Cicero kämpfte sein Leben lang für die Erhaltung der römischen Republik (res publica), die ungehinderte Herrschaft des Senats und die Abwehr der Mächte, die Recht und Gerechtigkeit sowie die freie politische Auseinandersetzung im Senat und vor der Volksversammlung gefährdeten. Seine vierzehn Philippischen Reden sind so ein Angriff auf den Konsul Antonius und dessen zweifelhafte Amtsführung. Allerdings konnte er noch nicht ahnen, dass Antonius zum Urgroßvater der berüchtigten römischen Kaiser Caligula und Nero wurde. Auch die skandalöse Verbindung mit der ägyptischen (...) Königin Kleopatra erlebte er nicht mehr; er hätte diese Liaison sicherlich für seine Polemik gegen den Erzfeind zu nutzen gewusst, den er als ein kriminelles Element darstellt, das es nur auf Zerstörung und Untergang abgesehen hat und daher zu beseitigen ist. Die Ziele und Methoden der Akteure auf der politischen Bühne misst Cicero an den traditionellen römischen Wertvorstellungen. Darin stimmen die Reden gegen Antonius mit dem Werk „Über die Pflichten“ überein, mit dem Cicero auf die Gefahren eines hemmungslosen, egoistischen und skrupellosen Machtstrebens aufmerksam machen wollte. Wie er in seinen philosophischen Schriften den Kampf gegen Caesar geführt hatte, so setzt er ihn in den Reden gegen Antonius mit den Waffen des Geistes fort. Cicero war davon überzeugt, dass Philosophie und Redekunst eine Einheit bilden und dass Theorie und Praxis, Ethik und Politik, Denken und Sprechen, Bildung und öffentliche Rede nicht voneinander zu trennen sind. In den Reden gegen Antonius thematisiert Cicero das Leitbild des gebildeten, rhetorisch kompetenten und moralisch gefestigten Politikers, der alle seine Fähigkeiten in den Dienst der res publica stellt, zum letzten Mal, um ihm konsequent wie nie zuvor zu folgen. Die vorliegende Übersetzung wurde 1990 von der Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, Darmstadt, ausgezeichnet. (shrink)

English Summary: Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor and the last important ancient stoic philosopher. His Meditations are one of the most widely read and known ancient works. Thus, research on this emperor has spread across an almost unprecedented number of scientific disciplines. This volume, which originated at the first conference on Marcus Aurelius, held in Cologne in 2009, reunites publishes recent research in history, archaeology, philosophy, philology, numismatics, rhetoric, legal studies, and literature. German text. German Description: Marc Aurel (...) war romischer Kaiser und der letzte bedeutende stoische Philosoph in der Antike. Seine Selbstbetrachtungen sind eines der meistgelesenen und uber die Fachwelt hinaus bekannten antiken Schriftstucke. Er ist daher wie kaum eine andere antike Figur Gegenstand eines so grossen Spektrums von Forschungsdiziplinen. Im vorliegenden Sammelband, der auf der ersten Tagung zu Marc Aurel (2009 in Koln) basiert, werden aktuelle Forschungsbeitrage aus den Fachern Geschichtswissenschaft, Archaologie, Philosophie, Philologie, Numismatik, Rhetorik, Rechtsgeschichte und Literaturwissenschaft vereint. (shrink)

Back cover: This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. (...) Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author’s analysis of reductive explanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in the philosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reduction becomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the concept of a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results of these five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases her final chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation. (shrink)

This paper develops a non-relativist version of contextualism about knowledge. It is argued that a plausible contextualism must take into account three features of our practice of attributing knowledge: (1) knowledge-attributions follow a default-and-challenge pattern; (2) there are preconditions for a belief's enjoying the status of being justified by default (e.g. being orthodox); and (3) for an error-possibility to be a serious challenge, there has to be positive evidence that the possibility might be realized in the given situation. It is (...) argued that standard "semantic" versions of contextualism (e.g. those of Lewis, Cohen, DeRose) fail to take these features into account, which makes them overly hospitable to the sceptic, and that Williams' version of contextualism, although incorporating (1), fails to do justice to (2) and (3). According to the contextualism developed here, although epistemic standards vary with the context, the truth-value of particular knowledge-attributions does not. Contexts here are understood as being constituted by two elements: an epistemic practice (a rule-governed social practice such as a scientific discipline, the law, a craft etc., in which knowledge-claims are evaluated according to specific standards) and the "facts of the matter" (i.e. those facts which, together with the epistemic standards in question, determine which error-possibilities are relevant and thus have to be eliminated for a knowledge-claim to be true). If there are several epistemic practices, and thus several contexts, in which a knowledge-claim can be evaluated, it is the "strictest" practice that counts. In this way, the counterintuitive consequence of other versions of contextualism that the same knowledge-claim can be true in one context, but false in another, can be avoided. At the same time, scepticism can be resisted since even in the "strictest" epistemic practices, error-possibilities become relevant only when backed by positive evidence that they might in fact obtain. (shrink)

