We considered supererogatory behavior as illustrated by people who rescued Jews in Nazi Europe. When we did so, we encountered a puzzling empirical finding: rescuers insisted they had no choice in their life-or-death actions. Rescuers' perspectives -- how they saw themselves in relation to others -- served as a powerful constraint on choice as traditionally conceived. Traditional moral theories failed to provide satisfactory explanations for this phenomenon, and we turned to virtue ethics to determine whether this approach, with its emphasis (...) on character, would provide a useful philosophical tool for explicating rescue behavior.Our conclusion on virtue ethics is mixed. We find the focus on character found in virtue ethics is superior to the traditional rule-based theories of moral choice, with virtue ethics able to account both for the supererogatory nature of rescue behavior and for rescuers' reports that they had no choice. Yet even as virtue ethics provides insight into the way character forms the preconditions for moral action and affects what people define as moral situations, it fails to capture the critical role of perspective in moral choice. Nor does it provide an answer to the conundrum that troubles us when we consider the implications of rescue behavior: can we assign moral responsibility if character determines actions? The reports of the rescuers present a concrete description of what has been called a perception of a common humanity. It is this perspective that constitutes the particular moral imperative that moved the rescuers to risk their lives for others, and whose full explication eludes us. Supererogatorisches Verhalten zeigt sich bei Menschen, die im Europa der Nazizeit Juden gerettet haben. Dazu sind wir auf einen verwirrenden empirischen Befund gestoßen: Retter bestehen darauf, daß sie mit Bezug auf ihre Handlungen, bei denen es um Leben und Tod ging, gar keine Wahl gehabt haben. Die Retterperspektive - wie sich die Retter selbst in ihrer Beziehung zu anderen sehen - wirkte sich als eine machtvolle Beschränkung der Wahlmöglichkeiten aus, wie sie traditionell angenommen werden. Traditionelle Moraltheorien haben es nicht geschafft, befriedigende Erklärungen für dieses Phänomen zu liefern, und wir haben uns der Tugendethik zugewendet, um herauszufinden, ob sie, die den Charakter betont, ein nützliches philosophisches Hilfsmittel für die Erklärung derartigen Rettungsverhalten bereitstellt.Unsere Schlußfolgerungen bezüglich der Tugendethik sind gemischt. Wir sind der Ansicht, daß die Betonung des Charakters durch die Tugendethik den traditionellen, auf Regeln basierenden Theorien über moralische Wahlmöglichkeiten überlegen ist, wobei die Tugendethik sowohl der supererogatorischen Natur des Rettungsverhaltens als auch den Aussagen der Retter, sie hätten gar keine Wahl gehabt, Rechnung trägt. Obwohl die Tugendethik sogar Einsichten in die Art und Weise liefert, wie der Charakter die entscheidende Vorbedingung für moralisches Handeln bildet und wie Menschen moralische Situationen bestimmen, versagt sie doch dabei, die maßgebliche Rolle zu definieren, die die moralische Perspektive bei der moralischen Wahl spielt. Ebensowenig gibt sie eine Antwort auf das Rätsel, das uns beschäftigt, wenn wir die Implikationen des Rettungsverhaltens bedenken: Können wir moralische Verantwortlichkeit zuschreiben, wenn der Charakter die Handlungen bestimmt? Die Aussagen der Retter geben eine konkrete Beschreibung von etwas, was als Perzeption einer gemeinsamen Menschheit bezeichnet worden ist. Es ist diese Perspektive, die das besondere moralische Gebot in Kraft setzt, das die Retter dazu bewogen hat, ihr Leben für andere zu riskieren. Diese Perspektive läßt sich nicht vollständig erklären. (shrink)

The possibility of enhancing human abilities often raises public concern about equality and social impact. This chapter aims at one particular group of technologies, cognitive enhancement, and one particular fear, that enhancement will create social divisions and possibly expanding inequalities. The chapter argues that cognitive enhancements could offer significant social and economic benefits. The basic forms of internal cognitive enhancement technologies foreseen today are pharmacological modifications, genetic interventions, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and neural implants. Cognitive enhancements can influence the economy through (...) reduction of losses, individual economic benefits, and society‐wide benefits. The strongest objection to the introduction of any enhancement technology is that it will create inequality, injustice, and unfairness. While there are clear economic and social benefits to cognitive enhancement, there exist anumber of obstacles to its development and use. One obstacle is the present system for licensing drugs and medical treatments. (shrink)

