Background As the UK’s main healthcare priority-setter, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has good reason to want to demonstrate that its decisions are morally justified. In doing so, it has tended to rely on the moral plausibility of its principle of cost-effectiveness and the assertion that it has adopted a fair procedure. But neither approach provides wholly satisfactory grounds for morally defending NICE’s decisions. In this study we adopt a complementary approach, based on the proposition that (...) a priority-setter's claim to moral justification can be assessed, in part, based on the coherence of its approach and that the reliability of any such claim is undermined by the presence of dissonance within its moral system. This study is the first to empirically assess the coherence of NICE’s formal approach and in doing so to generate evidence-based conclusions about the extent to which this approach is morally justified. Methods The study is grounded in the theory, methods and standards of empirical bioethics. Twenty NICE policy documents were coded to identify and classify the normative commitments contained within NICE technology appraisal policy as of 31 December 2021. Coherence was systematically assessed by attempting to bring these commitments into narrow reflective equilibrium (NRE) and by identifying sources of dissonance. Findings Much of NICE policy rests on coherent values that provide a strong foundation for morally justified decision-making. However, NICE’s formal approach also contains several instances of dissonance which undermine coherence and prevent NRE from being fully established. Dissonance arises primarily from four sources: i) NICE’s specification of the principle of cost-effectiveness; ii) its approach to prioritising the needs of particular groups; iii) its conception of reasonableness in the context of uncertainty, and iv) its concern for innovation as an independent value. Conclusion At the time of analysis, the level of coherence across NICE policy provides reason to question the extent to which its formal approach to technology appraisal is morally justified. Some thoughts are offered on why, given these findings, NICE has been able to maintain its legitimacy as a healthcare priority-setter and on what could be done to enhance coherence. (shrink)

Healthcare priority-setting institutions have good reason to want to demonstrate that their decisions are morally justified—and those who contribute to and use the health service have good reason to hope for the same. However, finding a moral basis on which to evaluate healthcare priority-setting is difficult. Substantive approaches are vulnerable to reasonable disagreement about the appropriate grounds for allocating resources, while procedural approaches may be indeterminate and insufficient to ensure a just distribution. In this paper, we set out a complementary, (...) coherence-based approach to the evaluation of healthcare priority-setting. Drawing on Rawls, we argue that an institutional priority-setter’s claim to moral justification can be assessed, in part, based on the extent to which its many normative commitments are mutually supportive and free from dissonance; that is, on the ability to establish narrow reflective equilibrium across the normative content of a priority-setter’s policy and practice. While we do not suggest that the establishment of such equilibrium is sufficient for moral justification, we argue that failure to do so might—like the proverbial canary in the coalmine—act as a generalised warning that something is awry. We offer a theoretical argument in support of this view and briefly outline a practical method for systematically examining coherence across priority-setting policy and practice. (shrink)

Possibility offers a new analysis of the metaphysical concepts of possibility and necessity, one that does not rely on any sort of "possible worlds." The analysis proceeds from an account of the notion of a physical object and from the positing of properties and relations. It is motivated by considerations about how we actually speak of and think of objects. Michael Jubien discusses several closely related topics, including different purported varieties of possible worlds, the doctrine of "essentialism," natural kind (...) terms and alleged examples of necessity a posteriori. The book also offers a new theory of the functioning of proper names, both actual and fictional, and the discussion of natural kind terms and necessity a posteriori depends in part on this theory. (shrink)

The elephant in the room -- Crabs and octopuses -- The central intelligence of a frog -- The cerebral cortex and consciousness -- Social consciousness -- Yoda and Darth: how can we find -- Consciousness in the brain? -- The hard problem and other perspectives on consciousness -- Conscious machines -- Uploading minds -- How to build visual consciousness.

