caregivers. Although MRTs carry medical risks, Cavaliere and Palacios-González contend that because MRTs are identity-affecting, they do not cause harm to an (...) existing human being, and our intuitions otherwise arise from the non-identity problem. Here, I review several attempts to address the non-identity problem, and propose a solution to the problem. Furthermore, I argue that regardless of one’s stance on whether MRTs are identity-affecting, the use of MRTs to pursue genetic relatedness alone falls outside the scope of the medical profession, as they involve substantive medical risk for no medical benefit. (shrink)

Is there a problem with believing based on moral testimony? The intuition that there is a problem is a starting point for much research on moral testimony. To arbitrate between various attempts to account for intuitions about moral testimony, we need to know the exact nature of those intuitions. The current study investigates this empirically. The study confirms an asymmetry in the way we think about testimony about moral and descriptive matters and explores the extent to which this asymmetry is (...) explained by different metaphysical beliefs about the relevant domains, or beliefs about the relative background levels of deception or disagreement. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reasonis an outstanding reference source to this exciting and distinctive subject area. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the field covering questions such as: What is the nature of the reasons for which we act and what is the nature of the faculty of practical reason? What are normative reasons for action? What is practical irrationality and what are the requirements, permissions, and powers that (...) explain what it is to be practically rational and irrational? What is the relationship between ethics and the philosophy of practical reason? This handbook will be essential reading for philosophy students and researchers in metaethics, philosophy of action, action theory, ethics and history of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed light on an underexplored aspect of Gilbert Ryle’s interest in the notion of “knowing-how”. It is argued that in addition to his motive of discounting a certain theory of mind, his interest in the notion also stemmed (and perhaps stemmed more deeply) from two ethical interests: one concerning his own life as a philosopher and whether the philosopher has any meaningful task, and one concerning the ancient issue of whether virtue is a kind of knowledge. (...) It is argued that Ryle saw know-how as crucial in both respects and, also, that he continued to be interested in these ethical issues throughout his career. (shrink)

Collating, for the first time, the key writings of Leonard Harris, this volume introduces readers to a leading figure in African-American and liberatory thought. -/- Harris' writings on honor, insurrectionist ethics, tradition, and his work on Alain Locke have established him as a leading figure in critical philosophy. His timely and urgent responses to structural racism and structural violence mark him out as a bold cultural commentator and a deft theoretician. -/- The wealth and depth of Harris' writings are brought (...) to the fore in this collection and the incisive introduction by Lee McBride serves to orient, contextualize, and frame an oeuvre that spans four decades. In his prolegomenon, Harris eschews the classical meaning of “philosophy,” supplanting it with an idiosyncratic conception of philosophy--philosophia nata ex conatu--that features an avowedly value-laden dimension. As well as serving as an introduction to Harris' philosophy, A Philosophy of Struggle provides new insights into how we ought conceptualize philosophy, race, tradition, and insurrection in the 21st century. (shrink)

A prominent objection to the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it classifies as harmful some events that are, intuitively, mere failures to benefit. In an attempt to solve this problem, Duncan Purves has recently proposed a novel version of the counterfactual comparative account, which relies on a distinction between making upshots happen and allowing upshots to happen. In this response, we argue that Purves’s account is unsuccessful. It fails in cases where an action makes the subject occupy a (...) high well-being level though one of the available alternatives would have made it even higher. In fact, it fails even in some cases where each of the available alternatives to the action that was actually performed would have made the subject’s well-being level lower. (shrink)

An essay review of Rutger Bregman's "Humankind: A Hopeful History" (2020).

A short piece on philosophy and misanthropy.

We argue that pandemic and lockdown can be usefully interpreted as transformative experiences, albeit of a sort with interestingly different features to those discussed by L.A. Paul.

In this chapter we suggest that many experiences of suffering can be further illuminated as forms of transformative experience, using the term coined by L.A. Paul. Such suffering experiences arise from the vulnerability, dependence, and affliction intrinsic to the human condition. Such features can create a variety of positively, negatively, and ambivalently valanced forms of epistemically and personally transformative experiences, as we detail here. We argue that the productive element of suffering experiences can be articulated as transformative, although suffering experiences (...) are not the type mostly discussed in the transformative experience literature. We correct for this here by developing a taxonomy of negatively valenced transformative experiences. We suggest three features that make such experiences ones of suffering, following Michael Brady’s definition: intensity, novelty, and attentional focus. Finally, we suggest that one possible explanation for the edifying capacity of suffering comes from it requiring more transformation than positive experiences. (shrink)

In this chapter we suggest that many experiences of suffering can be further illuminated as forms of transformative experience, using the term coined by L.A. Paul. Such suffering experiences arise from the vulnerability, dependence, and affliction intrinsic to the human condition. Such features can create a variety of positively, negatively, and ambivalently valanced forms of epistemically and personally transformative experiences, as we detail here. We argue that the productive element of suffering experiences can be articulated as transformative, although suffering experiences (...) are not the type mostly discussed in the transformative experience literature. We correct for this here by developing a taxonomy of negatively valenced transformative experiences. We suggest three features that make such experiences ones of suffering, following Michael Brady’s definition: intensity, novelty, and attentional focus. Finally, we suggest that one possible explanation for the edifying capacity of suffering comes from it requiring more transformation than positive experiences. (shrink)