As cognitive neuroscience has advanced, the list of prospective internal, biological enhancements has steadily expanded. Education and training, as well as the use of external information‐processing devices, may be labeled as “conventional” means of cognition enhancement (CE). They are often well established and culturally accepted. By contrast, methods of enhancing cognition through “unconventional” means, such as ones involving deliberately created nootropic drugs, gene therapy, or neural implants, are nearly all to be regarded as experimental at the present time. Transcranial magnetic (...) stimulation (TMS), genetic interventions, brain‐computer interfaces and new senses are highly experimental and unlikely to be important over the next 15 years. Many of the concerns about enhancement are nonspecific to the tools used to achieve it, which means that enhancement–ethic scrutiny should also apply to nonbiological external enhancements. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a debate focusing on the question of whether groups can literally have beliefs. For the purposes of epistemology, however, the key question is whether groups can have knowledge. More specifi cally, the question is whether “group views” can have the key epistemic features of belief, viz., aiming at truth and being epistemically rational. I argue that, while groups may not have beliefs in the full sense of the word, group views can have these key epistemic features (...) of belief. However, I argue that on Margaret Gilbert's infl uential “plural subject” account of group belief, group views are unlikely to be epistemically rational. (shrink)

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's views and relationship with the Church, explaining that while Kierkegaard was a frequent churchgoer, he also considered the Church a corrupt and disgraceful business enterprise. It discusses Kierkegaard's criticism on the development of the Church as an institution and analyses various aspects of his ecclesiastical conception of the Church. The chapter also considers Kierkegaard's own experiences in writing and delivering sermons.

Inference has long been a concern in epistemology, as an essential means by which we extend our knowledge and test our beliefs. Inference is also a key notion in influential psychological or philosophical accounts of mental capacities, from perception via utterance comprehension to problem-solving. Consciousness, on the other hand, has arguably been the defining interest of philosophy of mind over recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the significance of consciousness for the proper understanding of the nature (...) and role of inference. It is commonly suggested that inference may be either conscious or unconscious. Yet how unified are these various supposed instances of inference? Does either enjoy explanatory priority in relation to the other? In what ways or senses, can an inference be conscious, or fail to be conscious, and how does this matter? This book brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging theorists that illustrate how several current debates in epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind can benefit from reflections on these and related questions about the significance of consciousness for inference. Contributors include: Kirk Ludwig and Wade Munroe; Michael Rescorla; Federico Bongiorno and Lisa Bortolotti; Berit Brogaard; Nicholas Allott; Jake Quilty-Dunn and Eric Mandelbaum; Corine Besson; Anders Nes; David Henderson, Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč; Elijah Chudnoff; and Ram Neta. (shrink)

In _Plato on Democracy and Political technē_ Anders Dahl Sørensen offers an in-depth investigation of Plato’s discussions of democracy’s ‘epistemic potential’, arguing that this question is far more central to his political thought than is usually assumed.

It is often supposed one can draw a distinction, among the assumptions on which an inference rests, between certain background assumptions and certain more salient, or foregrounded, assumptions. Yet what may such a fore-v-background structure, or such structures, consist it? In particular, how do they relate to consciousness? According to a ‘Boring View’, such structures can be captured by specifying, for the various assumptions of the inference, whether they are phenomenally conscious, or access conscious, or else how easily available they (...) are to such consciousness. According to an ‘Interesting View’, there are fore-v-background structures over and above such classifications. The chapter gestures at reasons for thinking that an Interesting View at least merits exploration. The paper discusses some recent contributions to such a view in analytical philosophy; some remarks in Husserl on what he dubbed the horizonal dimension of acts of consciousness; and psychological work on the role of gist or schema representations in perception and memory. It is proposed that background assumptions can figure in consciousness by being as it were condensed into a consciously, though inattentively, entertained notion of their overall thematic gist, where this thematic gist gives the drift of a possible elucidation of how or why such-and-such salient grounds mean that so-and-so conclusion holds. (shrink)

1. The application of literature to life -- 2. Examples of application -- 3. Application and the act of reading -- 4. Literature and cognitive enrichment -- 5. Transportation and empathy -- 6. Simulation and identification -- 7. The aesthetic approach to literature -- 8. Conceptions of the text -- 9. Literary practice -- 10. The concepts of literature -- 11. Questions of norms and values -- 12. A final look at application.

