Under which conditions are social relationships hierarchical, and under which conditions are they not? This article has three main aims. First, I will explain what this question amounts to by providing a more detailed description of the general phenomenon of social hierarchy. Second, I will provide an account of what social hierarchy is. Third, I will provide some considerations in favour of this account by discussing how it improves upon three alternative ways of thinking about social hierarchy that are sometimes (...) explicitly endorsed and sometimes suggested or presupposed in writings in philosophy and elsewhere. (shrink)

The central question of the peer disagreement debate is: what should you believe about the disputed proposition if you have good reason to believe that an epistemic peer disagrees with you? This article shows that this question is ambiguous between evidential support (or propositional justification) and well-groundedness (or doxastic justification). The discussion focuses on conciliatory views, according to which peer disagreements require you to significantly revise your view or to suspend judgment. The article argues that for a wide range of (...) conceptions of evidential support, conciliatory views are false if they are understood entirely in terms of evidential support. Alternative conceptions of evidential support face some serious difficulties. These arguments speak against conciliationism, but the article then goes on to defend a conciliatory view about well-grounded belief: when you believe p, and you have good reason to believe that your epistemic peer disagrees with you, you are not justified in believing p because that belief is no longer well grounded. This picture of the epistemology of peer disagreement offers a reconciliation of some of the main competing views in the literature: conciliationism is true when we look at well-grounded belief, but a nonconciliatory view like Thomas Kelly's “total evidence view” is correct when we look at peer disagreement exclusively in terms of evidential support. (shrink)

One of political liberalism’s central commitments is to a principle of public reason. Political liberals frequently justify this principle by appeal to considerations of respect. In this article, I argue that political liberalism cannot be grounded in a moral principle of respect for persons. Instead, I argue that a particular interpretation of the principle of public reason can be justified as a key component of a political conception of mutual civic respect.

We provide a justification for political liberalism’s Reciprocity Principle, which states that political decisions must be justified exclusively on the basis of considerations that all reasonable citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. The standard argument for the Reciprocity Principle grounds it in a requirement of respect for persons. We argue for a different, but compatible, justification: the Reciprocity Principle is justified because it makes possible a desirable kind of political community. The general endorsement of the Reciprocity Principle, we will (...) argue, helps realize joint political rule and relationships of civic friendship. The main obstacle to the realization of these values is the presence of reasonable disagreement about religious, moral, and philosophical issues characteristic of liberal societies. We show the Reciprocity Principle helps to overcome this obstacle. (shrink)

I argue that reliance on political testimony conflicts with two democratic values: the value of mutual justifiability and the value of equality of opportunity for political influence. Reliance on political testimony is characterized by a reliance on the assertions of others directly on a political question the citizen is asked to answer as part of a formal democratic decision procedure. Reliance on expert testimony generally, even in the context of political decision-making, does not similarly conflict with democratic values. As a (...) consequence of the argument, citizens have a pro tanto reason to rely on their own political judgment when determining their vote, and democratic societies have a reason to only ask citizens questions they are able to answer without reliance on political testimony. (shrink)

Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral reasons for (...) deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons. (shrink)

Political liberalism holds that political decisions should be made on the basis of public considerations, and not on the basis of comprehensive religious, moral, or philosophical views. An important objection to this view is that it presupposes doubt, hesitation, or skepticism about the truth of comprehensive doctrines on the side of reasonable citizens. Proponents of political liberalism, such as John Rawls and Jonathan Quong, successfully defend political liberalism against several objections of this kind. In this paper, I argue that recent (...) developments in the epistemology of disagreement require us to revisit these skeptical concerns. I will argue that the correct understanding of political liberalism’s epistemic commitments, in combination with a conciliatory view about peer disagreement, lead to a new skeptical problem for political liberalism. All reasonable citizens who also hold a set of religious, moral, or philosophical beliefs, I will argue, suffer from a breakdown of epistemic rationality. I will show that existing answers to skeptical objections fail to resolve this problem. (shrink)

On Bicchieri's view, social norms most centrally involve a pattern of preferences among the members of a relevant population; according to Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin, and Southwood, social norms most centrally involve patterns of normative attitudes among the members of a given group. This paper argues, first, that social norms can require attitudes as well as behaviour, and, second, that the existence of such attitudinal social norms speaks in favour of the preference-based view and against the normative attitudes-based view.

