John Stuart Mill has not been considered, for the most part, a useful contributor to debates about either the of individuals in social groups or to the resolution of conflicts between diverse social groups. But Mill's attempt to combine the role of the with the theory of social science requires him to situate the social scientific inquirer in a contingent, historical, and cultural social group and to consider both the prospects and difficulties the diversity of cultural groups presents. By examining (...) the role of and in Mill's thought, Mill's position on the just treatment of diverse groups emerges. Because of the threat posed to liberty and critical rationality by any dominant group, Mill attempts to develop institutional arrangements that prevent any group becoming dominant and that embody critical rationality. A concrete example of such an institutional arrangement is found, somewhat surprisingly, in Mill's India policy. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's thought on education and schools reflects his wider educational project for individuals and society. As a writer, activist and Member of Parliament, he contributed to the educational debates of his day regarding the form that the new institutions of mass education should take and how they should be funded. He argues that schools should be funded by the state but not controlled by it and advocates a system of competing experiments, monitored by competitive examinations based on facts (...) and payment of teachers by their pupils' results. The democratic and participatory vision of education that he advocates, even for the working class, anticipates the progressive education of Dewey. (shrink)

Often, when there is a reason for you to do something, it is the kind of thing to motivate you to do it. For example, if Max and Caroline are deciding whether to go to the Alcove for dinner, Caroline might mention as a reason in favor, the fact that the Alcove serves onion rings the size of doughnuts, and Max might mention as a reason against, the fact that it is so difficult to get parking there this time of (...) day. It is some sign—perhaps not a perfect sign, but some sign—that each of these really is a reason, that Max and Caroline feel the tug in each direction. Mention of the Alcove's onion rings makes them feel to at least some degree inclined to go, and mention of the parking arrangements makes them feel to at least some degree inclined not to. According to some philosophers, reasons for action always bear some relation like this to motivation. This idea is variously known as ‘ reasons internalism’, ‘internalism about reasons ’, or ‘the internal reasons theory’. According to other philosophers, not all reasons are related to motivation in any of the ways internalists say. This idea is known as ‘ reasons externalism’ or ‘externalism about reasons ’. (shrink)

Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers shape social scientific research and contribute in (...) a practical way when treating these phenomena, focusing on examples of climate change scepticism. (shrink)

Some of the opponents of desire-based views of normativity seek to undermine them by arguing that even the existence of instrumental normativity (reasons to pursue the means to your ends) entails the existence of a desire-independent rational norm, the instrumental norm. Once we grant the existence of one such norm, there seems to be no principled reason for not allowing others. I clarify this alleged norm, identifying two criteria that any satisfactory candidate must meet: reasonable expectation and possible violation. Some (...) interpretations meet the first criterion and others meet the second, but there are no interpretations that meet both. After surveying the interpretations of Sidgwick, Hampton, and Korsgaard, I suggest that there is no instrumental norm of reason. The final section offers an alternative, desire-based account of instrumental normativity, on which individual normative requirements to pursue means derives from each individual desire for an end. (shrink)

What makes someone the same person over time? There are (at least) two ways of understanding this question: A person can be the same in the sense of being very similar to how they used to be (similarity), or they can be the same in the sense of being the same individual (numerical identity). In recent years, several papers have claimed to explore the commonsense notion of numerical identity. However, we suggest here that these researchers have instead been studying similarity. (...) We develop a novel method that uses simple intuitions about objects to illustrate these two notions of “same person”, and then asks which concept applies to instances of personal change. Across 4 studies (N = 2446), we find that these previously documented intuitions are best understood as reflecting judgments about similarity, not identity (Experiments 1 and 2). We then use this method to explore the situations in which participants do perceive a change in numerical identity. We find that when a person's entire brain (Experiments 3 and 4) or soul (Experiment 4) has been replaced with that of another person, the majority of participants judge that numerical identity has changed. However, we also note that a substantial minority of participants denied that identity had changed, opening new questions about the role of the body in intuitive judgments of personal identity. (shrink)

Arguing for a new direction in postmodern theological thinking, away from the liberalism and nihilism of those who name themselves postmodern theologians, the ...

