Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Many find that the objectionable nature of paternalism has something to do with belief. However, since it is commonly held that beliefs are directly governed by epistemic as opposed to moral norms, how could it be objectionable to hold paternalistic beliefs about others if they are supported by the evidence? Drawing on central elements of relational egalitarianism, this paper attempts to bridge this gap. In a first step, it argues that holding paternalistic beliefs about others implies a failure to regard (...) them as equals in terms of their moral agency. In a second step, it shows that the fact that we should regard others as equals in this sense raises the threshold for sufficiency of evidence for paternalistic beliefs to be epistemically justified. That is, moral reasons of relational equality encroach on the epistemic. However, these reasons are not decisive. In cases where others are about to jeopardize critical goods such as their lives, mobility or future autonomy, relational equality sometimes calls for paternalistic action and, by extension, the formation of beliefs that render such action rational. The upshot is that in order to meet demands of relational equality we have a pro tanto reason to not hold paternalistic beliefs about others. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 55-74, February 2022. Many find that the objectionable nature of paternalism has something to do with belief. However, since it is commonly held that beliefs are directly governed by epistemic as opposed to moral norms, how could it be objectionable to hold paternalistic beliefs about others if they are supported by the evidence? Drawing on central elements of relational egalitarianism, this paper attempts to bridge this gap. In a first step, it (...) argues that holding paternalistic beliefs about others implies a failure to regard them as equals in terms of their moral agency. In a second step, it shows that the fact that we should regard others as equals in this sense raises the threshold for sufficiency of evidence for paternalistic beliefs to be epistemically justified. That is, moral reasons of relational equality encroach on the epistemic. However, these reasons are not decisive. In cases where others are about to jeopardize critical goods such as their lives, mobility or future autonomy, relational equality sometimes calls for paternalistic action and, by extension, the formation of beliefs that render such action rational. The upshot is that in order to meet demands of relational equality we have a pro tanto reason to not hold paternalistic beliefs about others. (shrink)

How should we understand stigmatization in policies that force, induce, or nudge people to make healthier choices? Sometimes when health authorities try to alleviate (inequality in) lifestyle diseases by such means, stigmatization is reinforced and additional burdens are imposed on those who are already at a disadvantage. Distinguishing between policies that rely on stigma effects and policies that produce stigma as an unintended side effect, the paper argues that stigmatization is objectionable because it makes people’s lives worse, instrumentally as well (...) as non-instrumentally. How stigmatizing a policy is thus partly determines how desirable it is vis-à-vis other policies that might achieve the same end. In order to settle this matter, the paper suggests four evaluative dimensions and brings them to bear on three different types of policy: legal mandates, incentives, and nudges. (shrink)

Media use can empower people, provided that this is accompanied by a deeper understanding of the actors, processes and structures in the media sector – including media policy. It is, however, to be expected that media users’ literacy of media policy is rather limited. This is problematic as the absence of such understanding makes it impossible for citizens to hold the politicians they elected accountable for the media policy they develop. This article explores what media users know about media policy, (...) what they expect to know, and whether they care. We adopted a case-study approach, researching this question for the region of Flanders based on a combination of quantitative (representative survey) and qualitative (49 in-depth interviews) data. While the article focuses on the case of Flanders, its theoretical basis as well as conclusion section are relevant beyond that specific context. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe scarcity of research on associations between inflammatory markers and symptoms of depression and anxiety during adolescence has yielded inconsistent results. Further, not all studies have controlled for potential confounders. We explored the associations between baseline inflammatory markers and psychological distress including moderators at follow-up in a Norwegian adolescent population sample.MethodsData was derived from 373 girls and 294 boys aged 15–18 years at baseline, in the Fit Futures Study, a large-scale 2-year follow-up study on adolescent health. Baseline data was gathered (...) from 2010 to 2011 and follow-up data from 2012 to 2013. Psychological distress was measured with Hopkins Symptom Checklist. Serum levels of the following inflammatory markers were measured: C-reactive protein, Interleukin 6, Transforming growth factor alpha, Tumor necrosis factor alpha variant 1, and variant 2. Independent associations between baseline inflammatory markers and HSCL-10 at follow-up were explored by linear regressions, in sex-stratified analyses.ResultsIn girls, analyses showed positive associations between all inflammatory markers and HSCL-10, except for TRANCE. However, all associations were non-significant in crude as well as in adjusted analyses. In boys, CRP and TGF-α showed significant associations with HSCL-10, that remained significant after adjustment. Additionally, moderators were found. In boys, CRP was associated with HSCL-10 in those with high body fat and those being physical inactive, and the association between TWEAK and HSCL-10 was dependent upon sleep duration.ConclusionThere were significant prospective associations between CRP, TFG-α, and HSCL-10 in boys aged 15–18 years at baseline. (shrink)