This article explains how social norms can help to distinguish and understand a range of different kinds of social inequality and social hierarchy. My aim is to show how the literature on social norms can provide crucial resources to relational egalitarianism, which has made social equality and inequality into a central topic of contemporary normative political theorizing. The hope is that a more discriminating and detailed picture of different kinds of social inequality will help relational egalitarians move beyond a discussion (...) of the justice or injustice of social equality as a single general category. (shrink)

In “What’s Wrong with Colonialism,” Lea Ypi argues that the distinctive wrong of colonialism should be understood as the failure of the colonial relationship to extend equal and reciprocal terms of political association to the colonized. Laura Valentini argues that Ypi’s account fails. Her argument targets an ambiguity in Ypi’s account of the relata of the colonial relationship. Either Ypi’s view is that the members of the colonized group are, as individuals, denied an equal and reciprocal political relationship to the (...) colonizer, or Ypi’s view is that the colonized individuals form a collective agent and that it is denied an equal and reciprocal relationship to the colonizer. According to Valentini, both options face insurmountable difficulties. Valentini’s argument, this paper argues, sets up a false dilemma. The third option is to think of the colonizer as relating in an unequal and non-reciprocal way to the plurality of people subjected to colonial rule. As I will argue, this view avoids Valentini’s objections. It does, however, raise some new questions about how we are to understand the distinctive wrong of colonialism. (shrink)

We routinely ascribe both belief and knowledge to collective entities. We say that the Bush administration knew that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, that the philosophy department believes its hiring decision complies with employment law, or that we know that greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change. Collective epistemology studies the nature of collective belief, justification, and knowledge. This volume contains ten original articles, five of which are centrally concerned with collective epistemology so understood. The other five (...) take up a number of issues that fall into the wider area of social epistemology. (shrink)

We propose a separation logic where resources are histories (sequences) of epistemic actions so that resource update means concatenation of histories and resource decomposition means splitting of histories. This separation logic, called AMHSL, allows us to reason about the past: does what is true now depend on what was true in the past, before certain actions were executed? We show that the multiplicative connectives can be eliminated from a logical language with also epistemic and action model modalities, if the horizon (...) of epistemic actions is bounded. (shrink)

In this analysis we discuss the change in criteria for triage of patients during three different phases of a pandemic like COVID-19, seen from the critical care point of view. Availability of critical care beds has become a hot topic, and in many countries, we have seen a huge increase in the provision of temporary intensive care bed capacity. However, there is a limit where the hospitals may run out of resources to provide critical care, which is heavily dependent on (...) trained staff, just-in-time supply chains for clinical consumables and drugs and advanced equipment. In the first phase, we can still do clinical prioritisation and decision-making as usual, based on the need for intensive care and prognostication: what are the odds for a good result with regard to survival and quality of life. In the next, the resources are mostly available, but the system is stressed by many patients arriving over a short time period and auxiliary beds in different places in the hospital being used. We may have to abandon admittance of patients with doubtful prognosis. In the last phase, usual medical triage and priority setting may not be sufficient to decrease inflow and there may not be enough intensive care unit beds available. In this phase different criteria must be applied using a utilitarian approach for triage. We argue that this is an important transition where society, and not physicians, must provide guidance to support triage that is no longer based on medical priorities alone. (shrink)

Fitch showed that not every true proposition can be known in due time; in other words, that not every proposition is knowable. Moore showed that certain propositions cannot be consistently believed. A more recent dynamic phrasing of Moore-sentences is that not all propositions are known after their announcement, i.e., not every proposition is successful. Fitch's and Moore's results are related, as they equally apply to standard notions of knowledge and belief (S 5 and KD45, respectively). If we interpret ‘successful’ as (...) ‘known after its announcement’ and ‘knowable’ as ‘known after some announcement’, successful implies knowable. Knowable does not imply successful: there is a proposition ϕ that is not known after its announcement but there is another announcement after which ϕ is known. We show that all propositions are knowable in the more general sense that for each proposition, it can become known or its negation can become known. We can get to know whether it is true: ◊(Kϕ ∨ K¬ϕ). This result comes at a price. We cannot get to know whether the proposition was true. This restricts the philosophical relevance of interpreting ‘knowable’ as ‘known after an announcement’. (shrink)

Dynamic Epistemic Logic This article tells the story of the rise of dynamic epistemic logic, which began with epistemic logic, the logic of knowledge, in the 1960s. Then, in the late 1980s, came dynamic epistemic logic, the logic of change of knowledge. Much of it was motivated by puzzles and paradoxes. The number … Continue reading Dynamic Epistemic Logic →.

