This book demonstrates pride's unique profile in philosophical theory as both an emotion and an element of human virtue, and includes a range of represented perspectives: psychology; philosophy; sociology; and anthropology.

If Savulescu's (2001, 2009) controversial principle of Procreative Beneficence (PB) is correct, then an important implication is that couples should employ genetic tests for non‐disease traits in selecting which child to bring into existence. Both defenders as well as some critics of this normative entailment of PB have typically accepted the comparatively less controversial claim about non‐disease traits: that there are non‐disease traits such that testing and selecting for them would in fact contribute to bringing about the child who is (...) expected to have the best life. We challenge this less controversial claim, not by arguing deductively for its falsity, but by showing that Savulescu's central argument for this presumably less controversial claim fails. Savulescu offers intelligence as the paradigm example of a testable non‐disease trait such that testing and selecting for it would increase the likelihood that the child selected would be the one who is expected to have the best life (or at least as good a life as the others). We provide a series of arguments aimed at demonstrating that Savulescu's argument from intelligence fails. If our arguments are successful, the upshot is not that PB is false, but more modestly, that the burden of proof remains squarely with Savulescu. (shrink)

Understanding in Epistemology Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. However, epistemologists have recently started to turn more attention to the epistemic state or states of understanding, asking questions about its nature, relationship … Continue reading Understanding in Epistemology →.

Bioconservative bioethicists (e.g., Kass, 2002, Human Dignity and Bioethics, 297–331, 2008; Sandel, 2007; Fukuyama, 2003) offer various kinds of philosophical arguments against cognitive enhancement—i.e., the use of medicine and technology to make ourselves “better than well” as opposed to merely treating pathologies. Two notable such bioconservative arguments appeal to ideas about (1) the value of achievement, and (2) authenticity. It is shown here that even if these arguments from achievement and authenticity cut ice against specifically pharmacologically driven cognitive enhancement, they (...) do not extend over to an increasingly viable form of technological cognitive enhancement – namely, cognitive enhancement via augmented reality. An important result is that AR-driven cognitive enhancement aimed at boosting performance in certain cognitive tasks might offer an interesting kind of “sweet spot” for proponents of cognitive enhancement, allowing us to pursue many of the goals of enhancement advocates without running into some of the most prominent objections from bioconservative philosophers. (shrink)

Literature in epistemology tends to suppose that there are three main types of understanding – propositional, atomistic, and objectual. By showing that all apparent instances of propositional understanding can be more plausibly explained as featuring one of several other epistemic states, this paper argues that talk of propositional understanding is unhelpful and misleading. The upshot is that epistemologists can do without the notion of propositional understanding.

In work on the ethics of cognitive enhancement use, there is a pervasive concern that such enhancement will—in some way—make us less authentic. Attempts to clarify what this concern amounts to and how to respond to it often lead to debates on the nature of the “true self” and what constitutes “genuine human activity”. This paper shows that a new and effective way to make progress on whether certain cases of cognitive enhancement problematically undermine authenticity is to make use of (...) considerations from the separate debate on the nature of authentic emotion. Drawing in particular on Wasserman and Liao, the present paper offers new conditions that can help us assess the impact of cognitive enhancements on authenticity. (shrink)

In Chapter 3 of True Enough, Elgin outlines her view of objectual understanding, focusing largely on its non-factive nature and the extent to which a certain kind of know-how is required for the “grasping” component of understanding. I will explore four central issues that feature in this chapter, concentrating on the role of know-how, the concept of endorsement, Elgin’s critique of the factivity constraint on understanding, and how we might use aspects of Elgin’s framework to inform related debates on the (...) norm of assertion. (shrink)

It is often taken for granted that monitoring stands in some kind of tension with trusting (e.g., Hieronymi 2008; Wanderer and Townsend 2013; Nguyen forthcoming; McMyler 2011, Castelfranchi and Falcone 2000; Frey 1993; Dasgupta 1988, Litzky et al. 2006) — especially three-place trust (i.e., A trusts B to X), but sometimes also two-place trust (i.e., A trusts B, see, e.g., Baier 1986). Using a case study involving relationship breakdown, repair, and formation, I will argue there are some ways in which (...) monitoring can be conducive to two-place trust, and to instances of three-place trust that are likely to be repeated over time—especially when previously established two-place trust has broken down. The result, I hope, is not any kind of abandoning of the important idea that monitoring can undermine trust, but an appreciation of where the conflict between monitoring and trust doesn’t lie – one from which future work will hopefully be better positioned to illuminate where exactly the conflict is. (shrink)

