Towards the end of her seminal work on the notion of representation Hanna Pitkin makes the following observation:At the end of the Second World War and during the Nuremberg trials there was much speculation about the war guilt of the German people. [...] Many people might argue the responsibility of the German people even though a Nazi government was not representative. We might agree, however, that in the case of a representative government the responsibility would be more clear-cut.2As Pitkin suggests (...) in this quotation, there is a common underlying assumption, both in academic writings and in popular perceptions of democracy, that a people living under a democratic government is ultimately responsible for that .. (shrink)

I consider the plausibility of discounting for kinship, the view that a positive rate of pure intergenerational time preference is justifiable in terms of agent-relative moral reasons relating to partiality between generations. I respond to Parfit's objections to discounting for kinship, but then highlight a number of apparent limitations of this approach. I show that these limitations largely fall away when we reflect on social discounting in the context of decisions that concern the global community as a whole, such as (...) those related to global climate change. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers and psychologists conceived of emotions as brain- and body-bound affairs. But researchers have started to challenge this internalist and individualist orthodoxy. A rapidly growing body of work suggests that some emotions incorporate external resources and thus extend beyond the neurophysiological confines of organisms; some even argue that emotions can be socially extended and shared by multiple agents. Call this the extended emotions thesis. In this article, we consider different ways of understanding ExE in philosophy, psychology, and the (...) cognitive sciences. First, we outline the background of the debate and discuss different argumentative strategies for ExE. In particular, we distinguish ExE from cognate but more moderate claims about the embodied and situated nature of cognition and emotion. We then dwell upon two dimensions of ExE: emotions extended by material culture and by the social factors. We conclude by defending ExE against some objections and point to desiderata for future research. (shrink)

This paper deals with the relationship between legal responsibility and causation. I argue that legal responsibility is not necessarily rooted in causation. The general claim I aim to disprove is that responsibility is descriptive because it is fundamentally rooted in causality, and causality is metaphysically real and founded. My strategy is twofold. First, I show (in §1) that there are significant and independent non- causal form of responsibility that cannot be reduced to causal responsibility; second, in §2, I show that (...) the very notion of causality is— lato sensu—not plainly descriptive. I will suggest that even causation is tied to evaluative elements, contrary to what is assumed by many theorists and practitioners working in normative domains. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that crowds can form morally evaluable collective intentions, even without formal decision making structures and that these intentions can direct morally evaluable collective actions. Although recent philosophical work in the area of collective moral responsibility goes some way to theorising collective agency and intentional action in crowds, we currently do not have theoretically sound basis for evaluating the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of particular crowds, even though these evaluations are regularly made. This thesis attempts to fill (...) this explanatory gap in the literature. In developing this explanation, I make a taxonomic distinction between aggregative and cohesive crowds; a distinction that is based on a claim about the specific properties of a crowd that make it capable of bearing ascriptions of collective responsibility. Simply put, cohesive crowds are distinct from aggregative crowds because their members develop and share a specific bank of common knowledge. This knowledge can often be acquired very quickly and - crucially - may come to be shared without explicit verbal or written communication. It develops through a phenomenological experience of joint attention and a sharing of beliefs. While this common knowledge includes shared understandings of the crowd’s aims and goals, it also crucially includes knowledge of the relationships between crowd members and of the capacity that they have to act together. I argue that coordinated actions in crowds are only possible when individuals know that they stand in a certain relationship with each other. Their beliefs and intentions must be shared not merely in the sense that individuals possess the same beliefs and intentions but also that each person knows that they know that they share those beliefs and intentions with the people around them. I argue that crowds become cohesive crowds when their members together develop collective awareness of their beliefs and intentions. It is this specific epistemic condition makes possible the spontaneous coordination of individual actions towards a goal that only a crowd can achieve. (shrink)