Patients’ experience of symptoms does not follow the body–mind divide that characterizes the classification of disease in the health care system. Therefore, understanding patients in their entirety rather than in parts demands a different theoretical approach. Attempts have been made to formulate such approaches but many of these, such as the biopsychosocial model, are still basically dualistic or methodologically reductionist. In primary care, patients often present with diffuse symptoms, making primary care the ideal environment for understanding patients’ undifferentiated symptoms and (...) disease patterns which could readily fit both bodily and mental categories. In this article we discuss theoretical models that have attempted to overcome this challenge: The psychosomatic approach could be called holistic in the sense of taking an anti-dualistic stance. Primary care theorists have formulated integrative views but these have not gained a foothold in primary care medicine. McWhinney introduced a new metaphor, ‘the body–mind’, and Rudebeck advocated cultivating ‘bodily empathy’. These views have much in common with both phenomenological thinking and mentalization, a psychological concept for understanding others. In the process of understanding patients there is a need for the physician to enter an intersubjectivity that aims at understanding the patient’s experiences and sensations without initially jumping to diagnostic conclusions or into a division into mental and physical phenomena. Mentalization theory could form the basis of an approach to a more comprehensive understanding of patients. The success of such an approach is, however, dependent upon structural and organizational conditions that do not counteract it. (shrink)

AimsThis preliminary study aimed to investigate therapy-induced electrophysiological changes in persons with primary progressive aphasia. The investigated event-related potential components associated with language processing were the mismatch negativity, P300, N400, and P600.MethodsA linguistic ERP test battery and standardized language assessment were administered in four patients with PPA of which two received speech-language therapy and two did not receive therapy. The battery was administered twice with approximately 6 months in between in each patient. The results of the follow-up assessments were compared (...) to the results of the initial assessments.ResultsAlthough the results of the behavioral language assessment remained relatively stable between the initial and follow-up assessments, changes in the mean amplitudes, onset latencies, and duration of the ERP components were found in the four patients. In the two patients that did not receive SLT, an increased delay in 50% and a decreased mean amplitude in 25% of the measured ERP components were found. The electrophysiological changes found in the patients that received SLT were variable. Interestingly, the mismatch negativity and the N400 effect elicited by the categorical priming paradigm were less delayed and had an increased mean amplitude at the follow-up assessment in the patient with the non-fluent variant who received SLT. In this patient, the P600 component was absent at the initial assessment but present at the follow-up assessment.ConclusionAlthough no clear patterns in electrophysiological changes between patients who received SLT and patients who did not receive SLT were found by our preliminary study, it seems like the SLT induced improvements or compensation mechanisms in some specific language comprehension processes in the patient with the NFV. The results of this study are still preliminary because only four heterogeneous patients were included. Future studies should include larger patient groups of the three clinical variants because the therapy-induced electrophysiological changes might differ depending on the clinical variant and the underlying pathology. (shrink)

