Karl Popper suggested that the utilitarian formula "Maximise happiness" should be replaced by the formula "Minimize suffering" - a view which has been called "negative utilitarianism". Can such a view be spelled out in a plausible way? Examining several ways of understanding the alleged ethical priority of pain over pleasure, I come to the conclusion that none of them is satisfactory as a basis for a theory of benevolence. However, once we move from hedonistic to preference utilitarianism two possible views (...) emerge which, although not fundamentally different from classical utilitarianism, diverge from it in interesting ways and seem to warrant further study. (shrink)

Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox seems to show that we must give up one of three very plausible beliefs about the relative goodness of certain outcomes, which would put a strong damper on our hopes of finding an acceptable theory of benevolence dealing with issues of procreation. I shall argue that such a result can be avoided if we challenge some basic assumptions about moral reasoning which underlie Parfit's argument. An alternative account of the nature of moral reasoning will be given, (...) and a non-standard version of Utilitarianism capable of solving the Paradox will be developed and defended. (shrink)

Karl Popper suggested that the utilitarian formula "Maximise happiness" should be replaced by the formula "Minimize suffering" - a view which has been called "negative utilitarianism". Can such a view be spelled out in a plausible way? Examining several ways of understanding the alleged ethical priority of pain over pleasure, I come to the conclusion that none of them is satisfactory as a basis for a theory of benevolence. However, once we move from hedonistic to preference utilitarianism two possible views (...) emerge which, although not fundamentally different from classical utilitarianism, diverge from it in interesting ways and seem to warrant further study. (shrink)

From citizens paying taxes to employees following their bosses’ orders and kids obeying their parents, we take it for granted that a whole range of authorities have the power to impose duties on others. However, although authority is often accepted in practice, it looks philosophically problematic if we conceive persons as free and as equals. -/- In this short and accessible book, Fabian Wendt examines the basis of authority, discussing five prominent theories that try to explain how claims to (...) authority can be vindicated. Focusing in particular on the issue of how states can rightfully claim authority, he rigorously analyses the theories’ arguments and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses. He also debates anarchism as an alternative that should be taken seriously if no theory ultimately succeeds in explaining state authority. -/- This clear and engaging book will be essential reading for anyone grappling with the most fundamental questions of authority and obligation in political theory and political philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency, mind-wandering is not—though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve mental agency at (...) all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mind-wandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness—in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 2, Page 166-190, Spring 2023.

The problem of algorithmic fairness is typically framed as the problem of finding a unique formal criterion that guarantees that a given algorithmic decision-making procedure is morally permissible. In this paper, I argue that this is conceptually misguided and that we should replace the problem with two sub-problems. If we examine how most state-of-the-art machine learning systems work, we notice that there are two distinct stages in the decision-making process. First, a prediction of a relevant property is made. Secondly, a (...) decision is taken based (at least partly) on this prediction. These two stages have different aims: the prediction is aimed at accuracy, while the decision is aimed at allocating a given good in a way that maximizes some context-relative utility measure. Correspondingly, two different fairness issues can arise. First, predictions could be biased in discriminatory ways. This means that the predictions contain systematic errors for a specific group of individuals. Secondly, the system’s decisions could result in an allocation of goods that is in tension with the principles of distributive justice. These two fairness issues are distinct problems that require different types of solutions. I here provide a formal framework to address both issues and argue that this way of conceptualizing them resolves some of the paradoxes present in the discussion of algorithmic fairness. (shrink)

A libertarian theory of justice holds that persons are self-owners and have the Hohfeldian moral power to justly acquire property rights in initially unowned external resources. Different variants of libertarianism can be distinguished according to their stance on the famous Lockean proviso. The proviso requires, in Locke’s words, to leave ‘enough and as good’ for others, and thus specifies limits on the acquisition of property. Left-libertarians accept an egalitarian interpretation of the proviso, ‘right-libertarians’ either reject any kind of proviso or (...) accept rather weak versions of it. In be-tween there is room for moderate interpretations of the proviso, and in particular for a sufficientarian interpretation: a ‘sufficiency proviso.’ The resulting theory of justice can be called ‘moderate libertarianism.’ In this article I make a case for moderate libertarianism, so understood. I argue that moderate libertarianism has advantages over both left- and right-libertarianism because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place. (shrink)

The measure of what can be considered “new” is what is already known. What is “new” – be it a (technical) invention, a new method, or a newly discovered natural phenomenon – must distinguish itself...