It is often taken for granted that monitoring stands in some kind of tension with trusting (e.g., Hieronymi 2008; Wanderer and Townsend 2013; Nguyen forthcoming; McMyler 2011, Castelfranchi and Falcone 2000; Frey 1993; Dasgupta 1988, Litzky et al. 2006) — especially three-place trust (i.e., A trusts B to X), but sometimes also two-place trust (i.e., A trusts B, see, e.g., Baier 1986). Using a case study involving relationship breakdown, repair, and formation, I will argue there are some ways in which (...) monitoring can be conducive to two-place trust, and to instances of three-place trust that are likely to be repeated over time—especially when previously established two-place trust has broken down. The result, I hope, is not any kind of abandoning of the important idea that monitoring can undermine trust, but an appreciation of where the conflict between monitoring and trust doesn’t lie – one from which future work will hopefully be better positioned to illuminate where exactly the conflict is. (shrink)

Recent thinking within philosophy of mind about the ways cognition can extend has yet to be integrated with philosophical theories of emotion, which give cognition a central role. We carve out new ground at the intersection of these areas and, in doing so, defend what we call the extended emotion thesis: the claim that some emotions can extend beyond skin and skull to parts of the external world.

While openmindedness is often cited as a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue, the connection between openmindedness and truth is tenuous. Several strategies for reconciling this tension are considered, and each is shown to fail; it is thus claimed that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth. In the final section, the implication of this result is assessed in the wider context of debates about epistemic value.

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio‐enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio‐enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings of (...) Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2010a; Clark 2010b; Palermos 2014) can help to explain why certain kinds of assertions—made on the basis of information stored in our gadgets rather than in biological memory—are properly criticisable in light of misleading implicatures, while others are not.

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio-enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio-enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings of (...) Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

Recent discussions of cognitive enhancement often note that drugs and technologies that improve cognitive performance may do so at the risk of “cheapening” our resulting cognitive achievements Arguing about bioethics, Routledge, London, 2012; Harris in Bioethics 25:102–111, 2011). While there are several possible responses to this worry, we will highlight what we take to be one of the most promising—one which draws on a recent strand of thinking in social and virtue epistemology to construct an integrationist defence of cognitive enhancement.. (...) According to such a line, there is—despite initial appearances to the contrary—no genuine tension between using enhancements to attain our goals and achieving these goals in a valuable way provided the relevant enhancement is appropriately integrated into the agent’s cognitive architecture. In this paper, however, we show that the kind of integration recommended by such views will likely come at a high cost. More specifically, we highlight a dilemma for users of pharmacological cognitive enhancement: they can meet the conditions for cognitive integration at the significant risk of dangerous dependency, or remain free of such dependency while foregoing integration and the valuable achievements that such integration enables. After motivating and clarifying the import of this dilemma, we offer recommendations for how future cognitive enhancement research may offer potential routes for navigating past it. (shrink)

Should we regard Jennifer Lackey’s ‘Creationist Teacher’ as understanding evolution, even though she does not, given her religious convictions, believe its central claims? We think this question raises a range of important and unexplored questions about the relationship between understanding, factivity and belief. Our aim will be to diagnose this case in a principled way, and in doing so, to make some progress toward appreciating what objectual understanding—i.e., understanding a subject matter or body of information—demands of us. Here is the (...) plan. After some ground clearing in §1, §2 outlines and motivates a plausible working model—moderate factivity—for characterising the sense in which objectual understanding should be regarded as factive. §3 shows how the datum that we can understand false theories can, despite initial suggestions to the contrary, be assimilated straightforwardly within the moderate factivity model. §4 highlights how the inverse kind of case to that explored in §3—viz., a variant of Lackey’s creationist teacher case—poses special problems for moderate factivity. With reference to recent work on moral understanding by Hills, §5 proposes a solution to the problem, and §6 attempts to diagnose why it is that we might originally have been led to draw the wrong conclusion. (shrink)

