. Repetition and Difference: Lefebvre, Le Corbusier and Modernity's moral Landscape: A Commentary. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 135-144.

This essay presents an ideal for modern Western romantic love.The basic ideas are the following: people want to form a distinctive sort of plural subject with another, what Nozick has called a "We", they want to be loved for properties of certain kinds, and they want this love to establish and sustain a special sort of commitment to them over time.

In a recent paper in this journal, Joshua Blanchard has identified a novel problem: the problem of unwelcome epistemic company. We find ourselves in unwelcome epistemic company when we hold a belief that is also held mainly or most prominently by those we regard as morally or epistemically bad. Blanchard argues that some, but not all, unwelcome epistemic company provides higher-order evidence against our belief. But he doesn't provide a test for when company is unwelcome or a diagnosis of why (...) it is unwelcome. I provide both. On my disjunctive test, unwelcome epistemic company provides us with a defeater when either there is a match between the content of the belief and the properties that make our company unwelcome, or there is reason to suspect that the belief arose via a shared, unreliable, causal process. (shrink)

Philosophers from Hart to Lewis, Johnston and Bennett have expressed various degrees of reservation concerning the doctrine of double effect. A common concern is that, with regard to many activities that double effect is traditionally thought to prohibit, what might at first look to be a directly intended bad effect is really, on closer examination, a directly intended neutral effect that is closely connected to a foreseen bad effect. This essay examines the extent to which the commonsense concept of intention (...) supports a reasonably consistent and coherent application of double effect. Two important conclusions are these: (1) a number of traditionally proscribed activities involve a kind of “targeting” of innocents that can be taken to exhibit a direct intention to harm them; (2) a direct intention to harm need not involve a desire to harm in any ordinary sense of the latter expression. (shrink)

Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain mundane instrumental actions (e.g., Neil believes the switch is connected to the light, so he flipped the switch to illuminate the room). Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain group affiliation or identity (e.g., in order to belong to the Christian Reformed Church Neil must believe that God is triune). If we set aside the commonality of the word "belief," we can pose a crucial question: Is the cognitive attitude typically involved in the (...) first "light switch" sort of case the same as the cognitive attitude typically involved in the second "Trinity" sort of case? Or: Is mundanely believing the same cognitive relation as groupishly believing? In this essay, I argue that the answer is no. Mundane Beliefs play their instrumental roles well if they are true, and their manner of processing is accordingly sensitive to evidence. Groupish Beliefs play their identity-constituting roles well if they are distinctive, and their manners of processing accordingly allow for and often support distortions of evidence and truth. The manners of processing are thus so different that--despite the common word "belief"--philosophy of mind and epistemology would do well to recognize distinct cognitive attitudes. (shrink)

Neil Levy presents a new theory of freedom and responsibility. He defends a particular account of consciousness--the global workspace view--and argues that consciousness plays an especially important role in action. There are good reasons to think that the naïve assumption, that consciousness is needed for moral responsibility, is in fact true.

Over the past couple of decades, there has been an ongoing, often fierce, debate about the ethics of biobank participation. One central element of that debate has concerned the nature of informed consent, must specific reconsent be gained for each new use, or user, or is broad consent ethically adequate? Recently, Thomas Ploug and Søren Holm have developed an alternative to both specific and broad consent: what they call a meta-consent framework. On a meta-consent framework, participants can choose the type (...) of consent framework they require, for different kinds of use, different types of user and so on. Meta-consent involves a distinctive kind of design of the consent process. Here it is argued, first, that although a meta-consent framework does not wrong participants, Ploug and Holm understate the likely costs and burdens of such a framework, so there are good practical reasons not to offer it. Second, although Ploug and Holm allude to some ethical considerations that might seem to ground an ethical argument for providing meta-consent, they do not offer any sound argument, and it does not wrong participants in any way to fail to offer them the opportunity to design their own consent process. (shrink)