Das Buch weist in exemplarischen Fallstudien von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart die zentrale Rolle von Bildern für Prozesse der Vergemeinschaftung auf. Gegen Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts setzt in der akademischen Diskussion eine verstärkte Rückwendung zum Konzept der Gemeinschaft ein.

Please send me an email (fabian[email protected]) if you wish to receive a copy of the book. — 'In this highly ambitious, wide ranging, immensely impressive and ground-breaking work Fabian Dorsch surveys just about every account of the imagination that has ever been proposed. He identifies five central types of imagining that any unifying theory must accommodate and sets himself the task of determining whether any theory of what imagining consists in covers these five paradigms. Focussing on what he (...) takes to be the three main theories, and giving them each equal consideration, he faults the first two and embraces the third, which argues that imagining is a special form of mental agency. The scholarship is immaculate, the writing crystal clear and the argumentation always powerful.' (Malcolm Budd). (shrink)

Adorno notoriously asserted that there is no 'right' life in our current social world. This assertion has contributed to the widespread perception that his philosophy has no practical import or coherent ethics, and he is often accused of being too negative. Fabian Freyenhagen reconstructs and defends Adorno's practical philosophy in response to these charges. He argues that Adorno's deep pessimism about the contemporary social world is coupled with a strong optimism about human potential, and that this optimism explains his (...) negative views about the social world, and his demand that we resist and change it. He shows that Adorno holds a substantive ethics, albeit one that is minimalist and based on a pluralist conception of the bad - a guide for living less wrongly. His incisive study does much to advance our understanding of Adorno, and is also an important intervention into current debates in moral philosophy. (shrink)

This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the (...) author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain. Fabian Schuppert creates a grand synthesis uniting neo-republican insights on freedom with Hegelian recognition theory. The result is an account of agency that arises from the idea of non-domination whose aim it is to safeguard individual freedom. When combined with Hegelian recognition theory a social focus also emerges. This amalgam comments on many of the major disputes concerning global justice from a cosmopolitan perspective. Because of the broad scope and the many contemporary discussions engaged this book will be of keen interest to scholars as well as a welcome addition to the classroom. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the view that we can acquire factual knowledge – that is, contingent propositional knowledge about certain (perceivable) aspects of reality – on the basis of imaginative experience. More specifically, I argue that, under suitable circumstances, imaginative experiences can rationally determine the propositional content of knowledge-constituting beliefs – though not their attitude of belief – in roughly the same way as perceptual experiences do in the case of perceptual knowledge. I also highlight some philosophical consequences of (...) this conclusion, especially for the issue of whether imagination can help us to learn something from fictions. (shrink)

According to Karen Neander’s causal-informational teleosemantics, the contents of perceptual states depend on the etiological response functions of sensory-perceptual systems. In this paper, I argue that this theory is, despite its virtues, unable to explain how humans and other animals are capable of perceiving properties with which no sensory-perceptual system has ever been confronted. After rejecting Neander’s own proposal in terms of second-order similarity and a proposal inspired by Ruth Millikan in terms of simplicity, I offer a solution which equates (...) functions with manifestations of dispositions that made a difference to evolutionary success. My suggestion is able to generate determinate and plausible contents for new perceptual states while still preserving the idea that etiological functions explain evolutionary success. (shrink)