In The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi unfolds a political and clinical diagnosis of contemporary society, stating that the crisis we experience today is a permanent state of absent social autonomy and political agency. This crisis is not solely economic but is caused by semio-capitalism impacting all spheres of human life, affecting sensibility in particular—the linguistic and physical-sensuous link between the individual and the world. Taking up the term sensibility as a bodily basis of experience and as (...) an aesthetic notion, in this article I will explore the relation between individual and collective bodies, the crisis as a suspension of change, and literature, focusing on the Danish poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s 2017 lunatic and fragmented novel of love and economy The Crisis Notebooks, but also with reference to some of her other work. I argue that the bodily experience of crisis, as expressed in this novel, leads to an inhibited social sensibility but also, paradoxically, to a radical openness towards the world. With reference to the Danish literary scholar Anne Fastrup’s interpretation of French vitalism’s idea of sensibility in The Movement of Sensibility, I suggest that a more ambiguous, material notion of both a constructive and a destructive sensibility is crucial for its understanding, and hence—for an understanding of the relationship between body and crisis as expressed in The Crisis Notebooks. Finally, I suggest that an aesthetic notion of sensibility can provide a prism through which relations between today’s financial mechanisms and a sociocultural experience of crisis are rendered visible—if not sensuous—and it is from here that alternatives to the crisis can be found, felt, formulated or fabulated. (shrink)

Abstract:Since the birth of autism as a psychiatric category, autistic individuals have been described as preoccupied with the world of objects and detached from the world of subjects, thus marking a distinction between the “social” and the “non-social” still prevalent in autism research and diagnostic criteria. The aim of this article is to question this distinction by examining the role of things in autistic forms of social interaction. Drawing on qualitative data from an ongoing qualitative and phenomenological study on social (...) interaction among youth with autism, I argue that material things enjoy a sustaining and facilitating role in autistic social interaction for two reasons: First, by being sensible things open to tactile, auditory, and visual engagement, and second, by being things that incorporate normative practices. This relation between the material and the social in which the latter is mediated by the former, is beneficial to individuals with autism because it exploits a particular relation to materiality to consolidate a shaky attunement to the social world. I propose a materially mediated mode of interaction guided by the approaches to perception, embodiment, and materiality developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and James Gibson. This account puts pressure on the phenomenological emphasis on the face-to-face encounter and brings intersubjectivity into view as a many-faceted phenomenon realizable not only through interbodily dynamics but also through the material landscapes situating social encounters. (shrink)

Autism research has recently witnessed an embodied turn. In response to the cognitivist approaches dominating the field, phenomenological scholars have suggested a reconceptualization of autism as a disorder of embodied intersubjectivity. Part of this interest in autistic embodiment concerns the role of sensory differences, which have recently been added to the diagnostic criteria of autism. While research suggests that sensory differences are implicated in a wide array of autistic social difficulties, it has not yet been explored how sensory and social (...) experience in autism relate on a phenomenological level. Given the importance of the sensory dimension of social encounters in phenomenological analyses of autism, this question must be considered crucial. This article investigates the role played by sensory differences in autistic social experience. Through a phenomenological analysis informed primarily by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with particular emphasis on the relation between intersubjectivity and perception, I argue that sensory differences affect the way other people appear in autistic experience on a pre-reflective level. By drawing on autistic young adults’ experiential descriptions of social encounters, this article identifies three aspects of how sensory differences affect social experiences in autism. First, social encounters manifested as sensorially disturbing, chaotic, and unpredictable events. Second, the embodied expressions of others appeared unfamiliar, threatening, and promoted a sense of detachment from the social world. Third, deliberate practices were employed to actively seek perceptual and social meaning in these disorienting social encounters. This analysis stresses the importance of understanding embodied intersubjectivity through its sensory dimensions. In addition, it indicates an important avenue for future research in exploring the potential role of practice in maintaining an intuitive grip on social meaning. By approaching social encounters as sensory and perceptual events, I emphasize how social difficulties in autism are inherently world-involving phenomena rather than a cognitive deficit reducible to the autistic person. (shrink)