We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs—that believing in the existence of God or of supernatural entities that hear our prayers is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different. Our brains do not process religious beliefs like they do beliefs concerning mundane reality; instead, empirical findings show that religious beliefs function like the imaginings that guide (...) make-believe play. -/- Van Leeuwen argues that religious belief—which he terms religious “credence”—is best understood as a form of imagination that people use to define the identity of their group and express the values they hold sacred. When a person pretends, they navigate the world by consulting two maps: the first represents mundane reality, and the second superimposes the features of the imagined world atop the first. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence, Van Leeuwen posits that religious communities operate in much the same way, consulting a factual-belief map that represents ordinary objects and events and a religious-credence map that accords these objects and events imagined sacred and supernatural significance. -/- It is hardly controversial to suggest that religion has a social function, but Religion as Make-Believe breaks new ground by theorizing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Once we recognize that our minds process factual and religious beliefs in fundamentally different ways, we can gain deeper understanding of the complex individual and group psychology of religious faith. [Abstract writing credit: book editor Andrew Kinney, HUP]. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. First, I explore the scope and limitations of the doctrine of double effect (DOE) by focusing specifically on the notion of "effect classification." Turning my attention to some hard cases, I argue that the DOE has to be supplemented by additional principles that specify how effects are to be discriminated from one another and how the various aspects of the relevant actions are to be classified as intended or simply foreseen. Secondly, I draw some general (...) lessons from this specific investigation of the ODE bearing on the way in which moral principles of this sort can be seen to function helpfully in moral reflection. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 536-553, Winter 2021.

So‐called downshifters seek more meaningful lives by decreasing the amount of time they devote to work, leaving more time for the valuable goods of friendship, family and personal development. But though these are indeed meaning‐conferring activities, they do not have the right structure to count as superlatively meaningful. Only in work – of a certain kind – can superlative meaning be found. It is by active engagements in projects, which are activities of the right structure, dedicated to the achievement of (...) goods beyond ourselves, that we make our lives superlatively meaningful. (shrink)

Abstract: This essay consists of some clarifying remarks on the doctrine of double effect (DDE). After providing a contemporary formulation of the doctrine we put special emphasis on the distinction between those aspects of an action plan that are intended and those that are merely foreseen (the I/F distinction). Making use of this distinction is often made difficult in practice because salient aspects of the action plan exhibit a felt “closeness” to one another that is difficult if not impossible to (...) articulate with the precision we might like. The essay goes on to examine an especially adroit criticism of DDE best articulated by J.J. Thomson. We conclude with a brand new double effect case (new to the philosophical literature anyway) taken from medicine and Roman Catholic pastoral ministry. (shrink)

Suppose that one thinks that certain symmetries of a theory reveal “surplus structure”. What would a formalism without that surplus structure look like? The conventional answer is that it would be a reduced theory: a theory which traffics only in structures invariant under the relevant symmetry. In this paper, I argue that there is a neglected alternative: one can work with a sophisticated version of the theory, in which the symmetries act as isomorphisms.

In the wake of the spectacular success of Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice, philosophers have paid a great deal of attention to testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when recipients of testimony discount it in virtue of its source: usually, their social identity. The remedy for epistemic injustice is almost always listening better and giving greater weight to the testimony we hear, on most philosophers' implicit or explicit view. But Fricker identifies another kind of epistemic injustice: hermeneutical injustice. This kind of injustice (...) occurs when someone can't articulate their own experience or understand their situation for lack of the hermeneutical tools. There is a possible tension between these kinds of injustice, we suggest: sincere testimony may be misleading (may fail to identify significant harms the testfier is subject, or may fail to register its magnitude, or to categorize it as the kind of harm it is) in virtue of a lack of hermeneutical resources. This tension raises the possibility that there are situations in which experts - those who possess hermeneutical tools - may be able to correct the testimony of those who experience harms in virtue of their identity. In this paper, we identify possible cases in which epistemic injustice might be reduced through such correction: in which an increase in testimonial injustice might serve to decrease it in the longer run, for example. We also suggest how the obvious dangers of a too great readiness to see testimony as in need of expert correction might be mitigated, and how the expert might suggest corrections without ceasing to listen. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the US, Ghana, (...) Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief. (shrink)

In a recent JME article, Guidry-Grimes, Dean and Victor offer some signal and challenging insights into the ethical analysis of covert medication and in particular when administered via food. They warn of impacts on identity likely to emerge from using food in this way. In particular, they caution against allowing families to be involved in covert medication, in the light of their central role in sustaining identity. Their analysis has particular purchase in resource rich contexts and those contexts where individual (...) identity is a central concern. But it is less clear that the article’s insights are relevant to other contexts. This article places the analysis of covert medication and identity in a wider context, arguing both that the focus on identity is equally significant when analysing potential alternatives to covert medication, such as coercion; and that the ethical analysis of covert medication offered by Guidry-Grimes, Dean and Victor lacks global applicability. It seems to lack application particularly in resource-poor contexts, and in cultures where identity and community are interconstituted. (shrink)

