Many moral error theorists reject moral realism on the grounds that moral realism implies the existence of categorical normativity, yet categorical normativity does not exist. Call this the Metaphysical Argument. In response, some moral realists have emphasized a parity between moral normativity and epistemic normativity. They argue that if one kind of normativity is rejected, then both must be rejected. Therefore, one cannot be a moral error theorist without also being an epistemic error theorist. Call this the Parity Argument. In (...) this paper, we address three possible responses to the Parity Argument from moral error theorists: (1) accept the parity but still reject epistemic error theory, (2) reject the parity, (3) accept the parity and defend epistemic error theory. We argue that there are problems with each of these responses, so the Parity Argument stands as a strong counterargument to the Metaphysical Argument. We conclude by drawing some lessons for any future challenges to the Parity Argument. (shrink)

abstract As history shows, some human beings are capable of acting very immorally. 1 Technological advance and consequent exponential growth in cognitive power means that even rare evil individuals can act with catastrophic effect. The advance of science makes biological, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction easier and easier to fabricate and, thus, increases the probability that they will come into the hands of small terrorist groups and deranged individuals. Cognitive enhancement by means of drugs, implants and biological (including (...) genetic) interventions could thus accelerate the advance of science, or its application, and so increase the risk of the development or misuse of weapons of mass destruction. We argue that this is a reason which speaks against the desirability of cognitive enhancement, and the consequent speedier growth of knowledge, if it is not accompanied by an extensive moral enhancement of humankind. We review the possibilities for moral enhancement by biomedical and genetic means and conclude that, though it should be possible in principle, it is in practice probably distant. There is thus a reason not to support cognitive enhancement in the foreseeable future. However, we grant that there are also reasons in its favour, but we do not attempt to settle the balance between these reasons for and against. Rather, we conclude that if research into cognitive enhancement continues, as it is likely to, it must be accompanied by research into moral enhancement. (shrink)

It may be seen from the foregoing that Pauline's existence is multiply jeopardized; or rather, that my right to use 'Pauline' as a name, the way I said I was going to, is very doubtful, for I agree with Parmenides that one cannot name what is not there to be named. The words I have used to describe Pauline's various perils are full of what Ryle aptly called "systematically misleading expressions"; but we need not worry about that for the (...) moment-enough for now if the words succeed in bringing the various cases before our minds--and we can tidy up our language as we come to see things more clearly. (shrink)

With The Perils of Global Legalism, Eric A. Posner explains that such views demonstrate a dangerously naive tendency toward legalism—an idealistic belief that ...

The story of how Perrin’s experimental work established the reality of atoms and molecules has been a staple in (realist) philosophy of science writings (Wesley Salmon, Clark Glymour, Peter Achinstein, Penelope Maddy, …). I’ll argue that how this story is told distorts both what the work was and its significance, and draw morals for the understanding of how theories can be or fail to be empirically grounded.

This book offers a novel critique of public-private partnerships in public health. The author argues these relationships create webs of influence that undermine the integrity of public health agencies, and imperil public health. He makes a compelling case that the paradigm interaction between governments and corporations should be at arm's length: separation, not collaboration.

"Dogmatism" is a term renovated by James Pryor [2000] to stand for a certain kind of neo-Moorean response to Scepticism and an associated conception of the architecture of basic perceptual warrant. Pryor runs the response only for (some kinds of) perceptual knowledge but here I will be concerned with its general structure and potential as a possible global anti-sceptical strategy. Something like it is arguably also present in recent writings of Burge 1 and Peacocke.2 If the global strategy could succeed, (...) (...) it would pre-empt any role in the diagnosis and treatment of sceptical paradoxes for the kind of notion of entitlement (rational, non-evidential warrant) I have proposed elsewhere [Wright 2004]. But my overarching contention will be that Dogmatism is, generally and locally, too problematic a stance to be helpful in that project. (shrink)

The Perils of Invention is based on three Hannah Arendt Center Conferences: "Human Being in an Inhuman Age," "Lying and Politics," and "Truthtelling: Democracy in an Age without Facts." Contributions written for these conferences are placed alongside many new essays that reflect on the ideas they raised. The result is a freshly invigorated investigation into these critical and timely themes. The authors have diverse backgrounds--Arendt scholars, public intellectuals, novelists, journalists, and business people--and include Uday Mehta, Marrianne Constable, Nicholson Baker, (...) George Kateb, Marianne Constable, Linda M.G. Zerilli, Peg Birmingham, Davide Panagia, and many others. (shrink)

The story of how Perrin’s experimental work established the reality of atoms and molecules has been a staple in (realist) philosophy of science writings (Wesley Salmon, Clark Glymour, Peter Achinstein, Penelope Maddy, …). I’ll argue that how this story is told distorts both what the work was and its significance, and draw morals for the understanding of how theories can be or fail to be empirically grounded.