Autistic difficulties with social interaction have primarily been understood as expressions of underlying impairment of the ability to ‘mindread.’ Although this understanding of autism and social interaction has raised controversy in the phenomenological community for decades, the phenomenological criticism remains largely on a philosophical level. This article helps fill this gap by discussing how phenomenology can contribute to empirical methodologies for studying social interaction in autism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and qualitative data from an ongoing study (...) on social interaction in autism, I discuss how qualitative interviews and participant observation can yield phenomenologically salient data on social interaction. Both, I argue, enjoy their phenomenological promise through facilitating attention to the social-spatial-material fields in and through which social interactions and experiences arise. By developing phenomenologically sound approaches to studying social interaction, this article helps resolve the deficiency of knowledge concerning experiential dimensions of social interaction in autism. (shrink)

Dit jaarboek van het 'Studium Generale' van de Hogeschool Gent bevat essays van de sprekers die tijdens het academiejaar 2012-2013 een lezing hebben gehouden over het jaarthema ‘Normaal!? Waar is de norm?’. In deze bundel wordt stilgestaan bij de vraag hoe de tweedeling normaal/abnormaal aan de orde is in de maatschappij, in de kunsten en in de (medische) wetenschappen.0Deze lezingenreeks werd samengesteld door Sofie Vandamme en georganiseerd i.s.m. Jeroen Cluckers. Het boek bevat bijdragen van Sofie Vandamme, Charlotte Mutsaers, Peter Hinssen, (...) Dirk De Wachter, Maartje Schermer, Piet Hoebeke, Kristien Hemmerechts, Patrick Allegaert en Bart Marius, Stijn Vanheule, Paul De Grauwe, Hilde Van den Bulck, Jens Franssen en Dieter Ceustermans. Ook de beste paper van de deelnemende studenten werd mee opgenomen. (shrink)

Although compassion in healthcare differs in important ways from compassion in everyday life, it provides a key, applied microcosm in which the science of compassion can be applied. Compassion is among the most important virtues in medicine, expected from medical professionals and anticipated by patients. Yet, despite evidence of its centrality to effective clinical care, research has focused on compassion fatigue or barriers to compassion and neglected to study the fact that most healthcare professionals maintain compassion for their patients. In (...) contributing to this understudied area, the present report provides an exploratory investigation into how healthcare professionals report trying to maintain compassion. In the study, 151 professionals were asked questions about how they maintained compassion for their patients. Text responses were coded, with a complex mixture of internal vs. external, self vs. patient, and immediate vs. general strategies being reported. Exploratory analyses revealed reliable individual differences in the tendency to report strategies of particular types but no consistent age-related differences between older and younger practitioners emerged. Overall, these data suggest that while a range of compassion-maintaining strategies were reported, strategies were typically concentrated in particular areas and most professionals seek to maintain care using internal strategies. A preliminary typology of compassion maintaining strategies is proposed, study limitations and future directions are discussed, and implications for the study of how compassion is maintained are considered. (shrink)

The article develops a methodological and empirical approach for gauging the ways Big Data can be collected and distributed through mobile apps. This approach focuses on the infrastructural components that condition the disclosure of smartphone users’ data – namely the permissions that apps request and the third-party corporations they work with. We explore the surveillance ecology of mobile apps and thereby the privacy implications of everyday smartphone use through three analytical perspectives: The first focuses on the ‘appscapes’ of individual smartphone (...) users and investigates the consequences of which and how many mobile apps users download on their phones; the second compares different types of apps in order to study the app ecology and the relationships between app and third-party service providers; and the third focuses on a particular app category and discusses the functional as well as the commercial incentives for permissions and third-party collaborations. Thereby, the article advances an interdisciplinary dialogue between critical data studies, political economy and app studies, and pushes an empirical and critical perspective on mobile communication, app ecologies and data economies. (shrink)