Can you master the ideas of Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and Sartre? What does 'I think, therefore I am' really mean? Do you know the arguments for and against the existence of god? And what do the great philosophers tell us about knowledge and truth, good and evil? Packed with bite-sized briefings, shortcuts and bluffs, Get Smart: Philosophy demystifies 50 key philosophical concepts and provides you with all you need to speak out about the very biggest ideas.

Quick, accessible, compact guide to understanding key political concepts. Contents include: Liberty, Justice, Equality, Human rights, Social contract, Democracy, Monarchy, Anarchism, Capitalism, Socialism, Nationalism and Globalisation.

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines (...) and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures. (shrink)

Demystifies complex philosophical ideas and debates in a comprehensive format that introduces the major theories of such great philosophers as Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche, Epicurus, and Thomas Aquinas.

Philosophy in Minutes distils 200 of the most important philosophical ideas into easily digestible, bite-sized sections. The core information for every topic - including debates such as the role of philosophy in science and religion, key thinkers from Aristotle to Marx, and introductions to morality and ethics - is explained in straightforward language, using illustrations to make the concepts easy to understand and remember. Whether you are perplexed by existentialism or pondering the notion of free will, this accessible small-format book (...) will help any reader to quickly grasp the basics of this highly nuanced subject. Chapters include: Truth and logic, Marxism, Communism and Socialism, Ontology, Philosophy and literature, Existence of God, Feminist theory, Consciousness, The future of philosophy. (shrink)

Cultural forces such as film create and reinforce rigidly-defined images of a doctor's identity for both the public and for medical students. The authoritarian and hierarchical institution of medical school also encourages students to adopt rigidly-defined professional identities. This restrictive identity helps to perpetuate the power of the patriarchy, limits uniqueness, squelches inquisitiveness, and damages one's self-confidence. This paper explores the construction of a physician's identity using cultural theorists' psychoanalytic analyses of gender and race as a framework of analysis. Cultural (...) theorists' politically-motivated work provides an excellent point of departure for destabilizing parts of the authoritarian medical hierarchy that can damage a student's professional development. Drawing on such discourse, this paper examines the processes by which a doctor's identity becomes rigidly defined and fixed by daily training. It finally proposes a way for a medical student to extrapolate himself from the current definitions of this identity and create a broader, more malleable concept of professional identity by defining himself from outside of, rather than through, difference. (shrink)

Researchers have long suspected that grapheme-color synaesthesia is useful, but research on its utility has so far focused primarily on episodic memory and perceptual discrimination. Here we ask whether it can be harnessed during rule-based Category learning. Participants learned through trial and error to classify grapheme pairs that were organized into categories on the basis of their associated synaesthetic colors. The performance of synaesthetes was similar to non-synaesthetes viewing graphemes that were physically colored in the same way. Specifically, synaesthetes learned (...) to categorize stimuli effectively, they were able to transfer this learning to novel stimuli, and they falsely recognized grapheme-pair foils, all like non-synaesthetes viewing colored graphemes. These findings demonstrate that synaesthesia can be exploited when learning the kind of material taught in many classroom settings. (shrink)

Many of Margaret Cavendish’s criticisms of Thomas Hobbes in the Philosophical Letters (1664) relate to the disorder and damage that she holds would result if Hobbesian pressure were the cause of visual perception. In this paper, I argue that her “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV is aimed at a different goal: to show the explanatory potency of her account. First, I connect Cavendish’s view of visual perception as “patterning” to the “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV. Second, (...) I provide a potential reply on Hobbes’s behalf that appeals to physiological differences between perceivers’ sense organs, drawing upon Hobbes’s optics in De homine. Third, I argue that such a reply would misunderstand Cavendish’s objective of showing the limited explanatory resources available in understanding visual perception as pressing when compared to her view of visual perception as patterning. (shrink)