Hypocrisy is a ubiquitous feature of moral and political life, and accusations of hypocrisy a ubiquitous feature of moral and political discourse. Yet it has been curiously under-theorized in analytic philosophy. Fortunately, the last decade has seen a boomlet of articles that address hypocrisy in order to explain and justify conditions on the so-called “standing” to blame (Wallace 2010; Friedman 2013; Bell 2013; Todd 2017; Herstein 2017; Roadevin 2018; Fritz and Miller 2018). Nevertheless, much of this more recent literature does (...) not adequately address the question, “what is hypocrisy?” In this paper, I develop and defend an account of hypocrisy as vicious, value-expressing inconsistency. I show how this account solves some traditional and some novel philosophical puzzles concerning hypocrisy and affords a deeper understanding of the features of hypocrisy emphasized by other prominent accounts. (shrink)

A tradição filosófica das abordagens da moral tem predominantemente como base conceitos e teorias metafísicas e teológicas. Entre os conceitos tradicionais de ética, o mais proeminente é a Teoria do Comando Divino (TCD). De acordo com a TCD, Deus dá fundamentos morais à humanidade desde sua criação e por meio de revelações. Assim, moralidade e divindade seriam inseparáveis desde a civilização mais remota. Esses conceitos submergem em uma estrutura teológica e são principalmente aceitos pela maioria dos seguidores das três tradições (...) Abraâmicas: judaísmo, cristianismo e islamismo, abrangendo a parte mais considerável da população humana. Mantendo a fé e a Revelação como seus fundamentos, as Teorias do Comando Divino não estão estritamente sujeitas a qualquer tipo de demonstração. Os oponentes da concepção moral do Comando Divino, fundamentados na impossibilidade de demonstrar suas suposições metafísicas e religiosas, tentam há muitos séculos (embora sem sucesso) desvalorizar sua importância. Eles sustentam o argumento de que a teoria não mostra evidências materiais e coerência lógica e, por esse motivo, não pode ser levada em consideração para fins científicos ou filosóficos. É apenas uma crença e, como tal, deve ser entendida. Além dessas oposições extremas, muitos outros conceitos atacam as teorias do Comando Divino, de uma ou de outra maneira, em parte ou na totalidade. Muitos filósofos e cientistas sociais, da clássica filosofia grega até a presente data, por exemplo, sustentam que a moralidade é apenas uma construção e, portanto, culturalmente relativa e culturalmente determinada. No entanto, isso traz muitas outras discussões e impõe o desafio de determinar qual é o significado da cultura, quais elementos da cultura são moralmente determinantes e, finalmente, quais são os limites dessa relatividade. Os deterministas morais, por sua vez, afirmam que tudo relacionado ao comportamento humano, incluindo a moralidade, é determinado em suas causas, uma vez que o livre-arbítrio não existe. Mais recentemente, os pensadores modernos argumentaram que existe uma rigorosa ciência da moralidade. No entanto, o método científico por si só, apesar de explicar vários fatos e evidências, não pode esclarecer todo o conteúdo e todo o significado da ética. A compreensão moral exige uma percepção mais ampla e um acordo entre os filósofos, que eles nunca alcançaram. Todas essas perguntas têm muitas configurações diferentes, dependendo de cada linha filosófica, e iniciam análises complexas e debates intermináveis, uma vez que muitas delas são reciprocamente conflitantes. O universo e a atmosfera envolvendo esta estudo são os domínios de todos esses conflitos conceptuais, observados de um ponto de vista objetivo e evolutivo. Independentemente dessa circunstância e de sua importância intrínseca, essas questões estão muito distantes da abordagem metodológica de uma discussão analítica sobre a moral objetiva, a qual é, de fato, o objetivo e o escopo deste trabalho. Devemos revisitar brevemente essas importantes teorias tradicionais, porque esta pesquisa abriga um estudo comparativo, e suas suposições pelo menos diferem profundamente de todas as teorias tradicionais. Portanto, torna-se necessário oferecer ao leitor, neste texto, elementos diretos e específicos de comparação para críticas válidas, dispensando pesquisas interruptivas. No entanto, mesmo revisitando as teorias tradicionais, para esse objetivo de exposição comparativa e crítica, elas serão mantidas ao lado de nossas principais preocupações, como " aliena materia ". Independentemente da validade de qualquer um ou de todos os elementos dessa discussão e de seu significado como universo filosófico deste trabalho, o objetivo do nosso estudo é demonstrar e justificar a existência e o significado de arquétipos morais pré-históricos surgidos diretamente dos princípios fundamentais, necessidades sociais e esforços para a sobrevivência. Esses arquétipos são a definição do fundamento essencial da ética, sua agregação ao inconsciente coletivo e organização lógica correspondente e transmissão aos estágios evolutivos do genoma humano e às diferentes relações espaço-tempo, independentemente de qualquer experiência contemporânea dos indivíduos. O sistema definido por esses arquétipos compõe um modelo social humano evolutivo. Esta é uma posição metaética? Sim, ela é. Além disso, como em qualquer raciocínio metaético, devemos procurar cuidadosamente as melhores e coerentes rotas, como a Filosofia Analítica lhes oferece. Desta forma, este trabalho deve demonstrar razoavelmente que a moral não é um produto cultural dos homens civilizados ou das sociedades modernas e que, apesar de estar sujeito a várias agregações e subtrações culturais relativas, seus fundamentos essenciais são arquetípicos e nunca mudaram estruturalmente. Esse raciocínio induz que a moralidade é um atributo primal do "homo sapiens"; não é uma propriedade e nem um acidente: integra a essência humana e pertence ao reino da identidade ontológica humana. -/- O fenômeno humano é um processo contínuo, desempenhando seu papel entre determinação aleatória e livre-arbítrio, e precisamos questionar como a moralidade começou e como chegou a nós no presente. (shrink)