BackgroundDementia care is essential to promote the well-being of patients but remains a difficult task prone to ethical issues. These issues include questions like whether manipulating a person with dementia is ethically permissible if it promotes her best interest or how to engage with a person who is unwilling to recognize that she has dementia. To help people living with dementia and their carers manage ethical issues in dementia care, we developed the CARE intervention. This is an intervention focused on (...) promoting the ethical self-efficacy of people living with dementia and carers, i.e., their confidence that they can manage ethical issues when they occur. The purpose of this paper is to explain and discuss how we have developed the CARE intervention to promote the ethical self-efficacy of people living with dementia, their family, and professional carers through a specific and, we believe, new use of literary texts.MethodsThe CARE intervention has been developed in two phases: First, we conducted a needs assessment of the occurrence of ethical issues in dementia care and the need for an intervention to support people living with dementia and their carers in managing such issues. Second, in a design phase, we developed the CARE intervention to meet identified needs.ResultsTo address identified ethical issues in dementia care we designed the CARE intervention as a workshop format where people living with dementia and carers can meet, discuss literary texts, and deliberate on how to solve such issues. The workshop is structured by the following elements: An agenda of ethical issues, a collection of literary cases exemplifying ethical issues, a moderator with an understanding of dementia care, and an overview of the ethical principles relevant to the discussion of ethical issues. >This workshop concept is operationalized in three applications tailored to meet the specific ethical issues of each of the study´s three target groups: people living with dementia and family carers, professional and family carers, and professional carers.ConclusionWe conclude the paper by stating that it is possible to develop an intervention that promotes the ethical self-efficacy of people living with dementia and family and professional carers. (shrink)

Autism is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon. Not only is it difficult to understand the various and diverse aspects of autism, their relation to each other is also complex and still poorly understood. In my article, “Material encounters. A phenomenological account of social interaction in autism,” I have addressed this heterogeneity by presenting an understanding of how social features of autism relate to behavioral features. Straddling this divide between the social and the non-social that still pervades much thinking in philosophy, psychiatry, (...) and psychology is crucial for understanding the diverse experiences of autistic persons and... (shrink)

Research has shown the importance of engaging in networking behaviors for employees’ career success. Networking behaviors can be seen as a proactive way of creating access to career-related social resources and we argue that this type of proactive career behaviors might be particularly relevant for freelancers who cannot depend on an organizational career system supporting their further development, yet whose careers are characterized by high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability. To date, however, our understanding of how freelancers, being a category (...) of workers that are deprived of an organizational context of support for career development, can safeguard their employability, is limited. Therefore, this study addresses this gap and investigates whether freelancers’ networking behaviors are positively associated with career outcomes, through the mediating role of the need for relatedness fulfillment and employability-enhancing competencies. Hypotheses are tested via Structural Equation Modelling using a sample of 1,874 freelancers from Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The results generally support our hypotheses, providing evidence for a significant association between networking behaviors and need for relatedness fulfillment, and between networking behaviors and employability-enhancing competencies. Moreover, we found a significant association between need for relatedness fulfillment and employability-enhancing competencies, being the mediators in our research model and the outcomes of career satisfaction and future career opportunities. Implications for career development in the contemporary workplace are discussed, with particular attention for need for relatedness fulfillment, employability, and sustainable careers of freelance workers. (shrink)