Although the last decade has seen a proliferation of ontological approaches to arguments, many of them employ ad hoc solutions to representing arguments, lack interoperability with other ontologies, or cover arguments only as part of a broader approach to evidence. To provide a better ontological representation of arguments, we present the Arguments Ontology (ArgO), a small ontology for arguments that is designed to be imported and easily extended by researchers who work in different upper-level ontology frameworks, different logics, and different (...) approaches to argument evaluation. Unlike most ontological approaches to arguments, ArgO utilizes Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as an upper-level ontology, and may be used alongside other commonly used ontologies in the BFO framework, including boththe Information Artifact Ontology (IAO), and the Information Entity Ontology (INFO). Critically, our proposal is principled, based on rigorous definitions and formal axioms out of which characterizations of arguments naturally fall. It is our hope that ArgO may assist researchers in many projects, including: integrating heterogeneous sources of evidence, structuring the content of semantic wikis, and enhancing semantic reasoning. (shrink)

The conflict between agency and stakeholder theories of the firm has long been entrenched in organizational and management literature. At the core of this debate are two competing views of the firm in which assumptions and process contrast each other so sharply that agency and stakeholder views of the firm are often described as polar opposites. The purpose of this paper is to show how agency theory can be subsumed within a general stakeholder model of the firm. By analytically deconstructing (...) the assumptions of agency theory, it is argued that agency theory: (1) must include a recognition of stakeholders; (2) requires a moral minimum to be upheld, which places four moral principles above the interests of any stakeholders, including shareholders; (3) consists of contradictory assumptions about human nature and which give rise to the equally valid assumptions of trust, honesty and loyalty to be infused into the agency relationship. In this way, stakeholder theory is argued to be the logical conclusion of agency theory. Empirical hypotheses are presented as a means to substantiate this claim. (shrink)

This essay discusses Peter Langland-Hassan's approach to "explaining imagination" as it plays out in his recent book of that title. Langland-Hassan offers a theory of “attitude imagining” that avoids positing what he calls a “sui generis cognitive attitude.” This theory attempts to explain things like pretend play, hypothetical reasoning, and cognition of fiction; to explain them using only (what he calls) more “basic” mental states like beliefs and desires; and thus to explain them without positing a distinct cognitive attitude of (...) imagining, as many theorists do (including me). In other words, “attitude imagining,” for Langland-Hassan, is whatever explains those things (except for a distinct cognitive attitude of imagining itself). Despite the theoretical interest of this approach, I argue it is ontologically pennywise and pound foolish: for a slight savings in ontological complexity it dramatically reduces explanatory power. (shrink)

According to the ego-depletion account of loss of self-control, self-control is, or depends on, a depletable resource. Advocates of this account have argued that what is depleted is actually glucose. However, there is experimental evidence that indicates that glucose replenishment is not necessary for regaining self-control, as well as theoretical reasons for thinking that it is not depleted by exercises of self-control. I suggest that glucose restores self-control not because it is a resource on which it relies, but because it (...) serves as a signal of environment quality. I suggest that the evidence is better explained by a rival opportunity costs model of self-control than by the ego-depletion account. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory is formulated in terms of individuals that carry heritable information and are subject to selective pressures. However, individuality itself is a trait that had to evolve - an individual is not an indivisible entity, but a result of evolutionary processes that necessarily begin at the lower level of hierarchical organisation. Traditional approaches to biological individuality focus on cooperation and relatedness within a group, division of labour, policing mechanisms and strong selection at the higher level. Nevertheless, despite considerable theoretical (...) progress in these areas, a full dynamical first-principles account of how new types of individuals arise is missing. To the extent that individuality is an emergent trait, the problem can be approached by recognising the importance of individuating mechanisms that are present from the very beginning of the transition, when only lower-level selection is acting. Here we review some of the most influential theoretical work on the role of individuating mechanisms in these transitions, and demonstrate how a lower-level, bottom-up evolutionary framework can be used to understand biological complexity involved in the origin of cellular life, early eukaryotic evolution, sexual life cycles and multicellular development. Some of these mechanisms inevitably stem from environmental constraints, population structure and ancestral life cycles. Others are unique to specific transitions - features of the natural history and biochemistry that are co-opted into conflict mediation. Identifying mechanisms of individuation that provide a coarse-grained description of the system's evolutionary dynamics is an important step towards understanding how biological complexity and hierarchical organisation evolves. In this way, individuality can be reconceptualised as an approximate model that with varying degrees of precision applies to a wide range of biological systems. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the “ontology” of consent. Some argue that it is a mental act, some that it is a “hybrid” of a mental act plus behaviour that signifies that act; others argue that consent is a performative, akin to promising or commanding. Here it is argued that all these views are mistaken—though some more so than others. We begin with the question whether a normatively efficacious act of consent can be completed in the mind alone. Standard (...) objections to this “mentalist” account of consent can be rebutted. Here we identify a much deeper problem for mentalism. Normatively transformative acts of consent change others’ reasons for acting in a distinctive—“robust”—way. Robust reason-changing involves acts aimed at fulfilling a distinctive kind of reflexive and recognition-directed intention. Such acts cannot be coherently performed in the mind alone. Consent is not a mental act, but nor is it the signification of such an act. Acts of consent cannot be “completed” in the mind, and it is a mistake to view consent behaviour as making known a completed act of consent. The robust reason-changing account of consent developed here shares something with the performative theory, but is not saddled with a label whose home is philosophy of language. Certain kinds of performative utterance may change reasons robustly, but not all robust reason-changing involves or requires acts of speech, and consent can be effected by a wide range of behavioural acts. (shrink)