Begründet und entfaltet wird ein Begriff des Spiels, der sich um Lockungen und Drohungen des Unerwarteten dreht. Das Autorenduo ordnet seine Theorie der ludischen Aktion in klassische Konzepte des Spiels ein sowie in den aktuellen Diskurs der Game Studies. Die phänomenale Mannigfaltigkeit des Spiels wird in historischer Perspektive skizziert und in systematischer Weise gegliedert. Die Autoren erläutern medientechnische und kommunikative Voraussetzungen des Booms der Computerspiele und reflektieren die Diskussion über Eskalationen ludischer Gewalt. Kritisch ausgeleuchtet werden Instrumentalisierungen des Spiels, die sich (...) unter dem Stichwort Gamification wachsender Beliebtheit erfreuen. Die auffällige Inflation der Spielmetapher wird in Zusammenhang gebracht mit ludischen Anmutungen in den sozialen Strukturen der modernen und digitalen Gesellschaft. Fabian Arlt, M. A., hat Medienmanagement studiert und promoviert im Studiengang Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftskommunikation der Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin. Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Arlt ist Sozialwissenschaftler und Publizist, er lehrt am Institut für Theorie und Praxis der Kommunikation der Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin. (shrink)

This book explores the morality of compromising. The author argues that peace and public justification are values that provide moral reasons to make compromises in politics, including compromises that establish unjust laws or institutions. He explains how it is possible to have moral reasons to agree to moral compromises and he debates our moral duties and obligations in making such compromises. The book also contains discussions of the sources of the value of public justification, the relation between peace and justice, (...) the nature of modus vivendi arrangements and the connections between compromise, liberal institutions and legitimacy. In exploring the morality of compromising, the book thus provides some outlines for a map of political morality beyond justice. (shrink)

This thesis aims to clarify a number of conceptual aspects of the debate surrounding algorithmic fairness. The particular focus here is the role of causal modeling in defining criteria of algorithmic fairness. In Chapter 1, I argue that in the discussion of algorithmic fairness, two fundamentally distinct notions of fairness have been conflated. Subsequently, I propose that what is usually taken to be the problem of algorithmic fairness should be divided into two subproblems, the problem of predictive fairness, and the (...) problem of allocative fairness. At the core of Chapter 2 is the proof of a theorem that establishes that three of the most popular (predictive) fairness criteria are pairwise incompatible. In particular, I show that under certain conditions, a predictive algorithm that satisfies a criterion called counterfactual fairness will with logical necessity violate two other popular predictive fairness criteria called equalized odds and predictive parity. In Chapter 3, a new predictive fairness criterion is developed using a mathematical framework for causal modeling. This fairness criterion, which I call causal relevance fairness, is a relaxation of another popular fairness criterion, counterfactual fairness, but turns out to be more closely in line with philosophical theories of discrimination. In Chapter 4, another infamous impossibility result in algorithmic fairness is analyzed through the lens of causality. I argue that by using a causal inference method called matching, we can modify the two fairness criteria equalized odds and predictive parity in a way that resolves the impossibility. Lastly, Chapter 5 contains an empirical case study. In it, the fairness of a popular recidivism risk prediction tool is analyzed using the criteria of (predictive) fairness developed earlier. (shrink)

Ontology development methodologies emphasise knowledge gathering from domain experts and documentary resources, and knowledge representation using an ontology language such as OWL or FOL. However, working ontologists are often surprised by how challenging and slow it can be to develop ontologies. Here, with a particular emphasis on the sorts of ontologies that are content-heavy and intended to be shared across a community of users (reference ontologies), we propose that a significant and heretofore under-emphasised contributor of challenges during ontology development is (...) the need to create, or bring about, consensus in the face of disagreement. For this reason reference ontology development cannot be automated, at least within the limitations of existing AI approaches. Further, for the same reason ontologists are required to have specific social-negotiating skills which are currently lacking in most technical curricula. (shrink)