We show that the contemporary debate surrounding the question “What is the norm of assertion?” presupposes what we call the quantitative view, i.e. the view that this question is best answered by determining how much epistemic support is required to warrant assertion. We consider what Jennifer Lackey ( 2010 ) has called cases of isolated second-hand knowledge and show—beyond what Lackey has suggested herself—that these cases are best understood as ones where a certain type of understanding , rather than knowledge, (...) constitutes the required epistemic credential to warrant assertion. If we are right that understanding (and not just knowledge) is the epistemic norm for a restricted class of assertions, then this straightforwardly undercuts not only the widely supposed quantitative view, but also a more general presupposition concerning the universalisability of some norm governing assertion—the presumption (almost entirely unchallenged since Williamson’s 1996 paper) that any epistemic norm that governs some assertions should govern assertions—as a class of speech act—uniformly. (shrink)

'Knowledge-First' constitutes what is widely regarded as one of the most significant innovations in contemporary epistemology in the past 25 years. Knowledge-first epistemology is the idea that knowledge per se should not be analysed in terms of its constituent parts (e.g., justification, belief), but rather that these and other notions should be analysed in terms of the concept of knowledge. This volume features a substantive introduction and 13 original essays from leading and up-and-coming philosophers on the topic of knowledge-first philosophy. (...) The contributors' essays range from foundational issues to applications of this project to other disciplines including the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, ethics and action theory. Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind aims to provide a relatively open-ended forum for creative and original scholarship with the potential to contribute and advance debates connected with this philosophical project. (shrink)

An emerging line of research in bioethics questions whether enhanced love is less significant or valuable than otherwise, where "enhanced love" generally refers to cases where drugs (e.g., oxytocin, etc.) are relied on to maintain romantic relationships. Separate from these debates is a recent body of literature on the philosophy and psychology of "Virtual Reality (VR) dating," where romantic relationships are developed and sustained in a way that is mediated by VR. Interestingly, these discussions have proceeded largely independently from each (...) other. This article considers whether and to what extent philosophical arguments leveled against the value of enhanced love in the pharmacological case extend to cases where loving relationships are technologically mediated via VR rather than pharmacologically mediated. It will be argued that, while some worries about the pharmacological case do not extend over in a way that will be particularly problematic for VR, two (of the four arguments considered) are more prima facie serious. I conclude by suggesting why even these stronger argument strategies are not insurmountable and, thus, that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that VR-mediated love can largely withstand variations on the bioconservative critiques that target pharmacologically enhanced love. (shrink)

According to Persson and Savulescu, the risks posed by a morally corrupt minority's potential to abuse cognitive enhancement make it such that we have an urgent imperative to first pursue moral enhancement of humankind – and, consequently, if we are a long way from safe, effective moral enhancement, then we have at least one good reason to consider opposing further cognitive enhancement. However, as Harris points out, such a proposal seems to support delaying life-saving cognitive progress. In this article, we (...) first show that Harris's worry can be expanded to show that Persson and Savulescu's proposal also threatens the development of moral enhancement – precisely what they suggest we have pro tanto reason to pursue. From there, we offer our own, alternative proposal – one on which cognitively enhanced researchers play a key role in the production of moral enhancement, and those in the general population who wish to be cognitively enhanced must first accept moral enhancement as an entry requirement. We engage with four substantive objections to our proposal and use these objections to refine and strengthen the details. (shrink)

Moral enhancement proposals struggle to be both plausible and ethically defensible while nevertheless interestingly distinct from both cognitive enhancement as well as (mere) moral education. Brian Earp (_Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement_ 83:415–439, 12 ) suggests that a promising middle ground lies in focusing on the (suitably qualified) use of psychedelics as _adjuncts_ to moral development. But what would such an adjunctive use of psychedelics look like in practice? In this paper, I draw on literature from three areas where techniques (...) for moral development have been discussed: psychotherapy (e.g., Overholser 2010; Burns 1980) education (e.g., Uhl and Lütge, 2018), and AI-assisted enhancement (e.g., Lara and Deckers, _Neuroethics_ 13(3):275–287, 17 ) in order to propose more concrete ways in which to use psychedelics as adjuncts to moral development. It is shown that in each of these areas, we can see that _trusting_ relationships (e.g., Baier 1986; Hawley 2019) between the facilitator and the agent will very plausibly maximize the success of this type of moral enhancement. Finally, I appeal to literature on informed consent for use of psychedelics (e.g., Smith and Sisti, _Journal of Medical Ethics_, 22 ; Johnson et al., _The Journal of Psychopharmacology_ 22(6):603–20, 23 ) and on the therapeutic relationship in psychotherapy (e.g., Dryden and Reeves 2013; Horvath et al. 2011) to outline concrete suggestions for facilitating dimensions of trust most likely to maximize the benefits of (adjunctive) psychedelic moral enhancement. The result is a newly detailed practical proposal for how we might best facilitate moral enhancement by using drugs as adjuncts to moral development. (shrink)

