Many philosophers have argued that statistical evidence regarding group characteristics (particularly stereotypical ones) can create normative conflicts between the requirements of epistemic rationality and our moral obligations to each other. In a recent article, Johnson-King and Babic argue that such conflicts can usually be avoided: what ordinary morality requires, they argue, epistemic rationality permits. In this article, we show that as data get large, Johnson-King and Babic’s approach becomes less plausible. More constructively, we build on their project and develop a (...) generalized model of reasoning about stereotypes under which one can indeed avoid normative conflicts, even in a big data world, when data contain some noise. In doing so, we also articulate a general approach to rational belief updating for noisy data. (shrink)

The paper examines the justification of warfare. The main thesis is that war is very difficult to justify, and justification by invoking “justice” is not the way to succeed it. Justification and justness are very different venues: while the first attempts to explain the nature of war and offer possible schemes of resolution, the second aims to endorse a specific type of warfare as correct and hence allowed – which is the crucial part of “just war theory.” However, “just war (...) theory,” somewhat Manichean in its nature, has very deep flaws. Its final result is criminalization of war, which reduces warfare to police action, and finally implies a very strange proviso that one side has a right to win. All that endangers the distinction between ius ad bellum and ius in bello, and destroys the collective character of warfare. Justification of war is actually quite different – it starts from the definition of war as a kind of conflict which cannot be solved peacefully, but for which there is mutual understanding that it cannot remain unresolved. The aim of war is not justice, but peace, i.e. either a new articulation of peace, or a restoration of the status quo ante. Additionally, unlike police actions, the result of war cannot be known or assumed in advance, giving war its main feature: the lack of control over the future. Control over the future, predictability, is a feature of peace. This might imply that war is a consequence of failed peace, or inability to maintain peace. The explanation of this inability forms the justification of war. Justice is always an important part of it, but justification cannot be reduced to it. The logic contained here refers to ius ad bellum, while ius in bello is relative to various parameters of sensitivity prevalent in a particular time, with the purpose to make warfare more humane and less expensive. (shrink)

I propose a general alethic theory of epistemic risk according to which the riskiness of an agent’s credence function encodes her relative sensitivity to different types of graded error. After motivating and mathematically developing this approach, I show that the epistemic risk function is a scaled reflection of expected inaccuracy. This duality between risk and information enables us to explore the relationship between attitudes to epistemic risk, the choice of scoring rules in epistemic utility theory, and the selection of priors (...) in Bayesian epistemology more generally. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a general theory of algorithmic fairness. Drawing on Johnson King and Babic’s work on moral encroachment, on Gary Becker’s work on labor market discrimination, and on Strawson’s idea of resentment and indignation as responses to violations of the demand for goodwill toward oneself and others, we locate attitudes to fairness in an agent’s utility function. In particular, we first argue that fairness is a matter of a decision-maker’s relative concern for the plight of people from (...) different groups, rather than of the outcomes produced for different groups. We then show how an agent’s preferences, including in particular their attitudes to error, give rise to their decision thresholds. Tying these points together, we argue that the agent’s relative degrees of concern for different groups manifest in a difference in decision thresholds applied to these groups. (shrink)

Dasgupta :35–67, 2009) has argued that material individuals, such as particles and laptops, are metaphysically objectionable and must be eliminated from our fundamental theories of the world. He proposes to eliminate them by redescribing all the fundamental facts of the world in a variant of predicate functor logic. We study the status, on this theory, of a putative fact particularly recalcitrant to a formulation within predicate functor logic: his own claim that there are no fundamental or primitive material individuals. We (...) consider three regimentations of the denial of primitive individuals and show that—under some plausible hypotheses about fundamental truths and the fundamentality operator—they cannot be consistently translated in predicate functor logic by Dasgupta’s usual strategy. We conclude by discussing two approaches to salvage Generalism, in the absence of such a translation. (shrink)

Despite significant promotion of diversity in companies, as well as legislation for equal opportunities for women and men, it must be noted that women still remain largely in the minority in decision-making positions. This observation reflects the phenomenon of the glass ceiling that constitutes vertical discrimination within companies against women. Although the glass ceiling has generated research interest, some authors have pointed out that theoretical models have made little attempt to develop an understanding of this phenomenon and its implications. Therefore, (...) our study aims to fill this gap and to better understand the phenomenon of the glass ceiling by considering both its antecedents and its possible consequences. More precisely, we extend the model developed by Elacqua et al., proposing a more comprehensive model including organizational gender culture as a third factor in the emergence of the glass ceiling through the perception of differential treatment. We also investigated the glass ceiling’s consequences for organizational attitudes and well-being at work by considering work-to-family conflict as a possible mediator. We surveyed 320 women in managerial positions in a Belgian organization. Our study highlights the importance of all three factors in the emergence of the perception of differential treatment and, ultimately, the perception that a glass ceiling exists. Moreover, our results show that WFC fully mediates the effects of the glass ceiling on job strain and job engagement, and partially mediates the effects of the glass ceiling on job satisfaction and intention to quit. (shrink)