I discuss a contemporary solution to the dynamic problem of old evidence (POE), as proposed by Sprenger. Sprenger’s solution combines the Garber–Jeffrey–Niiniluoto (GJN) approach with Howson’s suggestion of counterfactually removing the old evidence from scientists’ belief systems. I argue that in the dynamic POE, the challenge is to explain how an insight under beliefs in which the old evidence E is known increased the credence of a scientific hypothesis. Therefore, Sprenger’s counterfactual solution, in which E has been artificially removed, does (...) not resolve the problem. I consider several potential responses. (shrink)

Public reason liberals from John Rawls to Gerald Gaus uphold a principle of public justification as a core commitment of their theories. Critics of public reason liberalism have sometimes conceded that there is something compelling about the idea of public justification. But so far there have not been many attempts to elaborate and defend a ‘comprehensive’ liberalism that incorporates a principle of public justification. This article spells out how public justifiability could be integrated into a comprehensive liberalism and defends the (...) claim that what is worthwhile about public justification can be extracted from public reason liberalism. (shrink)

The republican ideal of freedom as non-domination stresses the importance of certain social relationships for a person’s freedom, showing that freedom is a social-relational state. While the idea of non-domination receives a lot of attention in the literature, republican theorists say surprisingly little about equality. My aim in this paper is therefore to carve out the contours of a republican conception of equality. In so doing, I argue that republican accounts of equality share a significant normative overlap with the idea (...) of ‘social equality’. However, closer analysis of Philip Pettit’s account of ‘expressive egalitarianism’ (which he sees as inherently connected to non-domination) and recent theories of social equality shows that republican non-domination – in contrast to what Pettit seems to claim – is not sufficient for securing (republican) social equality. In order to secure social equality for all, republicans would have to go beyond the ideal of freedom as non-domination. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the metaphorical use of medical terms in philosophy. Three examples selected from distinct philosophical contexts demonstrate that such terms have been employed as metaphors both to describe the practice of philosophising and historically to diagnose philosophical positions. The selected examples are (i) the title of Avicenna’s main philosophical work, The Book of Healing, (ii) the criticism of medical metaphors in Enlightenment philosophy, and (iii) recent historical diagnoses in philosophy. The underlying epistemological assumptions of all three contexts (...) are reconstructed to critically analyse the medical metaphors. Through this tripartite synopsis, I arrive at a normative conclusions medical metaphors, such as the “healing of the soul” or “pathology of reason”, do not stand up to the critique of Enlightenment and are obsolete against the theoretical background of my reference texts. (shrink)

The goal of the 2010 Ontology Summit was to address the current shortage of persons with ontology expertise by developing a strategy for the education of ontologists. To achieve this goal we studied how ontologists are currently trained, the requirements identified by organizations that hire ontologists, and developments that might impact the training of ontologists in the future. We developed recommendations for the body of knowledge that should be taught and the skills that should be developed by future ontologists; these (...) recommendations are intended as guidelines for institutions and organizations that may consider establishing a program for training ontologists. Further, we recommend a number of specific actions for the community to pursue. (shrink)

This chapter overviews Hume’s thoughts on the nature and role of imagining and focusses primarily on three important distinctions that Hume draws among our conscious mental episodes: (i) between impressions and ideas; (ii) between ideas of the memory and ideas of the imagination; and (iii), among the ideas of the imagination, between ideas of the judgement and ideas of the fancy. In addition, the chapter considers Hume’s views on the imagination as a faculty of producing ideas, as well as on (...) the part that imagining plays in the acquisition of modal knowledge and in the comprehension of, and resistance to, false or fictional opinions. (shrink)

A REALIDADE DAS SERRAS CENTRAIS POTIGUARES E A QUESTÃO DO DESENVOLVIMENTO REGIONAL SOB A PERSPECTIVA DO DIREITO, DESENVOLVIMENTO E SUSTENTABILIDADE.