Pharmacological cognitive enhancements nontherapeutically improve cognitive functioning, though recent critics have challenged their use by claiming that cognitive success, aided by the use of cognitive enhancement, is less valuable than otherwise. We criticize two recent responses to this objection, due to Carter and Pritchard and Wang, and propose a different response on behalf of proponents of cognitive enhancement that is shown to be more promising.

It is argued that understanding is the norm of political discourse, and it is shown why political assertions can be epistemically problematic within a liberal democracy even when asserted knowledgeably.

The World Anti-Doping Code (2021) includes a substance on the prohibited list if it meets at least two of the following: (1) it has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance; (2) it represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete; (3) it violates the spirit of sport. This paper uses a case study to illustrate points of tension between this code and enhancements that are appropriate to ban; we argue that there are banned drugs (e.g., acetazolamide (...) and dexamethasone) the use of which we have good reason to not only permit but encourage for high-altitude sports. Drawing on lessons from this case study, we propose a reformulation of the Code that requires (1–3) be met but offers preferable ways of unpacking conditions (1) and (3) – and in a way that better preserves how the spirit of sport condition should be indexed to particular sports. Our formulation is inclusive enough to rule in drugs like acetazolamide and dexamethasone as permissible in high-altitude sports while at the same time ruling out problem cases – including many drugs already on the prohibited list. The result is an attempted alignment between the conditions specified and those drugs that should be banned. (shrink)

This book outlines and criticises the six main contemporary arguments for scepticism about the role of human enhancements in promoting well-being. It also defends important and concrete ways in which enhancement-permissive policies should be embraced with the aim of promoting well-being.

If Savulescu's controversial principle of Procreative Beneficence is correct, then an important implication is that couples should employ genetic tests for non-disease traits in selecting which child to bring into existence. Both defenders as well as some critics of this normative entailment of PB have typically accepted the comparatively less controversial claim about non-disease traits: that there are non-disease traits such that testing and selecting for them would in fact contribute to bringing about the child who is expected to have (...) the best life. We challenge this less controversial claim, not by arguing deductively for its falsity, but by showing that Savulescu's central argument for this presumably less controversial claim fails. Savulescu offers intelligence as the paradigm example of a testable non-disease trait such that testing and selecting for it would increase the likelihood that the child selected would be the one who is expected to have the best life. We provide a series of arguments aimed at demonstrating that Savulescu's argument from intelligence fails. If our arguments are successful, the upshot is not that PB is false, but more modestly, that the burden of proof remains squarely with Savulescu. (shrink)

Epistemic relativists often appeal to an epistemic incommensurability thesis. One notable example is the position advanced by Wittgenstein in On certainty (1969). However, Ian Hacking’s radical denial of the possibility of objective epistemic reasons for belief poses, we suggest, an even more forceful challenge to mainstream meta-epistemology. Our central objective will be to develop a novel strategy for defusing Hacking’s line of argument. Specifically, we show that the epistemic incommensurability thesis can be resisted even if we grant the very insights (...) that lead Hacking to claim that epistemic reasons are always relative to a style of reasoning. Surprisingly, the key to defusing the argument is to be found in recent mainstream work on the epistemic state of objectual understanding. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard (2008, 2009, 2010, forthcoming) has argued for an elegant solution to what have been called the value problems for knowledge at the forefront of recent literature on epistemic value. As Pritchard sees it, these problems dissolve once it is recognized that that it is understanding-why, not knowledge, that bears the distinctive epistemic value often (mistakenly) attributed to knowledge. A key element of Pritchard’s revisionist argument is the claim that understanding-why always involves what he calls strong cognitive achievement—viz., cognitive (...) achievement that consists always in either (i) the overcoming of a significant obstacle or (ii) the exercise of a significant level of cognitive ability. After outlining Pritchard’s argument, we show (contra Pritchard) that understanding-why does not essentially involve strong cognitive achievement. Interestingly, in the cases in which understanding-why is distinctively valuable, it is (we argue) only because there is sufficiently rich objectual understanding in the background. If that’s right, then a plausible revisionist solution to the value problems must be sensitive to different kinds of understanding and what makes them valuable, respectively. (shrink)