Kant’s revolutionary new approach to philosophy was accompanied by the introduction of a largely novel terminology. With the Kant-Lexikon, a lexical reference gives the modern reader access to his work on the basis of present-day editions and takes into account 20th century and contemporary research and advances in lexicology. The Kant-Lexikon includes 2395 entries authored by 221 scholars.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously criticizes traditional metaphysics and its proofs of immortality, free will and God's existence. What is often overlooked is that Kant also explains why rational beings must ask metaphysical questions about 'unconditioned' objects such as souls, uncaused causes or God, and why answers to these questions will appear rationally compelling to them. In this book, Marcus Willaschek reconstructs and defends Kant's account of the rational sources of metaphysics. After carefully explaining Kant's conceptions (...) of reason and metaphysics, he offers detailed interpretations of the relevant passages from the Critique of Pure Reason in which Kant explains why reason seeks 'the unconditioned'. Willaschek offers a novel interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic, pointing up its 'positive' side, while at the same time it uncovers a highly original account of metaphysical thinking that will be relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

Contends that Freud's theory of civilization is substantially sociological, and examines the philosophical and sociological implications of key Freudian ...

In an era of fiscal austerity and dualization of social protection, has organized labor become increasingly split along skill and industry lines? Against recent political science accounts of trade union involvement in social policymaking, this paper argues that, in the specific area of pensions, unions representing high-skilled workers and the core industrial sectors of the economy have paradoxically been led to increase their cooperation with unions representing the less privileged segments of labor, in order to improve coverage of private pensions (...) across the board. These unions’ motivations for doing so and the strategies they have employed have nonetheless differed according to the preexisting institutional design of domestic pension systems. The argument is supported with case studies of British, French, German, and Belgian unions’ involvement in contemporary pension reform. (shrink)

Visual thinking -- visual imagination or perception of diagrams and symbol arrays, and mental operations on them -- is omnipresent in mathematics. Is this visual thinking merely a psychological aid, facilitating grasp of what is gathered by other means? Or does it also have epistemological functions, as a means of discovery, understanding, and even proof? By examining the many kinds of visual representation in mathematics and the diverse ways in which they are used, Marcus Giaquinto argues that visual thinking (...) in mathematics is rarely just a superfluous aid; it usually has epistemological value, often as a means of discovery. Drawing from philosophical work on the nature of concepts and from empirical studies of visual perception, mental imagery, and numerical cognition, Giaquinto explores a major source of our grasp of mathematics, using examples from basic geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and real analysis. He shows how we can discern abstract general truths by means of specific images, how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, and how visual means can help us grasp abstract structures. Visual Thinking in Mathematics reopens the investigation of earlier thinkers from Plato to Kant into the nature and epistemology of an individual's basic mathematical beliefs and abilities, in the new light shed by the maturing cognitive sciences. Clear and concise throughout, it will appeal to scholars and students of philosophy, mathematics, and psychology, as well as anyone with an interest in mathematical thinking. (shrink)

Marcus Giaquinto presents an investigation into the different kinds of visual thinking involved in mathematical thought, drawing on work in cognitive psychology, philosophy, and mathematics. He argues that mental images and physical diagrams are rarely just superfluous aids: they are often a means of discovery, understanding, and even proof.

This book treats modal logic as a theory, with several subtheories, such as completeness theory, correspondence theory, duality theory and transfer theory and is intended as a course in modal logic for students who have had prior contact with modal logic and who wish to study it more deeply. It presupposes training in mathematical or logic. Very little specific knowledge is presupposed, most results which are needed are proved in this book.

Following in a psychological and musicological tradition beginning with Leonard Meyer, and continuing through David Huron, we present a functional, cognitive account of the phenomenon of expectation in music, grounded in computational, probabilistic modeling. We summarize a range of evidence for this approach, from psychology, neuroscience, musicology, linguistics, and creativity studies, and argue that simulating expectation is an important part of understanding a broad range of human faculties, in music and beyond.

All the notes to the Farquharson translation, amplifying the twelve books of the "Meditations," are included in this volume.