Cutting across boundaries of art and science, evolution is a fundamental process that has beguiled thinkers through the ages. This collection draws together world renowned thinkers and communicators with their own intriguing insights. In these essays they offer a feast of dazzling thoughts and ideas to challenge and enthrall the reader. Why and how do civilisations and societies change over time? Why do our cells develop the way they do? Why are some villages still villages while others have grown into (...) vast cities? Can we learn from our evolutionary past to plan a better future for our health and society? Tracing a line from the history of biological evolution, through the evolution of cultures, society, science and the universe, Evolution brings together intriguing parallels from all levels of life. From the evolution of the developing embryo to the evolution of a developing star, common threads develop into a fascinating story. (shrink)

Las prácticas de la lectura y la escritura han sufrido, en los últimos años, profundas transformaciones en respuesta al mundo post-industrial cambiante que nos enfrentamos como maestros. La ampliación del objeto literario a nuevos espacios de expresión cultural, está revisando conceptos como el canon, la belleza, el género, el papel del lector, así como la reformulación de lo que significa para leer y escribir literatura en un contexto universitario. En este sentido, consideramos que si la universidad se ha adaptado a (...) estos diversos escenarios culturales e históricos con el fin de ser capaz de formar lectores y escritores eficaces en el nuevo contexto cultural y más específicamente en el literario. Probablemente deberíamos revisar nuestro papel mediador en el aula para que podamos articular productivamente las expectativas de lectura y escritura a cada estudiante tiene y la oferta académica de la universidad. En este artículo vamos a tratar con los principales problemas relacionados con la lectura y la escritura de la literatura en la Universidad; y vamos a elaborar una propuesta para un taller curricular articulando estas dos actividades, mientras que la integración de las contribuciones específicas didácticas en la enseñanza de la literatura y disciplinas como la teoría literaria, la semiótica y la crítica. (shrink)

One of the tasks of ontology in information science is to support the classification of entities according to their kinds and qualities. We hold that to realize this task as far as entities such as material objects are concerned we need to distinguish four kinds of entities: substance particulars, quality particulars, substance universals, and quality universals. These form, so to speak, an ontological square. We present a formal theory of classification based on this idea, including both a semantics for the (...) theory and a provably sound axiomatization. (shrink)

The imagination poses fascinating philosophical questions across a range of subjects including philosophy of mind, aesthetics and epistemology. However, until now it has been a relatively neglected topic. How do acts of imagining differ from other mental episodes, such as perceptions or judgements? What kind of awareness is involved in imagining? Can imagining ground knowledge and if so, how reliable is it? Is there some unity to the various forms of imagining? In this book Fabian Dorsch considers these questions, (...) introducing and assessing all the main issues and arguments concerning imagination, including: episodic imagining imagining objects propositional imagining imagination and epistemology imagination and aesthetics imagination and cognitive science the unity of imagining. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, _Imagination_ is an ideal starting point for anyone studying the philosophy of imagination for the first time as well as more advanced students and researchers in philosophy, psychology and related disciplines. (shrink)

Empirical research shows the significant negative effects inequality has on aspects such as public health, vulnerability to violence, and social trust. While the majority of researchers agree that there exist specific social determinants of health as well as a distinct social gradient in health , there is wide disagreement both over what the exact causal relationship between social inequalities and health is, and what the adequate policy responses especially to the SGH are. For policy-oriented theorists, the question arises which normative (...) implications these empirical findings offer for philosophers working on equality.This paper argues that the first lesson philosophers should take away from the empirical literature is that the issue that needs to be addressed is harmful social inequality, rather than unequal material distributions, or unequal opportunities and starting gates as such. That is to say, inequality with respect to a specific feature X is not—in itself—the problem, but the problem are the negative effects of certain harmful forms of complex social inequalities. For our normative analysis this entails that we should focus on the conceptualization of the ideal of social equality, and the kinds of relationships and institutional arrangements compatible with it. (shrink)

The article argues that persons should be conceived as self-owners and entitled to acquire private property within justifiable property conventions because they should be able to live as project pursuers. This is the ‘project pursuit argument’. It leads to a conception of self-ownership that is stringent, but weaker than standard libertarian notions of self-ownership, and to an understanding of private property as a convention that has to meet a sufficientarian threshold in order to be justifiable.