Offers a sustained critique of Carl Schmitt's late work, especially of his geopolitical theory.

Are you left dizzy by the vast array of new technologies? Skeptical about the latest Silicon Valley craze being worth the hype, yet wary of those who would throw these technologies to the curb? Me too. This book seeks to avoid landmines in our quest for perfection while offering strategies for evaluating both the possibilities and the limits of human enhancement. Think of it as a guide for navigating the perils of perfection while embracing the fullness of human dignity.

(1994). Perils of a modern Cassandra: Rhetorical aspects of public indifference to the population explosion. Social Epistemology: Vol. 8, Public Indifference to Population Issues, pp. 221-237.

Subpart B of 45 Code of Federal Regulations Part 46 (CFR) identifies the criteria according to which research involving pregnant women, human fetuses, and neonates can be conducted ethically in the United States. As such, pregnant women and fetuses fall into a category requiring “additional protections,” often referred to as “vulnerable populations.” The CFR does not define vulnerability, but merely gives examples of vulnerable groups by pointing to different categories of potential research subjects needing additional protections. In this paper, I (...) assess critically the role of this categorization of pregnant women involved in research as “vulnerable,” both as separate entities and in combination with the fetuses they carry. In particular, I do three things: (1) demonstrate that pregnant women qua pregnancy are either not “vulnerable” according to any meaningful definition of that term or that such vulnerability is irrelevant to her status as a research participant; (2) argue that while a fetus may be vulnerable in terms of dependency, this categorization does not equate to the vulnerability of the pregnant woman; and (3) suggest that any vulnerability that appends to women is precisely the result of federal regulations and dubious public perceptions about pregnant women. I conclude by demonstrating how this erroneous characterization of pregnant women as “vulnerable” and its associated protections have not only impeded vital research for pregnant women and their fetuses, but have also negatively affected the inclusion of all women in clinical research. (shrink)

This paper critiques the biological race realism of Quayshawn Spencer. Spencer's recent embrace of “radical race pluralism” (RRP) is welcome but incomplete, because it needs methods that distinguish different communicative contexts for how American English speakers use “race” and related terms. I offer a pragmatic approach to identifying such contexts that combines pragmatic argumentation theory, rhetorical polysemy, and a pragmatic approach to definition. One consequence of embracing RRP is that Spencer's theory of “OMB race talk” is unsupportable because it collapses (...) three distinct communicative contexts: genomic research, legal and regulatory governance, and ordinary talk. By so doing, OMB race talk blocks attempts to fight racism and violates ethical standards that should allow people the agency to define their own identities. (shrink)

It is widely thought in philosophy and elsewhere that parsimony is a theoretical virtue in that if T1 is more parsimonious than T2, then T1 is preferable to T2, other things being equal. This thesis admits of many distinct precisifications. I focus on a relatively weak precisification on which preferability is a matter of probability, and argue that it is false. This is problematic for various alternative precisifications, and even for Inference to the Best Explanation as standardly understood.

When can macroscopic data about a system be used to set parameters in a microfoundational simulation? We examine the epistemic viability of tweaking parameter values to generate a better fit between the outcome of a simulation and the available observational data. We restrict our focus to microfoundational simulations—those simulations that attempt to replicate the macrobehavior of a target system by modeling interactions between microentities. We argue that tweaking can be effective but that there are two central risks. First, tweaking risks (...) overfitting the simulation to the data and thus compromising predictive accuracy; and second, it risks compromising the microfoundationality of the simulation. We evaluate standard responses to tweaking and propose strategies to guard against these risks. (shrink)

The individual right of access to one’s own data is a crucial privacy protection long recognized in U.S. federal privacy laws. Mobile health devices and research software used in citizen science often fall outside the HIPAA Privacy Rule, leaving participants without HIPAA’s right of access to one’s own data. Absent state laws requiring access, the law of contract, as reflected in end-user agreements and terms of service, governs individuals’ ability to find out how much data is being stored and how (...) it might be shared with third parties. Efforts to address this problem by establishing norms of individual access to data from mobile health research unfortunately can run afoul of the FDA’s investigational device exemption requirements. (shrink)