Indoor radon is a natural radioactive gas that enters homes through cracks in the foundations. It is one of the leading causes of lung cancer. Although radon can be detected with an indoor radon test and can be mitigated by means of either ventilation or professional measures, testing and mitigating rates of the at-risk population remain insufficient. The objective of this study is to systematically review the current level of evidence regarding the design and effectiveness of mass media campaigns to (...) address the health risks of indoor radon to homeowners. The results show that informative tone of voices prevailed, other components, such as emotional or social components, were often not included. Furthermore, the focus was mostly on intention and less on behavior itself, and on testing instead of mitigation. Further research is needed to test effective and innovative communication strategies to increase protective behavior concerning indoor radon. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his main work of theoretical philosophy, frequently uses metaphors from law. In this first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors and their role in the first Critique, Sofie Møller shows that they are central to Kant's account of reason. Through an analysis of the legal metaphors in their entirety, she demonstrates that Kant conceives of reason as having a structure mirroring that of a legal system in a natural right framework. Her study shows (...) that Kant's aim is to make cognisers become similar to authorized judges within such a system, by proving the legitimacy of the laws and the conditions under which valid judgments can be pronounced. These elements consolidate her conclusion that reason's systematicity is legal systematicity. (shrink)

In Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics, Sofía Betancourt constructs environmental ethics at the intersection of the global North and global South. Betancourt explores transnational environmental justice through the lived experience of women from the African Diaspora who migrated to Panamá to work on the Canal.

This paper explores trans poetics as a way of doing trans philosophy. I begin by giving an overview of the current state of trans philosophy. I then give examples of other literatures wherein poetics is taken to be philosophically robust. After giving a brief history of trans poetics, I turn to the poetics statements and poetry of three trans poets—D'Lo, Ching-In Chen, and micha cárdenas—featured in the 2013 anthology Troubling the Line. I show how poetry is often uniquely able to (...) capture the ambiguity of the WTF of trans experience in ways that differ from philosophical argumentation. I conclude by suggesting that poetics might move us away from a potential politics of suffering in trans philosophy to a politics of liberation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What, Exactly, Does the Madperson Lack?Sofie Jeppsson, PhD (bio)Justin garson has already received well-earned recognition for his Madness: A philosophical exploration (2022), in which he distinguishes the view of madness as a dysfunction from madness as a strategy—a distinction that cuts across traditional distinctions between, for example, biological/neurological and psychological/social views. On the dysfunction view, going mad might be comparable to something like having an asthma attack or, more (...) long-term, developing type 1 diabetes. If the trachea closes up and prevents air from passing through, that is a dysfunction in the breathing apparatus. If the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas cease to produce insulin, making the person dependent on insulin shots to stay alive, that is a dysfunction. On the strategy view, going mad is rather like getting a fever when already infected with some pathogen. Given that you have the pathogen reproducing inside you, a rising body temperature provides a strategy (although not, of course, something the ill person chose) to keep the reproduction rate down, thus giving the immune system a better chance at vanquishing the infection. That does not mean that fevers are harmless—if a fever becomes high enough, it might itself do damage to the body. Still, it is a strategy, not a mere dysfunction. Analogously, on the Madness as strategy view, going mad might help a person deal with old traumas or an ongoing terrible situation, even as the madness may also be damaging in itself.In this paper, Garson introduces us to another interesting distinction: between seeing madness as a lack of reason, or as a perversion of or difference in reason. Garson writes that present-day psychiatry tends to see madness as a lack, whereas the late modern thinkers conceived of it as a perversion of reason. The late moderns clearly saw madness as something negative, but if we retain something like their basic view, merely change our evaluation from the negative perversion to the more neutral difference, we have a better basis for regarding Madness as a complicated and problematic but still cherished identity, and for Mad Pride.This is another interesting distinction well worth calling attention to. I’m uncertain how well the J.C.A. Heinroth example works—the text cited seems to show that he had a Madness as strategy view, but is it a Madness as a different kind of reason view?—but the other examples work better. Nevertheless, I want to push back a little against the claim that present-day psychiatry and philosophy of psychiatry tend to regard madness as a lack of something whereas the early moderns saw it as a difference. (Just a friendly little push, mind you, but still.)Arthur Wigan’s description of two brains, one functional and one dysfunctional, still seems to posit a lack of proper function in one of them. Sure, he does not say that the madperson lacks as much as the [End Page 313] idiot, who has two dysfunctional brains whereas the madperson has one functional and one dysfunctional. Still, there’s a lack. This two-brain picture also has its modern analogues: It brings to mind (albeit in a less biologically concrete and reified form) much psycho-educational material on, for example, how to live with bipolar disorder, according to which a supposed sane and rational part of the psychiatric patient’s mind should learn to handle and control the other, mad part (e.g., Miklowitz, 2012).According to John Locke, madpeople reason just fine, but they start from false premises. Is not this, too, something that madpeople are supposed to lack? Correct and realistic premises to start from? Locke writes that madpeople have “taken their fancies for realities,” but “make right deductions from them.” Moreover, Locke’s theory is reminiscent of modern bottom-up theories like Brendan Maher’s (1999)—madpeople have bizarre experiences on the basis of which they form bizarre beliefs, but we need not postulate that they suffer from any problems with, for example, reasoning and drawing inferences to explain why they believe what they do. Theorists who instead argue for a top-down or two-factor account of why madpeople stick... (shrink)