What does it mean to have “strong beliefs”? My thesis is that it can mean two very different things. That is, there are two distinct psychological features to which “strong belief” can refer, and these often come apart. I call the first feature epistemic confidence and the second identity centrality. They are conceptually distinct and, if we take ethnographies of religion seriously, distinct in fact as well. If that’s true, it’s methodologically important for the psychological sciences to have measures that (...) tease them apart. In this paper, I critique some measures that are currently in use and propose some strategies for developing measurement tools that track the distinction in question. (shrink)

Visual narratives like comics involve a range of complex cognitive operations in order to be understood. The Parallel Interfacing Narrative‐Semantics (PINS) Model integrates an emerging literature showing that comprehension of wordless image sequences balances two representational levels of semantic and narrative structure. The neurocognitive mechanisms that guide these processes are argued to overlap with other domains, such as language and music.

In this paper we take up the issue of near-term artificial intelligence (AI). "Near-term AI" is used to denote artificial intelligence algorithms that are already in place in a variety of public and private sectors, guiding decision that pertain to advertising, credit ratings, and sentencing in the justice system. Our focus here is to contribute to a critical discussion of the ways that AI is already being widely used in decision-making procedures in these areas. We will argue that developers and (...) deployers of AI systems--in senses to be defined--bear a particular kind of responsibility for the moral consequences of near-term AI. We will present a tool to aid developers and deployers in engaging in the moral reflection we argue is required of them, in order both the help them meet their moral obligations and to help address the material risks posed by what we take to be the status quo of actual near-term AI development. This chapter can be understood as a contribution to the field of technology assessment, but instead of suggesting policy revisions, we will propose a framework for ethical analysis that can be used to facilitate more robust ethical reflection in AI development and implementation. (shrink)

This paper outlines a new metasemantic theory of moral reason statements, focused on explaining how the reasons thus stated can be inescapable. The motivation for the theory is in part that it can explain this and other phenomena concerning moral reasons. The account also suggests a general recipe for explanations of conceptual features of moral reason statements. (Published with Open Access.).

Whether nature is valuable on its own (intrinsic values) or because of the benefits it provides to humans (instrumental values) has been a long-standing debate. The concept of relational values has been proposed as a solution to this supposed dichotomy, but the empirical validation of its intuitiveness remains limited. We experimentally assessed whether intrinsic/relational values of sentient beings/non-sentient beings/ecosystems better explain people’s sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation for the future. Participants from a representative sample of the population (...) of Singapore (n = 1508) were randomly allocated to two “the last human” scenarios. We found that the best predictor of such a sense of moral duty for future nature conservation is the recognition of the intrinsic values of sentient beings. Our results suggest that the concern for animal welfare may enhance rather than compete with the sense of moral duty towards nature conservation. (shrink)

Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject? With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit. This concept of the umwelt has become enormously important within posthumanist philosophy, influencing such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben, who has called Uexküll (...) "a high point of modern antihumanism." A key document in the genealogy of posthumanist thought, _A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans_ advances Uexküll's revolutionary belief that nonhuman perceptions must be accounted for in any biology worth its name; it also contains his arguments against natural selection as an adequate explanation for the present orientation of a species' morphology and behavior. _A Theory of Meaning_ extends his thinking on the _umwelt_, while also identifying an overarching and perceptible unity in nature. Those coming to Uexküll's work for the first time will find that his concept of the _umwelt_ holds out new possibilities for the terms of animality, life, and the whole framework of biopolitics itself. (shrink)