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

The possibility that autonomous weapons will be deployed on the battlefields of the future raises the challenge of determining who can be held responsible for how these weapons act. Robert Sparrow has argued that it would be impossible to attribute responsibility for autonomous robots' actions to their creators, their commanders, or the robots themselves. This essay reaches a much different conclusion. It argues that the problem of determining responsibility for autonomous robots can be solved by addressing it within the context (...) of the military chain of command. The military hierarchy is a system of distributing responsibility between decision makers on different levels and constraining autonomy. If autonomous weapons are employed as agents operating within this system, then responsibility for their actions can be attributed to their creators and their civilian and military superiors. (shrink)

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is a private notebook of philosophical reflections with universal significance. Drawing on Stoic philosophy, Marcus confronts challenges that affect us all in our struggle to live meaningful lives. This edition includes a selection of Marcus' correspondence with his tutor Fronto which complements the Meditations.

Marcus Giaquinto tells the compelling story of one of the great intellectual adventures of the modern era: the attempt to find firm foundations for mathematics. From the late nineteenth century to the present day, this project has stimulated some of the most original and influential work in logic and philosophy.

The status of the laws of nature in Hobbes’s Leviathan has been a continual point of disagreement among scholars. Many agree that since Hobbes claims that civil philosophy is a science, the answer lies in an understanding of the nature of Hobbesian science more generally. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes’s view of the construction of geometrical figures sheds light upon the status of the laws of nature. In short, I claim that the laws play the same role as (...) the component parts – what Hobbes calls the “cause” – of geometrical figures. To make this argument, I show that in both geometry and civil philosophy, Hobbes proceeds by a method of synthetic demonstration as follows: 1) offering a thought experiment by privation; 2) providing definitions by explication of “simple conceptions” within the thought experiment; and 3) formulating generative definitions by making use of those definitions by explication. In just the same way that Hobbes says that the geometer should “put together” the parts of a square to learn its cause, I argue that the laws of nature are the cause of peace. (shrink)

Even though Kant’s theory of cognition (Erkenntnis) is central to his Critique of Pure Reason, it has rarely been asked what exactly Kant means by the term “cognition”. Against the widespread assumption that cognition (in the most relevant sense of that term) can be identified with knowledge or if not, that knowledge is at least a species of cognition, we argue that the concepts of cognition and knowledge in Kant are not only distinct, but even disjunct. To show this, we (...) first (I) investigate Kant’s explicit characterizations of the nature of cognition. As it turns out, he introduces several different notions that must be carefully distinguished before identifying the one that is central to his project in the first Critique. We then (II) consider the basic features of Kant’s conception of knowledge, indicating both how it involves assent and objective justification and how it relates to our contemporary conception. Next (III), we compare and contrast Kant’s understanding of cognition and his conception of knowledge in a way that allows us to present their fundamental differences and connections. We argue that while cognition, in the most relevant sense, is a species of representation that differs from other representations in that it involves the conceptual determination of a sensibly given object, knowledge (for Kant) is a kind of assent to a judgment that requires consciousness of a sufficient epistemic ground. Finally (IV), by appreciating the differences between cognition and knowledge, we explain several of the implications this conception of cognition has for some of Kant’s main claims in the Critique of Pure Reason as a whole. Among other things, we show how Kant can deny cognition of specific things in themselves while allowing philosophical knowledge about things in themselves in general (e.g. that they exist, are not in space and time, etc.). (shrink)

This article demonstrates how the Conservative system of social protection in Germany has been converging toward the Liberal American model during the past two decades, focusing on social protection for the unemployed and pensioners. In addition to public/statutory provisions, occupational welfare is also covered. Despite an overall process of convergence, we continue to witness stark dissimilarities in the arrangements for social protection outsiders: whereas Germany continues to constitutionally guarantee a legal entitlement to minimum social protection for all citizens, such a (...) guarantee does not exist in the United States. The lack of such legal entitlement for poor people of working age, combined with the criminalization of the "dangerous class," is a key differentiating characteristic of the US model at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The findings confirm but also qualify Franz-Xaver Kaufmann's analysis of the United States as "capitalism," which lacks collective welfare responsibility for all citizens, as compared to Germany's "welfare state.". (shrink)

This book is a philosophically-oriented introduction to bioethics. It offers the reader an overview of key debates in bioethics relevant to various areas including; organ retrieval, stem cell research, justice in healthcare and issues in environmental ethics, including issues surrounding food and agriculture. The book also seeks to go beyond simply describing the issues in order to provide the reader with the methodological and theoretical tools for a more comprehensive understanding of current bioethical debates. The aim of the book is (...) to present bioethics as an interdisciplinary field, to explore its close relation to other disciplines (such as law, life sciences, theology and philosophy), and to discuss the conditions under which bioethics can serve as an academically legitimate discipline that is at the same time relevant to society. As a systematic and methodologically rigorous overview, Bioethics: Methods, Theories, Domains will be of particular interest to academics and students in the disciplines of Law, Medicine, Ethics and Philosophy. (shrink)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)