This article focuses on the ethical implications of so-called ‘collateral damage’. It develops a moral typology of collateral harm to innocents, which occurs as a side effect of military or quasi-military action. Distinguishing between accidental and incidental collateral damage, it introduces four categories of such damage: negligent, oblivious, knowing and reckless collateral damage. Objecting mainstream versions of the doctrine of double effect, the article argues that in order for any collateral damage to be morally permissible, violent agents must comply with (...) high standards of care. In order for incidental harm to be permissible, an agent must take pains to avoid such harm even at higher cost to him- or herself. It is argued that accidentally but negligently caused collateral damage may be just as difficult to excuse as incidental harm. Only if high precautionary standards of care are met, can unintended harm to innocents – incidental or accidental – be permissible. In practice, such a strong commitment to avoiding harm to civilians may well lead us to question more generally and rethink more radically how violent conflicts ought to be fought, how military violence ought to be used and whether there are better ways of achieving those aims that we think are legitimate than those we are currently using. (shrink)

In historiography there is a tendency to see the Great War as marking the end of scientific optimism and the period that followed the war as a time of discord. Connecting to current (inter)national historiographical debate on the question of whether the First World War meant a disruption from the pre-war period or not, this article strives to prove that faith in scientific progress still prevailed in the 1920s. This is shown through the use of Belgium as a case study, (...) which suggests that the generally adopted cultural pessimism in the post-war years did not apply to the public rhetoric of science in this country. Diverse actors—scientists, industrialists, politicians, the public opinion and the military staff—declared a confidence in science, enhanced by wartime results. Furthermore, belief in science in Belgium was not affected by public outcry over the use of mustard gas, unlike in the former belligerent countries where the gas became an unpleasant reminder of how science was used during the war. Even German science with its industrial applications remained the norm after 1918. In fact, the faith in science exhibited during the pre-war years continued to exist, at least until the 1920s, despite anti-German sentiments being voiced by many sections of Belgian society in the immediate aftermath of the war. (shrink)

A fallibilist theory of knowledge is employed to make sense of the idea that agents know what they are doing 'without observation' (as on Anscombe's theory of practical knowledge).

WINNER BEST SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY BOOK IN 2021 / NASSP BOOK AWARD 2022 -/- Together we can often achieve things that are impossible to do on our own. We can prevent something bad from happening or we can produce something good, even if none of us could do it by herself. But when are we morally required to do something of moral importance together with others? This book develops an original theory of collective moral obligations. These are obligations that individual moral (...) agents hold jointly, but not as unified collective agents. To think of some of our obligations as joint or collective is the best way of making sense of our intuitions regarding collective moral action problems. Where we have reason to believe that our efforts are most efficient as part of a collective endeavor we may incur collective obligations together with others who are similarly placed as long as we are able to establish compossible individual contributory strategies towards that goal. The book concludes with a discussion of “massively shared obligations” to large-scale moral problems such as global poverty. (shrink)

The standard view of ignorance is that it consists in the mere lack of knowledge or true belief. Duncan Pritchard has recently argued, against the standard view, that ignorance is the lack of knowledge/true belief that is due to an improper inquiry. I shall call, Pritchard’s alternative account the Normative Account. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the Normative Account by providing an independent vargument supporting it.