This paper assessed whether belief in conspiracy theories was associated with a particularly cognitive style (worldview). The sample comprised 223 volunteers recruited via convenience sampling and included undergraduates, postgraduates, university employees and alumni. Respondents completed measures assessing a range of cognitive-perceptual factors (schizotypy, delusional ideation and hallucination proneness) and conspiratorial beliefs (general attitudes towards conspiracist thinking and endorsement of individual conspiracies). Positive symptoms of schizotypy, particularly the cognitive-perceptual factor, correlated positively with conspiracist beliefs. The best predictor of belief in conspiracies (...) was delusional ideation. Consistent with the notion of a coherent conspiratorial mindset, scores across conspiracy measures correlated strongly. Whilst findings supported the view that belief in conspiracies, within the sub-clinical population, was associated with a delusional thinking style, cognitive-perceptual factors in combination accounted for only 32% of the variance. (shrink)

It is commonly understood that over-arching transcendental values (TVs) play a major role in directly influencing individual and group behaviours, including those relating to the environment. This paper challenges this approach, by arguing that there is good evidence to indicate that personal contexts – rather than TVs – inform many decisions that individuals need to make. As such, the paper argues that individuals use their TVs as a guide to forming contextual values, in a way that TVs only influence daily (...) behaviours indirectly. In order to review the potential utility of these arguments, we offer a secondary analysis of the International Social Survey Programme. The results indicate that contexts can influence behaviours independently of the set of (transcendental) values that people may hold. (shrink)

According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s example of Nate. I argue that this (...) counterexample fails since it underestimates the range of cases where agents can act for their normative reasons. Moreover, I argue that a key motivation behind Williams’ claim is compatible with this ‘expansive’ account of what it is to act for a normative reason. (Published with Open Access.). (shrink)

The philosopher Jerry Fodor was a key figure alongside Noam Chomsky in the revolution that led to the renaissance of the cognitive sciences from around 1960. This chapter describes key difference between Chomsky and Fodor. It focuses on Chomsky's and Fodor's conceptions of modularity. The chapter discusses two ways of understanding Chomsky's proposal, in particular how it claims an underlying faculty is related to processing and performance. Chomsky is largely agnostic on this question; the commitments of his programme are to (...) be found elsewhere. The most persuasive evidence for Fodorian modules, as for Chomskyan faculties, comes from dissociations. The chapter also reviews the evidential foundation of all versions of modularity: double dissociation (impairments of one or more mental abilities caused by accidents or other pathology which leave other abilities intact). (shrink)

Drawn sequences of images, like those in comics and picture stories, are a pervasive and fundamental way that humans have communicated for millennia. Yet, the study of visual narratives has only recently gained traction in Cognitive Science. Here we explore what has held back the study of the cognition of visual narratives, and why researchers should join in scholarship of this ubiquitous aspect of expression.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) hold considerable promise for maintaining aging adults’ mobility as they develop impairments in driving skill. Nonetheless, attitudes can be a significant barrier to adoption as has been shown for other technologies. We investigated how different introductions to AV, video with a driver in the front seat, the rear seat, and a written description, affected attitudes, as well as how individual difference variables such as age, gender, prior knowledge, and personality traits predict attitudes within a middle-aged (Median age (...) = 34, IQR = 20, n = 441) Amazon Mechanical Turk sample. The 16-item attitude survey uncovered three factors: Concern with AV, Eagerness to Adopt AV technology, and Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control. ANOVAs showed that only age (younger less concerned) and gender, (females more concerned) were significant factors in Concern with AV. Only gender affected Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control, with males more willing. Multiple regressions that included previous knowledge level and personality traits showed a different pattern. Female gender and greater conscientiousness were associated with greater Concern about AV. Prior knowledge of AV was associated with less concern. Emotional stability and openness to experience were positive predictors of Eagerness to Adopt AV, whereas conscientiousness was a negative predictor. Prior knowledge and openness to experience, positively, and extraversion, negatively, were associated wi... (shrink)

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics reexamines the notions of uniformity and variability within morphological systems from a cognitive linguistic standpoint. It challenges traditional perspectives that regard morphological variability as mere deviations from the norm, suggesting instead that such variability is systematic and shaped by external influences including language acquisition and processing constraints. The contributions in this issue promote a shift from isolated analysis to a holistic view of paradigms, classes, and systems, advocating for a framework where morphological structures are (...) seen as integral to communicative and functional aspects of language. By accounting for the broad adaptive dynamics of language systems, the complex interplay between uniformity and variability is revealed as an inherent aspect of language usage. (shrink)

Advancing a creolizing reading of the eighteenth-century philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this volume explores Rousseau’s strong resonances in Caribbean thought and politics.

Knowing God, Knowing Emptiness examines the viability of the epistemology proposed by Bernard Lonergan in his seminal work Insight, particularly with regard to its possible application in the field of interreligious dialogue. It applies Lonergan's epistemological categories to Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith, and Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.