Seks is overal. In kranten en tijdschriften, in advertenties op bushokjes, op televisie en het internet, op Instagram en Snapchat. Seks beheerst en betovert onze beeldcultuur. Af en toe roept die onafgebroken stroom van seksuele beelden kritiek op. We lezen over de ‘pornoficatie’ van onze cultuur en hoe de modeindustrie zelfs kinderen verleidt om sexy strings te kopen. We horen dat we aan porno verslaafd zijn, dat alles van waarde vervliegt en dat we steeds intensere prikkels nodig hebben. Een zeldzame (...) keer merkt iemand op dat de constante seksuele objectivering van vrouwenlichamen de genderongelijkheid in stand houdt. Als seks overal is, is het niet verwonderlijk dat seks ook in kunst te vinden is. Kunst en pornografie lijken elkaar uit te sluiten: het ene maakt het mooiste en het beste in ons wakker, het andere onderwerpt ons aan hitsigheid en dierlijkheid. Het ene viert de schoonheid van de vrouw, het andere is een kwestie van geweld en onderwerping. Toch is de relatie tussen kunst en pornografie genuanceerder dan ze op het eerste gezicht lijkt. In deze filosofische verkenning nemen filosofen Petra Van Brabandt en Hans Maes zowel kunst als pornografie onder de loep en ontdekken ze dat de dingen soms helemaal niet zijn wat ze lijken. (shrink)

We model three examples of beliefs that agents may have about other agents' beliefs, and provide motivation for this conceptualization from the theory of mind literature. We assume a modal logical framework for modelling degrees of belief by partially ordered preference relations. In this setting, we describe that agents believe that other agents do not distinguish among their beliefs ('no preferences'), that agents believe that the beliefs of other agents are in part as their own ('my preferences'), and the special (...) case that agents believe that the beliefs of other agents are exactly as their own ('preference refinement'). This multi-agent belief interaction is frame characterizable. We provide examples for introspective agents. We investigate which of these forms of belief interaction are preserved under three common forms of belief revision. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between evolutionary explanations of religious belief and a core idea in both classical Christian theology and Reformed Epistemology, namely that humans have fallen into sin. In particular, it challenges the claim made by De Cruz and De Smedt that ‘ in the light of current evolutionary and cognitive theories, the Reformed epistemological view of NES [the noetic effects of sin] is in need of revision.’ Three possible solutions to this conundrum are examined, two of which (...) are shown to be plausible. (shrink)

Where did the universe come from? Is life a result of chance, or design? If God is loving and all-powerful, why does evil still exist? Is religious belief just a byproduct of undirected evolutionary processes? Or did God make sure humans would evolve in such a way as to believe? Are philosophers closed-minded about religion? And why is so much of philosophy of religion about God-but not about gods? Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces students to some of the (...) major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God. It also includes discussions of some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the deep interconnections between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter considers what place there is for non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion. Whatever your religious beliefs-or lack of beliefs-we think you will find many of the arguments in this book fascinating to think about, and useful starting points for deeper philosophical discussions. (shrink)

Dynamic Epistemic Logic is the logic of knowledge change. This book provides various logics to support such formal specifications, including proof systems. Concrete examples and epistemic puzzles enliven the exposition. The book also offers exercises with answers. It is suitable for graduate courses in logic. Many examples, exercises, and thorough completeness proofs and expressivity results are included. A companion web page offers slides for lecturers and exams for further practice.

This volume consists of several contributions to a refined understanding of religious experience in view of contemporary theological epistemology.

A proposition is noncontingent, if it is necessarily true or it is necessarily false. In an epistemic context, ‘a proposition is noncontingent’ means that you know whether the proposition is true. In this paper, we study contingency logic with the noncontingency operator? but without the necessity operator 2. This logic is not a normal modal logic, because?→ is not valid. Contingency logic cannot define many usual frame properties, and its expressive power is weaker than that of basic modal logic over (...) classes of models without reflexivity. These features make axiomatizing contingency logics nontrivial, especially for the axiomatization over symmetric frames. In this paper, we axiomatize contingency logics over various frame classes using a novel method other than the methods provided in the literature, based on the ‘almost-definability’ schema AD proposed in our previous work. We also present extensions of contingency logic with dynamic operators. Finally, we compare our work to the related work in the fields of contingency logic and ignorance logic, where the two research communities have similar results but are apparently unaware of each other’s work. One goal of our paper is to bridge this gap. (shrink)