The law often calls on the concept of public interest for assistance. Privacy law makes use of this concept in several ways, including to justify consent waivers for secondary research on health information. Because the law sees information privacy as a means for individuals to control their personal information, consent can only be set aside in special circumstances. Ballantyne and Schaefer argue that only public interest, and only a broad conception of public interest, can do the special ‘normative justificatory work’ (...) to override consent requirements. Other, similar-sounding concepts, such as public benefit, public good and social value, also provide useful services. But none more so than public interest. In fact, they argue, public interest is the superior concept precisely because it can capture those concepts as well as a range of other interests. Our response focuses on this claim. We argue their strategy is not as promising as it might first seem. Ballantyne and Schaefer construe the important role that public interest plays in this context as their endpoint. They claim that unless the concept is open and content-rich, it will lose some of its importance. But by refusing to place limits around it, their inquiry leads us back to a catch-all concept that lacks clear focus or meaning. In reply, we argue that, for practically minded theorists, a narrow conception of public interest is more useful. Further, the narrowing of public interest in this context can be achieved by first analysing it in its legal, rather than ethical, sense. (shrink)

We argue that the trend toward providing users with feasible and actionable explanations of AI decisions—known as recourse explanations—comes with ethical downsides. Specifically, we argue that recourse explanations face several conceptual pitfalls and can lead to problematic explanation hacking, which undermines their ethical status. As an alternative, we advocate that explanations of AI decisions should aim at understanding.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Open theists deny that God knows future contingents. Most open theists justify this denial by adopting the position that there are no future contingent truths to be known. In this paper we examine some of the arguments put forward for this position in two recent articles in this journal, one by Dale Tuggy and one by Alan Rhoda, Gregory Boyd, and Thomas Belt. The arguments concern time, modality, and the semantics of ‘will’ statements. We explain why we find none of (...) these arguments persuasive. This wide road leads only to destruction. (shrink)

Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu argue that non-traditional forms of cognitive enhancement (those involving genetic engineering or pharmaceuticals) present a serious threat to humanity, since the fruits of such enhancement, accelerated scientific progress, will give the morally corrupt minority of humanity new and more effective ways to cause great harm. And yet it is scientific progress, accelerated by non-traditional cognitive enhancement, which could allow us to dramatically morally enhance human beings, thereby eliminating, or at least reducing, the threat from the (...) morally corrupt minority. I argue that this apparently intractable dilemma is less difficult to resolve than Persson and Savulescu suppose. Their analysis of non-traditional cognitive enhancement overstates the risks and undervalues the benefits that such enhancement might provide. Once the benefits are better described, it is clear that non-traditional cognitive enhancement could be the means of our survival, not of our destruction. (shrink)

The authors analyze deficiencies and perils of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine , in particular the concept of human rights as given by natural law and the Conventions stand on germline therapy and its refutation of therapeutic enhancement.

The willingness of some scientists, futurists … and now philosophers to contemplate—or even actively pursue—their own obsolescence is a source of genuine wonder. Writers such as Hans Moravec,1 Ray Kurzweil2 and Nick Bostrom3 blithely maintain that we will soon be outclassed by our own cybernetic creations as though this were a prospect that could only be celebrated and not feared. In this context, one can only applaud Agar's clearheaded investigation4 of the prospects for creating ‘post-persons’ and his eminently sensible conclusion (...) that there might be good reasons to avoid doing so. His discussion of the significance of the difference between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ thresholds in moral status and his inductive argument to the existence of higher levels of moral status than humans currently possess constitute significant advances in the philosophical literature on this topic. In these largely sympathetic remarks I will, however, argue both that post-persons are more easily conceived of than Agar suggests and that the threat posed by post-persons, should they eventuate, is greater than Agar allows.Agar's paper needs to be read in the context of Buchanan's discussion5 of the implications of post-personhood to which it is a response. Buchanan's discussion proceeds, for the most part, with reference to an essentially Kantian account of moral status as founded in the ability to engage in practical reasoning or practices of mutual accountability. Talk of ‘animals’, ‘persons’ …. (shrink)

One of the most entrenched commandments in medicine is: “Never take away a patient's hope!” Often it is issued during the treatment of a terminally ill patient to spur and justify the continuation of aggressive life-prolonging efforts. Hope has been called one of a patient‘s “most powerful internal resources,” and “a powerful ally, our last defense against despair.” One editorialist confidently stated: “[C]ommunicating hope can improve patients’ prognosis.”.