Background: The Declaration of Helsinki prohibits the publication of articles that do not meet defined ethical standards for reporting of research ethics board approval and informed consent. Despite this prohibition and a call to highlight the deficiency for the reader, articles with potential ethical shortcomings continue to be published.Objective: To determine what proportion of articles in major medical journals lack statements confirming REB approval and informed consent, and whether accompanying commentary alerts readers to this deficiency.Design: Retrospective, observational study.Setting: Online review (...) of five major medical journals.Population: All clinical research articles published online between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2006 in the BMJ, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine.Measurements: Statement of REB approval and informed consent.Results: Of 1780 articles reviewed, 1133 met inclusion criteria , 36 articles lacked a statement of REB approval, 62 lacked disclosure of informed consent and 15 articles lacked both. Articles that did not state REB approval were associated with not stating informed consent . There were no editorial comments to alert readers to the lack of either REB approval or informed consent statements associated with any of the deficient articles.Conclusions: Articles that lack explicit statements of REB approval and informed consent are infrequent but continue to be published in major medical journals without editorial statements to alert the reader to this deficiency. (shrink)

Is propositional religious faith constituted by belief? Recent debate has focussed on whether faith may be constituted by a positive non-doxastic cognitive state, which can stand in place of belief. This paper sets out and defends the doxastic theory. We consider and reject three arguments commonly used in favour of non-doxastic theories of faith: (1) the argument from religious doubt; (2) the use of ‘faith’ in linguistic utterances; and (3) the possibility of pragmatic faith. We argue that belief is required (...) to maintain a distinction between genuine faith, pretend faith, and fictionalist faith. (shrink)

Epistocratic systems of government have received renewed attention, and considerable opposition, in recent political philosophy. Although they vary significantly in form, epistocracies generally reject universal suffrage. But can they maintain the advantages of universal suffrage despite rejecting it? This paper develops an argument for a significant instrumental advantage of universal suffrage: that governments must take into account the interests of all of those enfranchised in their policy decisions or else risk losing power. This is called ‘the Interests Argument’. One problem (...) for the Interests Argument is that governments are not entirely responsive to voter interests, partly because voters do not always know what is in their interests. I will show how this epistemic claim can be used to support certain forms of epistocracy, but deny that it undermines the Interests Argument. I then consider whether we can identify forms of epistocracy that preserve the benefits of the Interests Argument whilst overcoming the epistemic limitations of democracy. I propose six forms of epistocracy, and argue that two are able to maintain these benefits, hence providing an evaluation of the relative strengths of these epistocracies with respect to one of the most valuable instrumental benefits of universal suffrage. Whilst epistocracy lacks many of the advantages of democracy, this paper shows that some forms fare better than others. (shrink)

The standard theory of electoral accountability treats the electorate as an appraiser of government performance on a range of complex issues, which re-elects or de-elects depending on its evaluation of that performance. This paper draws from studies on voter knowledge and behaviour to present a dilemma for the standard theory: either voters do not know how well their rulers have performed, or if they do, they do not base their votes on that knowledge. It is shown that, on either horn (...) of the dilemma, the standard account of electoral accountability fails, and that attempts to deflate the dilemma through heuristic and aggregative approaches to voter knowledge, or proposals for alternative systems of government, are also inadequate. The paper then sets out and defends an alternative conception of electoral accountability, which holds that electoral accountability is not about micro-assessing a government’s actions. Rather, it is about preventing political rulers from committing or allowing substantial harms to come upon those they govern. This alternative conception is compatible with a realistic view of voter knowledge and behaviour, but nonetheless makes electoral accountability an essential component of a well-functioning democratic system. (shrink)

What is the relationship between faith and evidence? It is often claimed that faith requires going beyond evidence. In this paper, I reject this claim by showing how the moral demands to have faith warrant a person in maintaining faith in the face of counter-evidence, and by showing how the moral demands to have faith, and the moral constraints of evidentialism, are in clear tension with going beyond evidence. In arguing for these views, I develop a taxonomy of different ways (...) of irrationally going beyond evidence and contrast this with rational ways of going against evidence. I then defend instances of having a moral demand to have faith, explore how this stands in tension with going beyond and against evidence, and develop an argument for the claim that faith involves a disposition to go against, but not beyond evidence. (shrink)

Religious fundamentalism remains a significant force in global politics and religion. Despite a range of problems arising from fundamentalism, the beliefs fundamentalists hold can seem quite reasonable. This paper considers whether, in fact, fundamentalist beliefs are rational by drawing on recent ideas in contemporary epistemology. The paper presents a general theory of fundamentalist beliefs in terms of their propositional content and the high credence levels attributed to them. It then explores the way these beliefs are both acquired and retained by (...) applying ideas from the social epistemology of echo chambers and group belief. The paper then considers three accounts of the rationality of belief: evidentialist, reliabilist, and virtue-theoretic. It is argued that fundamentalist beliefs can be reasonable on evidentialist standards, but are nevertheless still problematic on reliabilist and virtue standards, since they are formed in environments that are not truth-conducive and which cultivate intellectual vice. (shrink)