Chapter 1 of this book argued that moral philosophy should be based on seven principles of theory selection adapted from the sciences. Chapter 2 argued that these principles support basing normative moral philosophy on a particular problem of diachronic instrumental rationality: the ‘problem of possible future selves.’ Chapter 3 argued that a new moral principle, the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative, is the rational solution to this problem. Chapter 4 argued that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three equivalent formulations akin to but superior to (...) Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Chapter 5 argued that my principle’s three formulations make it rational to adopt a Moral Original Position to derive moral principles. The present chapter derives Four Principles of Fairness from the Moral Original Position--principles of coercion minimization, mutual assistance, fair negotiation, and virtue—and unifies them into a single principle of rightness: Rightness as Fairness. Finally, this chapter argues that Rightness as Fairness entails a novel approach to applied ethics called ‘principled fair negotiation’, illustrating how the theory provides a plausible new framework for addressing applied cases including lying, suicide, trolleys, torture, distribution of scarce resources, poverty, and the ethical treatment of animals. (shrink)

Across two studies the hypotheses were tested that stressful situations affect both leadership ethical acting and leaders' recognition of ethical dilemmas. In the studies, decision makers recruited from 3 sites of a Swedish multinational civil engineering company provided personal data on stressful situations, made ethical decisions, and answered to stress-outcome questions. Stressful situations were observed to have a greater impact on ethical acting than on the recognition of ethical dilemmas. This was particularly true for situations involving punishment and lack of (...) rewards. The results are important for the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of an organization, especially with regard to the analysis of the Stressors influencing managerial work and its implications for ethical behavior. (shrink)

According to Ole Hjortland, Timothy Williamson, Graham Priest, and others, anti-exceptionalism about logic is the view that logic “isn’t special”, but is continuous with the sciences. Logic is revisable, and its truths are neither analytic nor a priori. And logical theories are revised on the same grounds as scientific theories are. What isn’t special, we argue, is anti-exceptionalism about logic. Anti-exceptionalists disagree with one another regarding what logic and, indeed, anti-exceptionalism are, and they are at odds with naturalist philosophers of (...) logic, who may have seemed like natural allies. Moreover, those internal battles concern well-trodden philosophical issues, and there is no hint as to how they are to be resolved on broadly scientific grounds. We close by looking at three of the founders of logic who may have seemed like obvious enemies of anti-exceptionalism—Aristotle, Frege, and Carnap—and conclude that none of their positions is clearly at odds with at least some of the main themes of anti-exceptionalism. We submit that, at least at present, anti-exceptionalism is too vague or underspecified to characterize a coherent conception of logic, one that stands opposed to more traditional approaches. (shrink)

Biological individuality is a notoriously thorny topic for biologists and philosophers of biology. In this paper we argue that biological individuality presents multiple, interconnected questions for biologists and philosophers that together form a problem agenda. Using a case study of an interdisciplinary research group in ecology, behavioral and evolutionary biology, we claim that a debate on biological individuality that seeks to account for diverse practices in the biological sciences should be broadened to include and give prominence to questions about uniqueness (...) and temporality. We show that broadening the problem agenda of biological individuality draws attention to underrecognized philosophical issues and discussions and thereby organizes and enriches the existing debate. (shrink)

A wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been introduced to stop or slow down the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include school closures, environmental cleaning and disinfection, mask mandates, restrictions on freedom of assembly and lockdowns. These NPIs depend on coercion for their effectiveness, either directly or indirectly. A widely held view is that coercive policies need to be publicly justified—justified to each citizen—to be legitimate. Standardly, this is thought to entail that there is a scientific consensus on the factual propositions (...) that are used to support the policies. In this paper, we argue that such a consensus has been lacking on the factual propositions justifying most NPIs. Consequently, they would on the standard view be illegitimate. This is regrettable since there are good reasons for granting the state the legitimate authority to enact NPIs under conditions of uncertainty. The upshot of our argument is that it is impossible to have both the standard interpretation of the permissibility of empirical claims in public justification and an effective pandemic response. We provide an alternative view that allows the state sufficient room for action while precluding the possibility of it acting without empirical support. (shrink)