Drawing on positioning theory this study investigates how Somali diaspora mothers actively struggle to be recognized by teachers in Danish public schools as equitable partners in their children’s education. The study takes into account the historically and politically constituted conditions for positioning work and argues that these mothers navigate skillfully in these conditions explicitly positioning themselves as both ‘supportive assistants’ and ‘responsible parents’. However, the analysis shows that these mothers have narratives of unjust treatment of both themselves and their children (...) in schools, but the struggle to be recognized as equitable partners inhibits their possibilities of taking up the position of ‘advocate for their child’. They are thereby drawn into a position of ‘passive complacency’. Additionally the article argues for a more encompassing understanding of positioning theory that takes into account the constituted conditions as well as embodied and material aspects of constitutive here-and-now negotiations. (shrink)

This paper explores the connection between wonder and meaning, in particular ‘the meaning of life’, a connection that, despite strong intrinsic connections between wonder and the (philosoph...

Human rights are those legal and/or moral rights that all persons have simply as persons. In the current digital age, human rights are increasingly being either fulfilled or violated in the online environment. In this article, I provide a way of conceptualizing the relationships between human rights and information technology. I do so by pointing out a number of misunderstandings of human rights evident in Vinton Cerf's recent argument that there is no human right to the Internet. I claim that (...) Cerf fails to recognize the existence of derived human rights. I argue further that we need to consider what other human rights are necessitated by the digital age. I suggest we need a Declaration of Digital Rights. As a step toward the development of such a declaration, I suggest a framework for thinking through how to ensure the human rights are satisfied in digital contexts. (shrink)

Prison On Trial is the classic critique of prisons and imprisonment: a book for everyone's shelf. For anyone seeking to understand the modern penchant for locking-up ever more people, it distils the arguments for and against incarceration in a readable, accessible and authoritative way - gaining in status each time prison populations increase across large parts of the world.

In this paper, I examine a particularly important kind of social group, what I call a “collective.” Collectives are distinguished from other social groups by the fact that the members of collectives can think and act “in the name of ” the group; they can collectively plan for its future, work for its success, and grieve at its failure. As a result, collectives have certain person-like properties that other social groups lack. I argue that persons form collectives by taking a (...) shared first person plural perspective based on a shared collective self-concept. This collective self-concept defines the collective, and, along with the causal history of the collective, uniquely identifies it. Over time, collectives persist through changes in membership by maintaining this collective self-concept. Changes in the collective self-concept may be identity preserving, however, if they result from processes that naturally flow from the identity of the collective and which are appropriately caused by (or accepted by) the collective and are connected to previous stages of the collective via collective memories. (shrink)

A brain emulation would be a one‐to‐one simulation where every causal process in the brain is represented, behaving in the same way as the original. Opponents of animal testing often argue that much of it is unnecessary and could be replaced with simulations. Personal identity is going to be a major issue with brain emulations, both because of the transition from an original unproblematic single human identity to successor identity/identities that might or might not be the same, and because software (...) minds can potentially have multiple realizability. The process might produce distressed minds that have rights yet have an existence not worth living, or that lack the capacity to form or express their wishes. Emulations will experience and behave on a timescale set by the speed of their software. Brain emulations would not be self‐contained, and their survival would depend upon hardware over which they might not have any control. (shrink)

It has been recommended that parents should monitor their children’s Internet use, including what sites their children visit, what messages they receive, and what they post. In this paper, I claim that parents ought not to follow this advice, because to do so would violate children’s right to privacy over their on-line information exchanges. In defense of this claim, I argue that children have a right to privacy from their parents, because such a right respects their current capacities and fosters (...) their future capacities for autonomy and relationships. (shrink)