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

When philosophers discuss the possibility of machines making scientific discoveries, they typically focus on discoveries in physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. Observing the rapid increase of computer-use in science, however, it becomes natural to ask whether there are any scientific domains out of reach for machine discovery. For example, could machines also make discoveries in qualitative social science? Is there something about humans that makes us uniquely suited to studying humans? Is there something about machines that would bar them from (...) such activity? A close look at the methodology of interpretive social science reveals several abilities necessary to make a social scientific discovery, and one capacity necessary to possess any of them is imagination. For machines to make discoveries in social science, therefore, they must possess imagination algorithms. (shrink)

An interdisciplanary collection of essays focused on Kant's work on the concept of community.

A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating (...) critique of contemporary liberalism. Sandel locates modern liberalism in the tradition of Kant, and focuses on its most influential recent expression in the work of John Rawls. In the most important challenge yet to Rawls' theory of justice, Sandel traces the limits of liberalism to the conception of the person that underlies it, and argues for a deeper understanding of community than liberalism allows. (shrink)

Over the past sixty years, within the analytic tradition of philosophy, there has been a significant revival of interest in the philosophy of religion. More recently, philosophers of religion have turned in a more self-consciously interdisciplinary direction, with special focus on topics that have traditionally been the provenance of systematic theologians in the Christian tradition. The present volumes Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, volumes 1 and 2 aim to bring together some of the most important essays on six central topics (...) in recent philosophical theology. Volume 1 collects essays on three distinctively Christian doctrines: trinity, incarnation, and atonement. Volume 2 focuses on three topics that arise in all of the major theistic religions: providence, resurrection, and scripture. (shrink)

Message from the planet -- When prophecy fails -- Energy and empire -- Climate economics -- Ethical emissions -- Dwelling in the light -- Mobility and pilgrimage -- Faithful feasting -- Remembering in time.

"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Dedication" -- "Contents" -- "Introduction: Moral Globalization and Its Discontents" -- "1. Jackson Heights, New York: Diversity Plaza" -- "2. Los Angeles: The Moral Operating Systems of Global Cities" -- "3. Rio de Janeiro: Order, Corruption, and Public Trust" -- "4. Bosnia: War and Reconciliation" -- "5. Myanmar: The Politics of Moral Narrative" -- "6. Fukushima: Resilience and the Unimaginable" -- "7. South Africa: After the Rainbow" -- "Conclusion: Human Rights, (...) Global Ethics, and the Ordinary Virtues" -- "Notes" -- "Acknowledgments. (shrink)

Tye's book develops a persuasive and, in many respects, original argument for the view that the qualitative side of our mental life is representational in..

This book fills a gap in studies of meaning by providing detailed case studies of attested corpus data on the meanings of words and phrases.

Contains contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers and experts in philosophy-driven methods, such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and semiotics. This international body of scholars discuss the issue of method itself, as well as bring those methods to bear on some of the most prominent issues of our time in the areas of media, culture and criticism.

Parsimony is a virtue of empirical theories. Is it also a virtue of philosophical theories? I review four contemporary accounts of the virtue of parsimony in empirical theorizing, and consider how each might apply to two prominent appeals to parsimony in the philosophical literature, those made on behalf of physicalism and on behalf of nominalism. None of the accounts of the virtue of parsimony extends naturally to either of these philosophical cases. This suggests that in typical philosophical contexts, ontological simplicity (...) has no evidential value. (shrink)

Preface In these days, an anthology on the topic of possible worlds hardly needs justification. No issue has given rise to as much literature in the past ...

The definitive work on the philosophical nature and impact of the theories of Charles Darwin, written by a well-known authority on the history and philosophy of Darwinism. Broadly explores the theories of Charles Darwin and Darwin studies Incorporates much information about modern Biology Offers a comprehensive discussion of Darwinism and Christianity – including Creationism – by one of the leading authorities in the field Written in clear, concise, user-friendly language supplemented with quality illustrations Examines the status of evolutionary theory as (...) a genuine theory and its implications for philosophy, epistemology and ethics Provides a strong understanding of the philosophical nature and impact of Darwin's thought Holds wide appeal for general audiences outside the world of academic philosophy Strongly supports Darwinism and fully explores modern naturalistic explanations of religion. (shrink)

Michael Quante focuses on what Hegel has to say about such central concepts as action, person and will, and then brings these views to bear on contemporary debates in analytic philosophy. This book enables professional analytic philosophers and their students to understand the significance of Hegel's philosophy to contemporary theory of action. As such, it will contribute to the ever-increasing erosion of the barrier between the continental and analytic approaches to philosophy.