Moral grandstanding, or the use of moral talk for self-promotion, is a threat to free expression. When grandstanding is introduced in a public forum, several ideals of free expression are less likely to be realized. Popular views are less likely to be challenged, people are less free to entertain heterodox ideas, and the cost of changing one’s mind goes up.

I claim that objective consequentialism faces a problem stemming from the existence in some situations of a plurality of chances relevant to the outcomes of an agent’s acts. I suggest that this phenomenon bears structural resemblance to the well-known Reference Class problem. I outline a few ways in which one could attempt to deal with the issue, suggesting that it is the higher-level chance that should be employed by OC.

Through the vehicle of Nicolas Sarkozy’s so-called “Dakar Address” we will analyse the West’s persisting lack of insight into the need for a Western decolonization. We will try to identify the dangers that come from this refusal, such as the abidance in colonial patterns, the enduring self-understanding as superior com-pared to Africa, and the persisting unwillingness to accept the colonial guilt. Decolonization has to be understood as a two-fold business. Decolonization is over-coming endured and perpetrated violence. It is not only (...) important that the colonial oppressed regain strength, it is equally important that the perpetrator of colonial violence understand their excess of violence and work on effecting its return impossible. We explain how Western thinking remains dangerous and untrustwor-thy if it refuses its own decolonization. Finally, we will draw attention to a fundamental pattern of Western thought that clashes with the fundamental values of the West: contempt. In a final step we suggest how this contempt can be overcome through desuperiorisation and the establishment of elative ethics. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I construct scientifically and practically adequate moral analogs of cognitive heuristics and biases. Cognitive heuristics are reasoning “shortcuts” that are efficient but flawed. Such flaws yield systematic judgment errors—i.e., cognitive biases. For example, the availability heuristic infers an event’s probability by seeing how easy it is to recall similar events. Since dramatic events, such as airplane crashes, are disproportionately easy to recall, this heuristic explains systematic overestimations of their probability (availability bias). The research program on cognitive heuristics (...) and biases (e.g., Daniel Kahneman’s work) has been scientifically successful and has yielded useful error-prevention techniques—i.e., cognitive debiasing. I attempt to apply this framework to moral reasoning to yield moral heuristics and biases. For instance, a moral bias of unjustified differences in the treatment of particular animal species might be partially explained by a moral heuristic that dubiously infers animals’ moral status from their aesthetic features. While the basis for identifying judgments as cognitive errors is often unassailable (e.g., per violating laws of logic), identifying moral errors seemingly requires appealing to moral truth, which, I argue, is problematic within science. Such appeals can be avoided by repackaging moral theories as mere “standards-of-interest” (a la non-normative metrics of purportedly right-making features/properties). However, standards-of-interest do not provide authority, which is needed for effective debiasing. Nevertheless, since each person deems their own subjective morality authoritative, subjective morality (qua standard-of-interest and not moral subjectivism) satisfies both scientific and practical concerns. As such, (idealized) subjective morality grounds a moral analog of cognitive biases—namely, subjective moral biases (e.g., committed anti-racists unconsciously discriminating). I also argue that "cognitive heuristic" is defined by its contrast with rationality. Consequently, heuristics explain biases, which are also so defined. However, such contrasting with rationality is causally irrelevant to cognition. This frustrates the presumed usefulness of the kind, heuristic, in causal explanation. As such, in the moral case, I jettison the role of causal explanation and tailor categories solely for contrastive explanation. As such, “moral heuristic” is replaced with "subjective moral fallacy," which is defined by its contrast with subjective morality and explains subjective moral biases. The resultant subjective moral biases and fallacies framework can undergird future empirical research. (shrink)