This paper has two central aims. First, we motivate a puzzle. The puzzle features four independently plausible but jointly inconsistent claims. One of the four claims is the sufficiency leg of the knowledge norm of assertion (KNA-S), according to which one is properly epistemically positioned to assert that p if one knows that p. Second, we propose that rejecting (KNA-S) is the best way out of the puzzle. Our argument to this end appeals to the epistemic value of intellectual humility (...) in social-epistemic practice. (shrink)

Recent literature suggests that intellectual humility is valuable to its possessor not only morally, but also epistemically-viz., from a point of view where epistemic aims such as true belief, knowledge and understanding are what matters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, epistemologists working on intellectual humility have focused almost exclusively on its ramifications for how we go about forming, maintaining and evaluating our own beliefs, and by extension, ourselves as inquirers. Less explored by contrast is how intellectual humility might have implications for how we (...) should conduct our practice of asserting. The present entry aims to rectify this oversight by connecting these two topics in a way that sharpens how it is that intellectual humility places several distinctive kinds of demands on assertion, and more generally, on how we communicate what we believe and know. (shrink)

Recent literature suggests that intellectual humility is valuable to its possessor not only morally, but also epistemically-viz., from a point of view where epistemic aims such as true belief, knowledge and understanding are what matters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, epistemologists working on intellectual humility have focused almost exclusively on its ramifications for how we go about forming, maintaining and evaluating our own beliefs, and by extension, ourselves as inquirers. Less explored by contrast is how intellectual humility might have implications for how we (...) should conduct our practice of asserting. The present entry aims to rectify this oversight by connecting these two topics in a way that sharpens how it is that intellectual humility places several distinctive kinds of demands on assertion, and more generally, on how we communicate what we believe and know. (shrink)

In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head”’, specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge. This chapter has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of recent work in virtue epistemology, their interpretation (...) of the data supports the thesis that searching the internet is conducive to the vice of intellectual arrogance. Second, we argue that this arrogance interpretation of the data rests on an implicit commitment to cognitive internalism. Thirdly, we show how the data can be given a very different explanation in light of the hypothesis of extended cognition – one which challenges the extent to which Fisher et al. are entitled to insist that subjects are actually conflating access to knowledge for personal knowledge in the first place. We conclude by suggesting how, against the background of extended cognition rather than cognitive internalism, we have some reason to think that searching the internet might actually foster virtuous intellectual humility. (shrink)

This book demonstrates pride's unique profile in philosophical theory as both an emotion and an element of human virtue, and includes a range of represented perspectives: psychology; philosophy; sociology; and anthropology.

This book demonstrates pride's unique profile in philosophical theory as both an emotion and an element of human virtue, and includes a range of represented perspectives: psychology; philosophy; sociology; and anthropology.

Recent views in hinge epistemology rely on doxastic normativism to argue that our attitudes towards hinge propositions are not beliefs. This paper has two aims; the first is positive: it discusses the general normative credentials of this move. The second is negative: it delivers two negative results for No-Belief hinge epistemology such construed. The first concerns the motivation for the view: if we’re right, doxastic normativism offers little in the way of theoretical support for the claim that our attitudes towards (...) hinge propositions are anything but garden-variety beliefs. The second concerns theoretical fruitfulness: we show that embracing a No-Belief view will either get us in serious theoretical trouble, or loose all anti-sceptical appeal. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 74-89, March 2021.

Epistemic paternalism is the thesis that a paternalistic interference with an individual's inquiry is justified when it is likely to bring about an epistemic improvement in her. In this article I claim that in order to motivate epistemic paternalism we must first account for the value of epistemic improvements. I propose that the epistemic paternalist has two options: either epistemic improvements are valuable because they contribute to wellbeing, or they are epistemically valuable. I will argue that these options constitute the (...) foundations of a dilemma: either epistemic paternalism collapses into general paternalism, or a distinctive project of justified epistemic paternalism is implausible. (shrink)

On the text and translation of the De mysteriis -- Iamblichus the man -- The De mysteriis : a defence of theurgy, and an answer to Porphyry's letter to Anebo -- Iamblichus's knowledge of Egyptian religion and mythology -- The nature and contents of De mysteriis -- Iamblichus, De mysteriis : text and translation.