BackgroundEthical problems in everyday healthcare work emerge for many reasons and constitute threats to ethical values. If these threats are not managed appropriately, there is a risk that the patient may be inflicted with moral harm or injury, while healthcare professionals are at risk of feeling moral distress. Therefore, it is essential to support the learning and development of ethical competencies among healthcare professionals and students. The aim of this study was to explore the available literature regarding ethics education that (...) promotes ethical competence learning for healthcare professionals and students undergoing training in healthcare professions.MethodsIn this integrative systematic review, literature was searched within the PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycInfo databases using the search terms ‘health personnel’, ‘students’, ‘ethics’, ‘moral’, ‘simulation’, and ‘teaching’. In total, 40 articles were selected for review. These articles included professionals from various healthcare professions and students who trained in these professions as subjects. The articles described participation in various forms of ethics education. Data were extracted and synthesised using thematic analysis.ResultsThe review identified the need for support to make ethical competence learning possible, which in the long run was considered to promote the ability to manage ethical problems. Ethical competence learning was found to be helpful to healthcare professionals and students in drawing attention to ethical problems that they were not previously aware of. Dealing with ethical problems is primarily about reasoning about what is right and in the patient’s best interests, along with making decisions about what needs to be done in a specific situation.ConclusionsThe review identified different designs and course content for ethics education to support ethical competence learning. The findings could be used to develop healthcare professionals’ and students’ readiness and capabilities to recognise as well as to respond appropriately to ethically problematic work situations. (shrink)

(2013). Veritistic Epistemology and the Epistemic Goals of Groups: A Reply to Vähämaa. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 21-25. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760666.

Solomon’s article and Binmore’s response exemplify a standard exchange between the game theorist and those critical of applying game theory to ethics. The critic of game theory lists a number of problems with game theory and the game theorist responds by arguing that the critic’s objections are based on a misrepresentation of the theory. Binmore claims that the game theorist is in the position of the innocent man who, when asked why he beats his wife, must explain that he doesn’t (...) beat his wife at all (Binmore, 2). However, even if we agree that the denial is true, we might still like to know why, if you are not beating your wife, do others consistently accuse you of doing so? Or, to get away from this rather sexist metaphor, why are critics of game theory like Solomon (according to game theorists) consistently getting game theory wrong?While, as I argue in the first section, critics of game theory such as Solomon may misrepresent game theory, this misrepresentation is not entirely their own fault. The way in which game theory is traditionally presented is misleading. For example, students are usually first introduced to game theory through the prisoner’s dilemma. It is compelling drama, but lousy PR for the use of ethics in game theory. (You want to know what to do? Let’s see how two thieves reason.) However, while Binmore is right to argue that game theory neither assumes nor entails the theory of human nature that Solomon finds objectionable, Solomon is also right to argue that game theory is promulgated and applied with what appear to be a robust set of assumptions about human motivation. I argue in the second section, however, that in fact neither these applications of game theory, nor game theory itself, is committed to a particular theory of human motivation. Thus, while game theory is not able to provide a complete ethical theory (assuming that a theory of human motivation is essential to such a theory), it is not contrary to ethics. In the final section I note that Aristotle, rather than being the alternative to using game theory in business ethics, as Solomon suggests, actually points the way to an ethical theory that can combine a discussion of both game theory and “those nagging and controversial questions about what it is that people do and ought to care about” (Solomon, 7). (shrink)

This article offers a discussion of the connection between technology and values and, specifically, I take a closer look at ethically sound design. In order to bring the discussion into a concrete context, the theory of Value Sensitive Design (VSD) will be the focus point. To illustrate my argument concerning design ethics, the discussion involves a case study of an augmented window, designed by the VSD Research Lab, which has turned out to be a potentially surveillance-enabling technology. I call attention (...) to a “positivist problem” that has to do with the connection between the design context and the use context, which VSD seems to presuppose, and I argue that it is necessary to clearly distinguish between the two, since the designers’ intentions do not always correspond with the users’ practice; in fact, the relation between design and use is very complex and principally unpredictable. Thus, a design theory must accept that foresight is limited to anticipation rather than prediction. To overcome the positivist problem, I suggest a phenomenological approach to technology inspired by Don Ihde’s concept of multistability. This argument, which is general in nature and thus applies to any theory of design ethics, is intended as a constructive criticism, which can hopefully contribute to the further development of design ethics. (shrink)