Together we can achieve things that we could never do on our own. In fact, there are sheer endless opportunities for producing morally desirable outcomes together with others. Unsurprisingly, scholars have been finding the idea of collective moral obligations intriguing. Yet, there is little agreement among scholars on the nature of such obligations and on the extent to which their existence might force us to adjust existing theories of moral obligation. What interests me in this paper is the perspective of (...) the moral deliberating agent who faces a collective action problem, i.e. the type of reasoning she employs when deciding how to act. I hope to show that agents have collective obligations precisely when they are required to employ ‘we-reasoning’, a type of reasoning that differs from I-mode, best response reasoning, as I shall explain below. More precisely, two (or more) individual agents have a collective moral obligation to do x if x is an option for action that is only collectively available (more on that later) and each has sufficient reason to rank x highest out of the options available to them. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper discusses how the notion of clock time was introduced in the Greek world. On the basis of an analysis of the earliest (potential) references to hours and clocks in texts from the late fifth to the early third century BC in their historical context, and with reference to the earliest archaeologically attested clocks, it proposes a scenario for the conception and development of this conventional system. It offers a new interpretation of the problematic passage Herodotus 2.109 and argues (...) that an hour-like unit was developed by late fifth century astronomers, under Babylonian influence, to denote the time in which a celestial body moves through a section of its diurnal circle. When this astronomical concept moved to the civic sphere in the second half of the fourth century, it changed from a scientific unit of duration to a civic unit for measuring the time of day. This shift probably took place in Athens, where the first references to hours appear in this period together with multiple experiments in clock making, as well as humorous reactions to the newfound sense of temporal precision. The paper will also show, however, that these first clocks did not yet tell seasonal hours – the type of hours that would eventually define Greco-Roman clock time – and still measured the lapse of time rather than enabling the location of moments in time. Greco-Roman clock time was only fully formed when it incorporated Egyptian notions of the hour in the Ptolemaic kingdom of the early third century BC. (shrink)

Local opposition to infrastructure projects implementing renewable energy (RE) such as wind farms is often strong even if state-wide support for RE is strikingly high. The slogan “Not In My BackYard” (NIMBY) has become synonymous for this kind of protest. This paper revisits the question of what is wrong with NIMBYs about RE projects and how to best address them. I will argue that local opponents to wind farm (and other RE) developments do not necessarily fail to contribute their fair (...) share to producing a desirable public good (clean energy). In fact, with landscape concerns being at the heart of much protest, the question of fair burden distribution becomes sidelined: landscape impacts cannot be distributed nor compensated for. Protests may be attempts to express a true conflict of (incommensurable) values. Understanding them as such will help us better address NIMBY concerns and overcome such opposition through ensuring procedural justice. (shrink)

Humans are prone to producing morally suboptimal and even disastrous outcomes out of ignorance. Ignorance is generally thought to excuse agents from wrongdoing, but little attention has been paid to group-based ignorance as the reason for some of our collective failings. I distinguish between different types of first-order and higher order group-based ignorance and examine how these can variously lead to problematic inaction. I will make two suggestions regarding our epistemic obligations vis-a-vis collective (in)action problems: (1) that our epistemic obligations (...) concern not just our own knowledge and beliefs but those of others, too and (2) that our epistemic obligations can be held collectively where the epistemic tasks cannot be performed by individuals acting in isolation, for example, when we are required to produce joint epistemic goods. (shrink)