It is often assumed that in order to avoid the most severe consequences of global anthropogenic climate change we have to preserve our existing carbon sinks, such as for instance tropical forests. Global carbon sink conservation raises a host of normative issues, though, since it is debatable who should pay the costs of carbon sink conservation, who has the duty to protect which sinks, and how far the duty to conserve one’s carbon sinks actually extends, especially if it conflicts with (...) other duties one might have. According to some, forested states like Ecuador have a duty to preserve their tropical forests while the rich states of the global North have a duty of fairness to compensate states like Ecuador for the costs they incur. My aim in this paper is to critically analyse this standard line of argument and to criticise its validity both internally and externally. As I will argue, the duty to conserve one’s forests is only a particular instantiation of a wider, more general duty to contribute towards global climate justice for which the context in which one operates matters significantly. (shrink)

Doxasticism about our awareness of normative (i.e. justifying) reasons – the view that we can recognise reasons for forming attitudes or performing actions only by means of normative judgements or beliefs – is incompatible with the following triad of claims: -/- (1) Being motivated (i.e. forming attitudes or performing actions for a motive) requires responding to and, hence, recognising a relevant reason. -/- (2) Infants are capable of being motivated. -/- (3) Infants are incapable of normative judgement or belief. -/- (...) It should be clear that (3) is true, given that infants lack the required reflective and conceptual capacities. So doxasticists have to reject either (1) or (2) (or both). But this forced choice may be understood as a dilemma for doxasticism. On the hand, doxasticists may adopt a Kantian approach and reject (2), precisely because they think that motivation presupposes the doxastic recognition of reasons, and because infants lack the capacity to doxastically recognise reasons. But this choice seems to wrongly reduce the responses of infants to mere reflexes or instinctive reactions. On the other hand, doxasticists may choose a Humean route and deny (1) by espousing a purely causal or teleological account of motivation. But this would mean detrimentally ignoring the normative nature of (some instances of) motivation. -/- One elegant way of avoiding this dilemma is to give up doxasticism and instead endorse experientialism – the view that we enjoy some experiential access to reasons, which is independent of, and perhaps more fundamental than, our capacity to form normative judgements and beliefs. In this talk, I would like to provide an argument for the existence of such a non-doxastic form of access to reasons. More specifically, I aim to defend the claim that our basic awareness of reasons is phenomenal in nature. What this means is that it forms part of our access from the inside to those of our mental episodes that provide us with access to reasons. In other words, when we introspectively attend to reason-giving mental episodes and what they are about, we have the impression of the presence of a reason for us. My defence of this experientialist alternative to doxasticism will primarily focus on perceptual reasons for first-order beliefs about the external world. (shrink)

El presente ensayo maneja un interés doble. Primero, sin pretender dar una visión acabada, establece una serie de nudos relacionales entre el discurso estético y esa singular categoría del pensamiento contemporáneo de las últimas décadas que, presente tanto el realismo especulativo como en el aceleracionismo, procura analizar eso radicalmente otro: lo xeno o alien (Del gr. ξενο- xeno- 'extranjero', 'extraño'). Para ello, de manera preliminar, se desplegarán los alcances teóricos elaborados por Helen Hester, Laboria Cuboniks, Armen Avenessian e Ian Bogost (...) en torno a lo xeno y lo alien. Posteriormente, se precisarán los márgenes –tal como veremos, siempre abiertos– de una xenoestética o, si se prefiere, xeno-poesis. El segundo interés –en un intento dilucidar formas en que devenga el potencial emancipatorio de la tecnología– procura desarrollar la siguiente tesis: existe un vínculo directo entre la violencia conceptual que se escribe a través de los algoritmos y el miedo al xeno, es decir, lo extranjero. Eso “alien” que trae la enfermedad y, con ello, la destrucción biológica de todo el orden establecido. (shrink)