Approximate coherentism suggests that imperfectly rational agents should hold approximately coherent credences. This norm is intended as a generalization of ordinary coherence. I argue that it may be unable to play this role by considering its application under learning experiences. While it is unclear how imperfect agents should revise their beliefs, I suggest a plausible route is through Bayesian updating. However, Bayesian updating can take an incoherent agent from relatively more coherent credences to relatively less coherent credences, depending on the (...) data observed. Thus, comparative rationality judgments among incoherent agents are unduly sensitive to luck. (shrink)

We present an elementary system of axioms for the geometry of Minkowski spacetime. It strikes a balance between a simple and streamlined set of axioms and the attempt to give a direct formalization in first-order logic of the standard account of Minkowski spacetime in [Maudlin 2012] and [Malament, unpublished]. It is intended for future use in the formalization of physical theories in Minkowski spacetime. The choice of primitives is in the spirit of [Tarski 1959]: a predicate of betwenness and a (...) four place predicate to compare the square of the relativistic intervals. Minkowski spacetime is described as a four dimensional ‘vector space’ that can be decomposed everywhere into a spacelike hyperplane - which obeys the Euclidean axioms in [Tarski and Givant, 1999] - and an orthogonal timelike line. The length of other ‘vectors’ are calculated according to Pythagora’s theorem. We conclude with a Representation Theorem relating models of our system that satisfy second order continuity to the mathematical structure called ‘Minkowski spacetime’ in physics textbooks. (shrink)

Sarcopenia is a process of progressive aging‐associated loss of skeletal muscle mass (SMM) recognized as a serious global health issue contributing to frailty and increased all‐cause mortality. Exercise and nutritional interventions (particularly intake of dairy products and milk) demonstrate good efficacy, safety, and broad applicability. Here, we propose that at least some of the well‐documented favorable effects of milk and milk‐derived protein supplements on SMM might be mediated by D‐galactose, a monosaccharide present in large quantities in milk in the form (...) of disaccharide lactose (milk sugar). We suggest that ingestion of dairy products results in exposure to D‐galactose in concentrations metabolized primarily via the Leloir pathway with the potential to (i) promote anabolic signaling via maintenance of growth factor (e.g., insulin‐like growth factor 1 [IGF‐1]) receptor mature glycosylation patterns; and (ii) provide extracellular (liver glycogen) and intracellular substrates for short (muscle glycolysis) and long‐term (muscle glycogen, intramyocellular lipids) energy availability. Additionally, D‐galactose might optimize the metabolic function of skeletal muscles by increasing mitochondrial content and stimulating glucose and fatty acid utilization. The proposed potential of D‐galactose to promote the accretion of SMM is discussed in the context of its therapeutic potential in sarcopenia. (shrink)

This paper discusses a novel problem at the intersection of ethics and epistemology: there can be cases in which moral considerations seem to "encroach'' upon belief from multiple directions at once, and possibly to varying degrees, thereby leaving their overall effect on belief unclear. We introduce these cases -- cases of moral encroachment under moral uncertainty -- and show that they pose a problem for all predominant accounts of moral encroachment. We then address the problem, by developing a modular Bayesian (...) framework that, we argue, is sufficiently flexible and scaleable to accommodate the multifaceted uncertainty we describe while still generating clear recommendations for an agent's beliefs. Our framework has several practical upshots, and we close by articulating them: we derive insights about the relationship between moral character and doxastic behavior and make suggestions for how to encourage people to revise their doxastic states in morally laudable ways, without deviating from core Bayesian norms. (shrink)