We provide an ethical evaluation of the debate on managing diversity within teams and organizations between equality and business case scholars. Our core assertion is that equality and business case perspectives on diversity from an ethical reading appear stuck as they are based on two different moral perspectives that are difficult to reconcile with each other. More specifically, we point out how the arguments of equality scholars correspond with moral reasoning grounded in deontology, whereas the foundations of the business case (...) perspective are crafted by utilitarian arguments. We show that the problems associated with each diversity perspective correspond with the traditional concerns with the two moral perspectives. To resolve this stalemate position, we argue that the equality versus business case debate needs to be approached from a third, less well-known moral perspective (i.e. virtue ethics). We posit that a focus on virtues can enhance equality by reducing prejudice and illustrate this by applying it to the HRM domains of recruitment and selection and of performance management. Subsequently, we argue that values are key to aligning virtues with each other and with corporate strategy, delineate our values and virtues perspective on diversity, and argue why and how it can enhance organizational performance. (shrink)

Although agreement on the positive sign of the relationship between corporate social and financial performance is observed in the literature, the mechanisms that constitute this relationship are not yet well-known. We address this issue by extending management’s stakeholder theory by adding insights from psychology’s prospect decision theory and sociology’s resource dependence theory. Empirically, we analyze an extensive panel dataset, including information on disaggregated measures of social performance for the S&P 500 in the 1997–2002 period. In so doing, we enrich the (...) extant literature by focusing on stakeholder heterogeneity, perceptional framing, and disaggregated measures of corporate social performance. (shrink)

We look at lying as an act of communication, where (i) the proposition that is communicated is not true, (ii) the utterer of the lie knows that what she communicates is not true, and (iii) the utterer of the lie intends the lie to be taken as truth. Rather than dwell on the moral issues, we provide a sketch of what goes on logically when a lie is communicated. We present a complete logic of manipulative updating, to analyse the effects (...) of lying in public discourse. Next, we turn to the study of lying in games. First, a game-theoretical analysis is used to explain how the possibility of lying makes such games interesting, and how lying is put to use in optimal strategies for playing the game. Finally, we give a matching logical analysis. Our running example of lying in games in liar’s dice. (shrink)

This is a case-study in knowledge representation. We analyze the ‘one hundred prisoners and a lightbulb’ puzzle. In this puzzle it is relevant what the agents (prisoners) know, how their knowledge changes due to observations, and how they affect the state of the world by changing facts, i.e., by their actions. These actions depend on the history of previous actions and observations. Part of its interest is that all actions are local, i.e. not publicly observable, and part of the problem (...) is therefore how to disseminate local results to other agents, and make them global. The various solutions to the puzzle are presented as protocols (iterated functions from agent’s local states, and histories of actions, to actions). The computational aspect is about average runtime termination under conditions of random (‘fair’) scheduling. (shrink)

Popular press suggests that gender diversity benefits the performance of work groups. However, decades of research indicate that such performance benefits of gender diversity are anything but a given. To account for this incongruity, in this conceptual paper we argue that the performance of gender-diverse work groups is often inhibited by self-reinforcing gender role expectations. We use the analogy of a flywheel to illustrate how gender role expectations tend to reinforce themselves via three mechanisms. Specifically, we argue that gender role (...) expectations shape (a) the allocation of jobs, tasks, and responsibilities, (b) the behavior of perceivers, and (c) the behavior of target women and men. In turn, these three consequences of gender role expectations tend to confirm the initial gender role expectations, thus creating an automatic, self-reinforcing flywheel effect. Such self-reinforcing gender role expectations provide superficial impressions of individual women and men’s actual knowledge and abilities at best. We therefore further propose that each of the three mechanisms of the flywheel of gender role expectations negatively affects group performance to the extent that gender role expectations inaccurately capture group members’ actual knowledge and abilities. Because the extent to which work group members rely on gender role expectations depends on how they form impressions of others, we propose that individuals’ motivation to form accurate impressions is crucial for inhibiting the flywheel of gender role expectations. We close by advancing an agenda for future research on each of the three areas of interest in our conceptual analysis: the flywheel effect of gender role expectations, the consequences of this flywheel effect for group functioning, and ways to motivate group members to form accurate impressions. (shrink)