Faith occupies an important place in human lives in both religious and secular contexts: faith may be directed towards God, friends, governments, political systems and football teams. It is said to help people through crises and motivate people to achieve life goals. But what is faith? Philosophers and theologians have for centuries been concerned with questions about the rationality of faith, but more recently, have focussed on what kind of psychological attitude faith is. We bring together, for the first time, (...) the different elements of this recent debate, staking out the different positions and arguments, and defend a novel 'true grit' theory of faith, from which we assess questions about the rationality of faith from a fresh perspective. The book engages with a range of questions about the nature of faith, including: Does faith require belief? How is faith expressed in language? Is faith motivational? What is the relationship between faith and cognate attitudes, such as trust and hope? What is the role of faith in our long-term plans? And, in what sense is faith steadfast, resilient or constant, as is commonly supposed? This last issue leads us to additional literature from the social sciences, and we defend a distinctive conception of faith as resistance to practical, psychological and epistemic challenges, that forms the basis of the true grit theory defended in the book. (shrink)

Most contemporary accounts of the nature of faith explicitly defend what we call ‘the positivity theory of faith’ – the theory that faith must be accompanied by a favourable evaluative belief, or a desire towards the object of faith. This paper examines the different varieties of the positivity theory and the arguments used to support it. Whilst initially plausible, we find that the theory faces numerous problematic counterexamples, and show that weaker versions of the positivity theory are ultimately implausible. We (...) discuss a distinct property of faith that we call ‘true grit’, such that faith requires one to be resilient toward the evidential, practical, and psychological challenges that it faces. We show how true grit is necessary for faith, and provides a simpler and less problematic explanation of the evidence used to support the positivity theory. (shrink)

A critical survey of various positions on the nature, use, possession, and analysis of normative concepts. We frame our treatment around G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument, and the ways metaethicists have responded by departing from a Classical Theory of concepts. In addition to the Classical Theory, we discuss synthetic naturalism, noncognitivism (expressivist and inferentialist), prototype theory, network theory, and empirical linguistic approaches. Although written for a general philosophical audience, we attempt to provide a new perspective and highlight some underappreciated problems (...) about normative concepts. (shrink)

Religious fictionalism is the theory that it is morally and intellectually legitimate to affirm religious sentences and to engage in public and private religious practices, without believing the content of religious claims. This article discusses the main features of fictionalism, contrasts hermeneutic, and revolutionary kinds of fictionalism and explores possible historical and recent examples of religious fictionalism. Such examples are found in recent theories of faith, pragmatic approaches to religion, and mystical traditions in religious theology.

Echo chambers have received widespread attention in recent years, but there is no agreement over whether they are always epistemically bad for us. Some argue they’re inherently epistemically bad, whilst others claim they can be epistemically good. This paper has three aims. First, to bring together recent studies in this debate, taxonomizing different ways of thinking about the epistemic status of echo chambers. Second, to consider and reject several accounts of what makes echo chambers epistemically harmful or not, and then (...) offer an alternative account which builds on some features of existing accounts. In our view, echo chambers – even those that are truth-conducive – are always epistemically harmful because of their reasons-undermining features, e.g. the way that they impede the development of epistemic reasons which can answer and withstand challenges. This account captures important ideas behind several theories in the epistemology of echo chambers, but offers a richer explanation that does not suffer from their limitations. (shrink)