Medical practitioners are duty-bound to tell their patients the truth about their medical conditions, along with the risks and benefits of proposed treatments. Some patients, however, would rather not receive medical information. A recent response to this tension has been to argue that that the disclosure of medical information is not optional. As such, patients do not have permission to refuse medical information. In this paper I argue that, depending on the context, the disclosure of medical information can undermine the (...) patient’s ability to exercise her autonomy or have therapeutically detrimental effects. In the light of these insights I go on to develop a context-sensitive approach to medical disclosure. The advantage of this account is that it addresses concerns on both sides of the debate; whilst it acknowledges that patients do not have an exercisable ‘right not to know,’ it allows that in some cases medical information ought to be withheld. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a definition of paternalism must meet certain methodological constraints. Given the failings of descriptivist and normatively charged definitions of paternalism, I argue that we have good reason to pursue a normatively neutral definition. Archard's 1990 definition is one such account. It is for this reason that I return to Archard's account with a critical eye. I argue that Archard's account is extensionally inadequate, failing to capture some cases which are clear instances of paternalism. I (...) refine each of his three conditions, ultimately providing an improved definition of paternalistic interference. This revised definition meets specific methodological constraints, offering a definition that is both neutral between anti- and pro-paternalistic intuitions, but that also explains why paternalism is normatively significant. Specifically, this definition captures the conflict between interfering with an individual's choices and treating the individual benevolently, without making paternalism permissible or impermissible by definition. (shrink)

In medical practice, the doctrine of informed consent is generally understood to have priority over the medical practitioner’s duty of care to her patient. A common consequentialist argument for the prioritisation of informed consent above the duty of care involves the claim that respect for a patient’s free choice is the best way of protecting that patient’s best interests; since the patient has a special expertise over her values and preferences regarding non-medical goods she is ideally placed to make a (...) decision that will protect her interests. In this paper I argue against two consequentialist justifications for a blanket prioritisation of informed consent over the duty of care by considering cases in which patients have imperfect access to their overall best interests. Furthermore, I argue that there are cases where the mere presentation of choice under the doctrine of informed consent is detrimental to patient best interests. I end the paper by considering more nuanced approaches to resolving the conflict between informed consent and the duty of care and consider the option of permitting patients to waive informed consent. (shrink)

Although it has long been known that time is a cue to causation, recent work with adults has demonstrated that causality can also influence the experience of time. In causal reordering (Bechlivanidis & Lagnado, 2013, 2016) adults tend to report the causally consistent order of events, rather than the correct temporal order. However, the effect has yet to be demonstrated in children. Across four pre-registered experiments, 4- to 10-year-old children (N=813) and adults (N=178) watched a 3-object Michotte-style ‘pseudocollision’. While in (...) the canonical version of the clip object A collided with B, which then collided with object C (order: ABC), the pseudocollision involved the same spatial array of objects but featured object C moving before object B (order: ACB), with no collision between B and C. Participants were asked to judge the temporal order of events and whether object B collided with C. Across all age groups, participants were significantly more likely to judge that B collided with C in the 3-object pseudocollision than in a 2-object control clip (where clear causal direction was lacking), despite the spatiotemporal relations between B and C being identical in the two clips (Experiments 1—3). Collision judgements and temporal order judgements were not entirely consistent, with some participants—particularly in the younger age range—basing their temporal order judgements on spatial rather than temporal information (Experiment 4). We conclude that in both children and adults, rather than causal impressions being determined only by the basic spatial-temporal properties of object movement, schemata are used in a top-down manner when interpreting perceptual displays. (shrink)

A governing principle in medical ethics is respect for patient autonomy. This principle is commonly drawn upon in order to argue for the permissibility of assisted dying. In this paper I explore the proper role that respect for patient autonomy should play in this context. I argue that the role of autonomy is not to identify a patient’s best interests, but instead to act as a side-constraint on action. The surprising conclusion of the paper is that whether or not it (...) is in the best interests for the patient to die is a morally objective matter. This allows for the possibility that it can be in the best interests of the patient to die even if she autonomously considers it to be in her best interest to continue living. I argue that concerns about ‘mandatory’ euthanasia can be met when patient autonomy is respected as a side-constraint on action. Ultimately, this means that assisted dying is permissible, not because the autonomous patient views her suffering to be unbearable, but because it is in her objective best interests and she permitted it via her consent. (shrink)