This paper centers on Takashi Yagisawa’s book Worlds and Individuals, Possible and Otherwise (Oxford: 2010), which provides a novel and systematic analysis of modality and time. I consider the overall structure of Yagisawa’s treatment of modality and time, and discuss in detail the following three topics: (i) Possible worlds as modal indices, (ii) Trans-world identity, (iii) The claim that existence, unlike reality, is relative. My main conclusion is that Yagisawa's view of modality is driven by a strong primitivism, leading to (...) the endorsement of possibility, actuality, and presentness, but also possible worlds and times, as irreducible. The resulting view is saddled with the typical problems of primitivism on the one hand, and modal realism on the other. I criticize the view that existence is relative. (shrink)

If the morphology of baseball is similar to that of the fairy tale, it is obviously not because baseball is a form of narrative art. As my title suggests, insofar as baseball resembles literature at all in the way it manifests itself, it is clearly much closer to drama. Baseball takes place within a fixed, carefully delimited space that may be improvised but is reserved specifically for the purpose wherever the game is institutionalized. It is an ensemble performance carried out (...) by specially trained "players" in front of an audience for whom the occasion is a festive event that occurs as a suspension of ordinary life. It possesses a plot that develops in a limited period of time from initial situation through complication to denouement and has a relatively large number of dramatis personae who are sent into the playing area at a given moment in order to perform specific roles. Dennis Porter, associate professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and English novels. He is currently an NEH fellow and is working on two books: one on plot and ideology in the novel, the other, The Alibi of Crime, on detective fiction. (shrink)

The United States Supreme Court, in its decision Ferguson v. City of Charleston,ruled that to conduct drug tests on pregnant women in public hospitals and to share that information with the police without obtaining a search warrant amounted to a violation of the women's constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment. Set within the political context of public policy designed to monitor the activities of pregnant women and the ongoing incidence of prosecutions for ‘foetal abuse’,this note shows how the Supreme Court’s (...) decision, while on the one hand vindicating the rights of pregnant women to be free from unlawful searches upon their person, does not definitively determine the important question of the extent to which the state may regulate women’s behaviour during pregnancy. (shrink)

PROMISE AND PERIL includes essays that explore the idea of republicanism across the history of political thought, focusing on the challenges and dilemmas endemic to popular government.

Though Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl” has been praised for pre-senting the “I can” body as more of an aspiration than a reality for many women in the world today, she has also been criticized for claiming that women’s typical modes of bodily comportment are contradictory, and thus that their experience of the “I can” body is compromised. From her critics’ perspective, Young’s account seems to imply that women’s experiences of embodied agency are inferior or deficient in comparison to men (...) who have been encouraged to maximize their physical capabilities. The question this essay addresses is whether the “I can” body is itself a suspect notion that should be rejected altogether, or whether the problem lies in its sexist, racist, and ableist history that has failed to acknowledge the di-verse experiences of embodied agency it was originally intended to describe. Quoique « Lancer comme une fille » ait reçu des éloges pour sa pré-sentation du « je peux » corporel non comme la description d’un état de fait, mais plutôt comme une aspiration pour beaucoup de femmes dans le monde contemporain, certains critiquent la présentation des modalités typiques du comportement corporel féminin comme « contradictoire », car il en découle que l’expérience par les femmes du « je peux » corporel est compromise. Selon ces critiques, l’approche de Young semble impliquer que l’expérience féminine de l’agentivité corporelle est inférieure ou déficiente par rapport à celle des hommes, ces derniers ayant été encouragés à cultiver au maximum leurs capacités physiques. Dans cet article, nous poserons la question suivante : le « je peux » corporel est-il un concept sus-pect que l’on doit rejeter, ou doit-on plutôt dire que le problème gît dans l’histoire sexiste, raciste et capacitiste de ce concept, une histoire qui n’est pas parvenue à rendre compte des diverses expériences de l’agentivité corporelle que le « je peux » visait décrire initialement. (shrink)