The subject of this article is the Orthodox Christianity’s approach to war. Christians of other denomination have developed an elaborate theory of war, so-called “Just War Theory” (JWT), which has also been accepted by non-Christians and even secular thinkers regarding the nature and justification of war. A vast literature has been produced in a dire attempt to render perfect the world by insisting on the claim that war is the act of punishment for breaking the law. The result is an (...) epistemological ease from which everything seems evident in advance including who is right and who at fault, who is and who is not favored by God. By removing from war an essential feature – that it is a form of conflict – JWT takes away the concept of reciprocity and introduces an in advance declared inequality which enables removal of uncertainty about the war’s outcome. In Orthodox Christianity, the situation is different. With still live debate whether to persevere or abandon original Christian pacifism, for Orthodox Christianity, war is always a combination of cataclysm and temptation and far less Manichean than anything present in JWT. The aim of war is peace; but, however necessary, justice is an insufficient condition for justification. The difference between “justness” and “justification” is preserved through the uncertainty whom God, at war’s end, loves more, because both victors and vanquished remain and continue to be in His grace. Losing a war, as such, does not turn the vanquished into criminals, nor does victory give the vanquisher the right of revenge for defending oneself. The latter approach to war has significant potentialities: preserving the distinction of ius ad bellum and ius in bello, preserving reciprocity, mutual respect and trust, impossibility of incrimination of war per se, the possibility of honorable defeat, etc. (shrink)

Our time is characterized by what seems like an unprecedented process of intense global homogenization. This reality provides the context for exploring the nature and value of toleration. Hence, this essay is meant primarily as a contribution to international ethics rather than political philosophy. It is argued that because of the non-eliminability of differences in the world we should not even hope that there can be only one global religion or ideology. Further exploration exposes conceptual affinity between the concepts of (...) intolerance, ideology, and doctrinal evil. The last concept is developed in contrast to pure evil and average evil, and under the assumption of the metaphysical necessity of free will. Doctrinal evil is found to represent the main source of intolerance as a result of a mechanism that tends to confuse doctrinal evil (or the competing conceptions of the good) with pure evil. This connection between doctrinal evil and pure evil provides ideologies with their forcefulness. Tolerance cannot be properly understood in terms of a simple opposition to intolerance, however. Tolerance emerges as a sort of vigilance, conscientiousness, and non-negligence based not on a supposedly correct interpretation of the good, but rather on the acceptance of the fallibility of any such attempted definition. Conversely, the principal evil in doctrinal evil is found in arrogance that accompanies the intolerance-inducing irresponsible thoughtlessness. With this conceptual topology in mind the paper also addresses questions regarding religious tolerance, the ideology of human rights and democracy, the right to self-defense, ways to face evil, the dialectics of using old names for novel evils, and related issues. (shrink)

War ethics might sound as impossible combination of words – how justify what seems to be unjustifiable? War is prima facie unjustifiable. However, wars are a fact of human reality, and those among us who are unfortunate to live in times of war – in a way it is all of us – would know that the reality is not just a possibility, that prima facie designation does not help in answering what must be done, that unjustifiability does not imply (...) impossibility. We must understand to be able to explain, and to explain to have a valid evaluation, especially when what is happening is important and with far-reaching consequences. Wars are such phenomena. We live amid such phenomena, and we need to understand not only their tragic and often cataclysmic nature, but also their meaning, their structure and logic of their functioning. We should understand that war is not something that happens only to others, nor that it is the matter of the past. In the present volume we have thirty-three essays examining war from many angles, sometimes from the opposite standpoints, exploring some of the most intriguing issues of warfare in times characterized by radical changes in the world in turmoil. The contributions in present volume give an overview of the world’s thinking about war. The volume is certainly incomplete and unfinished, but it gives a lot of thought-provoking incentives to think about the most important aspects of warfare and its broad phenomenology. (shrink)

We present an elementary system of axioms for the geometry of Minkowski spacetime. It strikes a balance between a simple and streamlined set of axioms and the attempt to give a direct formalization in first-order logic of the standard account of Minkowski spacetime in Maudlin and Malament. It is intended for future use in the formalization of physical theories in Minkowski spacetime. The choice of primitives is in the spirit of Tarski : a predicate of betwenness and a four place (...) predicate to compare the square of the relativistic intervals. Minkowski spacetime is described as a four dimensional ‘vector space’ that can be decomposed everywhere into a spacelike hyperplane—which obeys the Euclidean axioms in Tarski and Givant, 175–214 1999)—and an orthogonal timelike line. The length of other ‘vectors’ are calculated according to Pythagoras’ theorem. We conclude with a Representation Theorem relating models \ of our system \ that satisfy second order continuity to the mathematical structure \, called ‘Minkowski spacetime’ in physics textbooks. (shrink)