Do we insult, offend or slight a speaker when we refuse her testimony? Do we compliment, commend or extol a speaker when we accept her testimony? I argue that the answer to both of these questions is “yes”, but only in some instances, since these respective insults and compliments track the reasons a hearer has for rejecting or accepting testimony. When disbelieving a speaker, a hearer may insult her because she judges the speaker to be either incompetent as a knower (...) or insincere as a teller. However, there are many instances where we reject testimony without making this negative evaluation of the speaker, and as such, without paying her an insult. Testimonial compliments are fewer in number, and are not constitutive of “everyday” testimonial exchanges, since, speakers who are competent as knowers and sincere as tellers are merely behaving correctly in accordance with the norms of testifying. Nevertheless, deferring to an authority on belief can be complimentary to that speaker if by doing so we judge her to have some mastery in a particular domain. Testimonial insults and compliments have important moral implications, particularly with regard to epistemic injustice and therapeutic trust. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that faith is a virtue. To what extent faith is a virtue depends on what faith is. One construal of faith, which has been popular in both recent and historical work on faith, is that faith is a matter of taking oneself to have been spoken to by God and of trusting this purported divine testimony. In this paper, I argue that when faith is understood in this way, for faith to be virtuous then it must (...) be accompanied by intellectual humility. I defend this view by showing how someone ought to respond to purported divine testimony if her faith is to be intellectually humble, and how, if it fails in this respect, it will instead be accompanied by the vices of either servility or arrogance. (shrink)

This two-part volume collects the complete fragments and most important testimonies for the leading presocratic philosophers. The Greek and Latin texts are translated on facing pages and accompanied by a brief commentary for each philosopher.

What is extremism, and how can it be countered? According to a recent account by (Cassam, 2021), there are three kinds of extremism: ideological, methodological, and psychological. The psychological kind – what Cassam calls ‘mindset extremism’ – is used by Cassam to explain what leads individuals to resort to extreme methods. From there we can say that methods extremism can be countered by preventing people from becoming mindset extremists. This paper outlines Cassam’s overall theory, and challenges it in two respects. (...) First, it is argued that whilst mindset extremism does account for some individuals, it applies more readily to groups in a way analogous to the contrast between individual and group belief. This creates space for an account of group mindset extremism. Second, I propose that Cassam’s account of the role mindset extremism occupies in predicting an individual’s turn to extreme methods underplays the social aspects that lead the individual to form the mindset. By acknowledging these social and group properties, we can begin to develop a social epistemology of extremism. (shrink)

Is propositional religious faith constituted by belief? Recent debate has focussed on whether faith may be constituted by a positive non‐doxastic cognitive state, which can stand in place of belief. This article sets out and defends the doxastic theory. We consider and reject three arguments commonly used in favour of non‐doxastic theories of faith: (1) the argument from religious doubt; (2) the use of ‘faith’ in linguistic utterances; and (3) the possibility of pragmatic faith. We argue that belief is required (...) to maintain a distinction between genuine faith, pretend faith, and fictionalist faith. (shrink)

Based on Michel Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Collège de France on governmental rationalities and his 1977 interview regarding his work on imprisonment, this volume is the long-awaited sequel to Power/Knowledge.

Can normative words like "good," "ought," and "reason" be defined in non-normative terms? Stephen Finlay argues that they can, advancing a new theory of the meaning of this language and providing pragmatic explanations of the specially problematic features of its moral and deliberative uses which comprise the puzzles of metaethics.

This is a short precis of my 2014 book Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative Language, accompanying my Reply to Worsnip, Dowell, and Koehn in the same volume.

When you don’t believe a speaker’s testimony for reasons that call into question the speaker’s credibility, it seems that this is an insult against the speaker. There also appears to be moral reasons that count in favour of refraining from insulting someone. When taken together, these two plausible claims entail that we have a moral reason to refrain from insulting speakers with our lack of belief, and hence, sometimes, a moral reason to believe the testimony of speakers. Reasons for belief (...) arising from non-epistemic sources are controversial, and it’s often argued that it’s impossible to base a belief on non-epistemic reasons. However, I will show that even if it is possible to base a belief on non-epistemic reasons, in the case of testimonial insult, for many or most cases, the moral reasons for belief don’t need to be the basis of our doxastic response. This is because there are, in many or most cases, either sufficient epistemic reasons for belief, or sufficient moral reasons for action that guide our response to testimony. Reasons from testimonial insult, in many cases, simply lead to overdetermination. Even if there are such moral reasons for belief, they are therefore practically unnecessary in many cases. There are, though, some cases in which they play an important role in guiding belief. This perhaps surprising conclusion is one unexplored way to defend epistemic over pragmatic reasons for belief. (shrink)

This brief paper builds on my recently published work on financial capitalism. My objective here is (a) to sketch an account of the primary social features of post-1970s financialised capitalism, (b) to identify select dynamics or mechanisms that have resulted in these features, (c) to outline a programme of research to enhance our explanatory understanding of the ‘fractured society’ via the sociological concepts of structure, culture and agency, and (d) to broach, characterize and assess likely prospects and triggers for the (...) accomplishment of a credible, defensible post-capitalist societal formation. (shrink)

Examines the influence of the physical and biological sciences on society, ethics, and philosophy during the twentieth century.