This paper examines the overt and covert racism Black professors experience within the context of mainstream university teacher education programs. Informed by literature from Canadian sources and the authors’ personal experiences, the paper challenges the perception that Canadian postsecondary teacher education is amenable to honest, open and civil debates regarding racism. The common view of Canada as an inclusive and welcoming society needs re-examining given the degree of resistance encountered by racialized professors while teaching controversial topics, including racism and antiracism. (...) A call is made for teacher education programs to revamp their curricula and to embed critical race and antiracist literature in all courses, in addition to recruiting, mentoring and retaining Black professors, senior administrators, staff and students. (shrink)

Transformation, not transcendence -- The lesson of Pierre Clastres -- On self-alteration -- Realism -- Paul's Greek -- Every religion is idolatry.

Working at the commencement from Derrida’s ‘Archive Fever’ this article explores Derrida’s definition of the archive – topographical, nomological, archontic – and alongside this official archive counters with an alternative archive, non-topographical, non-nomological, non-archontic forms of archive.The story of the accusations launched at Gerry Adams introduces some questions regarding the authenticity and authorisations of archives. This story evokes the competing archives of childhood and the possibility of critique arising from recognition of the tensions between competing archives. The article addresses the (...) complications of archives, counter-archives, archaeology and genealogy as records and research materials. The writer uses Cixous’s notion of ‘ecriture feminine’ as a way of escaping the linearities of archivalism. (shrink)

. Management scholars and practitioners often believe that individuals and organizations benefit by trusting their work contacts. (Husted, 1998; Sonnenberg, 1994) Trust is generally viewed as “good” and imperative to a modern functioning economy (Blau, 1964; Hosmer, 1995; Zucker, 1986) Consequently, scholars and practitioners have given scant attention to the “downside” of trust, despite the fact that trust involves taking risk under conditions of uncertainty (Rousseau et al., 1998) Recent corporate scandals show that people suffer when they misplace trust in (...) untrustworthy organizations and individuals. This paper develops a model of the causes and consequences of “over-trust,” which we define as a state where a trustor’s trust exceeds that which is warranted given the conditions. The antecedents of overtrust related to characteristics of the trustee, the trustor, and situational characteristics. We examine the role played by self-monitoring and perceived power base of the trustee as two key trustee characteristics. Among trustor characteristics, we examine the role (played by trustor’s core evaluation, core values). based on cultural affiliation), prior experiences with trustees, and use of habitual thinking behavior. Under characteristics of the situation, we examine the role played by uncertainty inherent in the situation, perceived threat from the context, degree of task interdependence, and organizational systems and routines. Next, we examine three consequences of over-trust – leniency in judging the trustee, delay in perceiving exploitation, and increased risk-taking. We conclude our paper by developing a set of guidelines that organizational members may employ to avoid over-trust. (shrink)

The dominant academic paradigm and the main inspiration of anticorruption policies is the economic theory of corruption, according to which anticorruption policies should be focused on raising the costs associated with corrupt behavior. In this article, I provide three reasons to explain why anticorruption interventions in organizations inspired by the economic theory of corruption frequently fail. I contribute to the current literature by integrating the literature on constructive deviance, on personality psychology, and on managerial biases in ethical decision-making into the (...) study of corruption and into the design and implementation of anticorruption interventions. Research propositions are advanced. Research and practice implications are discussed. (shrink)

Large-scale data systems are increasingly envisioned as tools for justice, with big data analytics offering a key opportunity to advance health equity. Health systems face growing public pressure to collect data on patient “social factors,” and advocates and public officials seek to leverage such data sources as a means of system transformation. Despite the promise of this “data-driven” strategy, there is little empirical work that examines big data in action directly within the sites of care expected to transform. In this (...) article, I present a case study on one such initiative, focusing on a large public safety-net health system’s initiation of sexual orientation and gender identity data collection within the clinical setting. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with providers, staff, and administrators, I highlight three main challenges that elude big data’s grasp on inequality: provider and staff’s limited understanding of the social significance of data collection; patient perception of the cultural insensitivity of data items; and clinic need to balance data requests with competing priorities within a constrained time window. These issues reflect structural challenges within safety-net care that big data alone are unable to address in advancing social justice. I discuss these findings by considering the present data-driven strategy alongside two complementary courses of action: diversifying the health professions workforce and clinical education reform. To truly advance justice, we need more than “just data”: we need to confront the fundamental conditions of social inequality. (shrink)