Even though the measurement of fear of crime in criminological research commenced a few decades ago, specific populations, such as social activists, remain undocumented. This article is an attempt to address this gap. A study was conducted among 153 social activists involved in exposing corruption and irregularities that take place in the government system in India. This article explores the gap between the fear of crime and actual victimization among the specific social activists in India. The results indicate activists expressed (...) moderate fear of any one form of victimization including verbal and emotional, physical, and sexual victimization. It was also found that one-third of them have reported facing some form of abuse. The research implications are discussed. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium (MRE) is a method of justification popularized by John Rawls and further developed by Norman Daniels, Michael DePaul, Folke Tersman, and Catherine Z. Elgin, among others. The basic idea is that epistemic agents have justified beliefs if they have succeeded in forming their beliefs into a harmonious system of beliefs which they reflectively judge to be the most plausible. Despite the common reference to MRE as a method, its mechanisms or rules are typically expressed (...) in a metaphorical or simplified manner and are therefore criticized as too vague. Recent efforts to counter this criticism have been directed towards the attempt to provide formal explications of MRE. This paper aims to supplement these efforts by providing an informal working definition of MRE. This approach challenges the view that MRE can adequately be characterized only in the negative as a set of anti-essentialisms. I argue that epistemic agents follow MRE iff they follow four interconnected rules, which are concerned with a minimalistic form of foundationalism, a minimalistic form of fallibilism, a moderate form of holism, and a minimalistic form of rationality. In the critical spirit of MRE, the corresponding working definition is, of course, provisional and revisable. In general, the aim is to contribute to a reflective equilibrium (RE) concerning MRE. If it is successful, this working definition provides a better grasp of the most basic elements of the method and thereby enhances our understanding of it. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a naïve realist conception of veridical perception in the light of the challenge from the argument from hallucination. The naïve realist claims that some sensory experiences are relations to mind-independent objects. That is to say, taking experiences to be episodes or events, the naïve realist supposes that some such episodes have as constituents mind-independent objects. In turn, the disjunctivist claims that in a case of (...) veridical perception like this very kind of experience that you now have, the experiential episode you enjoy is of a kind which could not be occurring were you having an hallucination. The common strategy of arguments from hallucination set out to show that certain things are true of hallucinations, and hence must be true of perceptions. For example, it is argued that hallucinations must have non-physical objects of awareness, or that such states are not relations to anything at all, but are at best seeming relations to objects. In insisting that veridical perceptual experience is of a distinct kind from hallucination, the disjunctivist denies that any of these conceptions of hallucination challenges our conception of veridical perceptions as relations to mind-independent objects. More specifically, I assume that the disjunctivist advocates naïve realism because they think that this position best articulates how sensory experience seems to us to be just through reflection. If the disjunctivist is correct in this contention, then anyone who accepts the conclusion of the argument from hallucination must also accept that the nature of sensory experience is other than it seems to us to be. In turn, one may complain that any such error theory is liable to lead to sceptical consequences. A Humean scepticism about the senses launches a challenge about our knowledge of the world through questioning the conception we have of what sense experience is, and how it can provide knowledge of the world. (shrink)

Philosophers, political theorists, and all readers seriously interested in the possibility of a moral life will find sustenance and inspiration in this book.

Das Grundanliegen des Werks besteht darin, Hansjürgen Verweyens erstphilosophisches Denken über eine Werkanalyse prinzipiell chronologisch zu verfolgen, um dadurch die Entwicklung seines Denkens nachzeichen sowie die darin sich durchhaltende Denkstruktur bzw. die Konsistenz seines Denksystems feststellen zu können, und schließlich die Brisanz seines grundlegenden Ansatzes in verschiedenen Diskussionen zu beleuchten.