Perceptual processes differ from cognitive, this paper argues, in functioning to be causally controlled by proximal stimuli, and being modular, at least in a modest sense that excludes their being isotropic in Jerry Fodor's sense. This claim agrees with such theorists as Jacob Beck and Ben Phillips that a function of stimulus-control is needed for perceptual status. In support of this necessity claim, I argue, inter alia, that E.J. Green's recent architectural account misclassifies processes deploying knowledge of grammar as perceptual. (...) _Pace_ Beck and Phillips, however, I argue a function of stimulus-control is insufficient for perceptual as opposed to cognitive status. One consideration in favour of such insufficiency, noted but (I argue) not convincingly rebutted by these theorists, concerns perpetually grounded demonstrative thought. Two other considerations trade on the fact that a function of stimulus-control can arise not from blind nature but intentional design or social institutions, where so-functioning processes may but need not be perceptual. I offer two cases where such processes are cognitive, viz. skilful play-by-play announcing of ongoing events, and voluntary visualizing of ongoing events under the guidance of apt play-by-play announcements, dubbed announcement-driven visualizing (ADV). The cognitive status of these three diverse phenomena cannot be explained by an absence of a perception-like representational format or content (for ADV has such) or by a presence of personal-level mental states causally mediating between stimuli and outputs (for perception has such). A bettter explanation invokes, I argue, the non-modular character of the generating process. (shrink)

We consider the mission of the librarian as an information provider and the core value that gives this mission its social importance. Our focus here is on those issues that arise in relation to the role of the librarian as an information provider. In particular, we focus on questions of the selection and organization of information, which bring up issues of bias, neutrality, advocacy, and children's rights to access information.

According to perceptualism, fluent comprehension of speech is a perceptual achievement, in as much as it is akin to such high-level perceptual states as the perception of objects as cups or trees, or of people as happy or sad. According to liberalism, grasp of meaning is partially constitutive of the phenomenology of fluent comprehension. I here defend an influential line of argument for liberal perceptualism, resting on phenomenal contrasts in our comprehension of speech, due to Susanna Siegel and Tim Bayne, (...) against objections from Casey O'Callaghan and Indrek Reiland. I concentrate on the contrast between the putative immediacy of meaning-assignment in fluent comprehension, as compared with other, less ordinary, perhaps translation-based ways of getting at the meaning of speech. I argue this putative immediacy is difficult to capture on a non-perceptual view (whether liberal or non-liberal), and that the immediacy in question has much in common with that which applies in other, less controversial cases of high-level perception. (shrink)

The paper addresses the phenomenology of inference. It proposes that the conscious character of conscious inferences is partly constituted by a sense of meaning; specifically, a sense of what Grice called ‘natural meaning’. In consciously drawing the (outright, categorical) conclusion that Q from a presumed fact that P, one senses the presumed fact that P as meaning that Q, where ‘meaning that’ expresses natural meaning. This sense of natural meaning is phenomenologically analogous, I suggest, to our sense of what is (...) said in fluently comprehending everyday utterances in our first language. The proposal that conscious inference involves a sense of natural meaning is compared with views according to which conscious inference involves taking the premises (i) to be good reasons for the conclusion (as defended by Thomson and Grice), (ii) to support it (as argued by Audi and, recently, Boghossian), or (iii) to imply it (as lately contended by Broome). I argue our proposal can explain certain phenomena handled by alternatives (i) and (ii), but that some further phenomena is handled by our account but not these alternatives. In relation to alternative (iii), I argue that, in so far as implicational and natural-meaning relations come apart, the latter are a better fit for what we sense or take to be so in conscious inference. (shrink)

Phenomena that are unanticipated or based on something unanticipated are often neglected by sociologists. 'Astonishment' is selected for analysis as one of the phenomena that are frequently based on unanticipated events. Especially when unanticipated events occur together with certain other social factors, astonishment is a likely reaction. Astonishment is further analysed in terms of some basic elements of social action: The reaction may be a means (especially of social control), it may be a conscious end in action, and it may (...) be a condition in action. (shrink)