What obligations are there on voters? This paper argues that voters should make their electoral decision competently, and does so by developing on a recent proposal for democratic legitimacy. It then explores three problems arising from this ‘competency obligation’. First, how should voters be competent? I propose three conditions required for voter competence. Second, how competent should voters be? I argue that the competency required tracks the significance of the consequences of the vote. Third, if the electorate are unlikely to (...) deliver a competent decision, should suffrage be restricted to the competent alone? I defend unrestricted suffrage on the grounds that restricting suffrage cannot guarantee a competently made electoral decision. Instead, obligations on voters should be minimised by political parties satisfying their obligations to be politically sound; if they are sound, then the obligation to be competent can be easily satisfied by voters. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of faith as a global trait of character, and explores how it relates to trust and hope. This account is developed in terms of the functional role faith occupies: what it is that global faith does in our lives. Global faith is taken to be a disposition to persevere in seeing the good in situations, events, circumstances, and people. This trait is explored through real and fictionalised situations of difficulty and strife, and when looking back (...) at one’s past experiences and challenges. The paper locates global faith within the broader family of faith-attitudes, contrasts it with similar accounts, and shows how it contributes to valuable trustfulness and hopefulness. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This commentary shows how Dormandy’s ‘Partiality Norm of Belief for Faith’ can be made compatible with ‘Evidentialism about Faith’. Dormandy takes partiality to involve disrespect toward evidence—where evidence we are partial toward is given undue weight. I propose an alternative where partiality is to require more or less evidence for believing a proposition given the benefits or harms of holding the belief. Rather than disrespecting evidence, this partiality is simply to have variable ‘evidence thresholds’ that are partly set by (...) pragmatic considerations. Evidence is not disrespected; an agent just requires more or less of it on pragmatic grounds. (shrink)

Freedom of speech in universities is currently an issue of widespread concern and debate. Recent empirical findings in the UK shed some light on whether speech is unduly restricted in the university, but it suffers from two limitations. First, the results appear contradictory. Some studies show that the issue of free speech is overblown by media reportage, whilst others track serious concerns about free speech arising from certain university policies. Second, the findings exclude important issues concerning restrictions to speech on (...) campus that fall outside of the traditional debate around violations to free speech rights. This is particularly the case when certain voices are excluded from important policy conversations, and in issues around diversifying the curriculum. This paper overcomes these two limitations by developing a novel conceptual framework within which to situate current debates concerning speech related matters in universities. It does so by developing a taxonomy around the concept of ‘silencing’. It then considers the current issue of speech matters in universities within this framework to determine whether, and to what extent, speech is indeed unduly restricted, and where this is a concern for free speech violations, and where it falls outside of this issue. (shrink)

Recent studies of spider phobia have indicated thatfearof spiders is closely associated with the disease-avoidance response of disgust. It is argued that the disgust-relevant status of the spider resulted from its association with disease and illness in European cultures from the tenth century onward. The development of the association between spiders and illness appears to be linked to the many devastating and inexplicable epidemics that struck Europe from the Middle Ages onwards, when the spider was a suitable displaced target for (...) the anxieties caused by these epidemics. Such factors suggest that the pervasive fear of spiders that is commonly found in many Western societies may have cultural rather than biological origins, and may be restricted to Europeans and their descendants. (shrink)

The cultivation of intellectual character is an important goal within university education. This article focusses on cultivating intellectual humility. It first explores an account of intellectual humility from recent literature on the intellectual virtues. Then, it considers one recent pedagogical approach – Making Thinking Visible – as a means of teaching intellectual virtue. It assesses one particular technique for cultivating intellectual humility arising from this pedagogical literature, and applies it to the teaching of political philosophy. Finally, there is a discussion (...) concerning how to supplement these techniques to best teach political philosophy generally, and for the purposes of cultivating intellectual humility in particular. It is argued that, by introducing the technique of the Circle of Viewpoints, supplemented by techniques from the Compassion in Education literature, the modules I teach can better cultivate intellectual humility in my students. (shrink)

Moral error theory of the kind defended by J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it were, the error theory would still be mistaken, (...) because the assumption does not contaminate the meaning or truth-conditions of moral claims. These are determined by the essential application conditions for moral concepts, which are relational rather than absolute. An analogy is drawn between moral judgements and motion judgements. (shrink)