Teza o "neskrivljenom neznanju" je instrument u okviru teorije pravednog rata koja sluzi da se moralno opravda ucesce u ratu za pripadnike one strane koja je porazena; uslovi za neskrivljenost su da su porazeni borci iskreno verovali da brane pravednu stvar i da su takodje iskreno verovali da imaju nekih izgleda da pobede. Bez ovog instrumenta teorija pravednog rata, jedna teorija koja opravdava rat preko pravednog uzroka rata, bi porazenoj strani narocito ako je slabija, morala da unapred pripise krivicu sto (...) je uopste usla u rat. Medjutim, u savremenoj situaciji rasirene kriminalizacije rata sam pojam rata se menja i postaje izuzetno neodredjen. Kako ratovi postaju sve vise i vise "asimetricni", pre svega u snazi sukobljenih strana, cini se da se teorija pravednog rata suocava sa teskocom da u svoje okvire uopste situira "neskrivljeno neznanje", ali to povlaci teskocu te teorije da pokaze da pravda ide sa pobedom, otvarajuci tako pitanje artikulacije pravednog mira. (shrink)

Depression is a major public health issue and the literature has consistently showed that the rates of depression increase dramatically during youth transition to adulthood, and gender differences merge in this period. Positive youth development framework is focused on strengths that make young people more resistant to negative outcomes, like depression, and more capable to choose a positive life direction. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between the 5Cs of PYD and depression in Croatia and Spain, (...) as well as to analyze gender differences. This research was conducted within the PYD Cross-National Project. High school and university students from Eastern Croatia and Southern Spain participated in the study. There were 584 students from Croatia and 768 students from Spain, who filled in self-reports of PYD and depression. Results showed that male participants presented more Competence and Confidence, while female participants reported more Connection, Caring, Character, overall PYD, but also more depressive symptoms. Furthermore, Confidence and Connection were negative correlates of depressive symptoms, with neither Spain nor Croatia showing remarkable gender differences. These results may have some implications concerning the promotion of the 5Cs of PYD as a recommendable approach to promote youth mental health in Croatia and Spain from a gender perspective. Youth mental health services and initiatives that engage the partnership of youth contexts, such as the family, schools and neighborhoods, should not only address risk factors for mental health problems, but also protecting factors as the 5Cs, thus providing a more inclusive and sustainable support for youth well-being. (shrink)

The first issue raised in the paper is difference between social and institutional facts; both exist only because we believe they are real. Second is the claim that belonging to collectives is always a social fact, not necessarily as a result of any decision-making process; it might also become institutional through actual, sometimes only implicit, acceptance of some constitutive rules. Third, accepting constitutive rules functions by setting an irreversible point in time after which the scope of available justificatory reasons for (...) deciding and doing narrows. The implication is that reality of collectives cannot be reduced to individuals. Individuals often participate in this reality by belonging. Belonging thus becomes a social and sometimes also an institutional fact. (shrink)

After a short historical survey of philosophical views on property, the article contains an analysis of the argument which justifies property by referring to the universal respect due to anyone’s right to use any thing for any purpose. Usage 224 JOVAN BABIĆ SVOJINA ҄ FILOZOFSKA ANALIZA: ARGUMENT of things for the realization of set ends (or goals) is among the conditions of action/ agency. The capacity of freedom as a specific causal power in real world is dependent on the (...) possibility of using things as means. However, without a real prospect to finish the process of realization of set goals, this causal power would not be real. Property is a scheme within which this prospect becomes a real possibility. Property is thus a condition of effective successful purposeful agency. In property the normative position of all others, besides the owner, has been changed, as they do not have the right to use things possessed for their ends, although they have a right to use any non-possessed thing as a means for whichever end they might set. As a right, property entails, first, the obligation to respect the fact of any established possession, and, second, an obligation to accept and recognize the established possession as ownership, which does not depend on the fact of factual physical control of the property. Ownership is therefore a guarantee of future possession. For this to be established there is a need for an explicit recognition from all others; however this recognition is normatively necessary for everybody, as no-one has a right to withdraw the recognition of a legitimate right to property. This comes from the ontological and axiological difference between persons and things: persons have a right to use and possess unpossessed things as means for realization of ends they set. (shrink)

The paper has three parts. The first is a discussion of the values as goals and means. This is a known Moorean distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values, with one other Moorean item - the doctrine of value wholes. According to this doctrine the value wholes are not simply a summation of their parts, which implies a possibility that two evils might be better than one (e. g. crime + punishment, two evils, are better than either one of them taken (...) separately). In this first part I will discuss peace as an end value, and war as a means value. The second part dicsusses briefly the issue of sincerity. The third, last and for me the most important part of the paper explores the issue of moral integrity in pacifism: could a pacifist preserve the integrity of the attacker, or, for that matter her own integrity, or must she destroy anyone’s integrity and dehumanize the attacker and also herself? (shrink)