The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the considerable challenge of sourcing expertise and determining which experts to trust. Dissonant information fostered controversy in public discourse and encouraged an appeal to a wide range of social indicators of trustworthiness in order to decide whom to trust. We analyze public discourse on expertise by examining how social indicators inform the reputation of Dr. Didier Raoult, the French microbiologist who rose to international prominence as an early advocate for using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. To (...) comprehend how these indicators came to inform his reputation, we outline Dr. Raoult's rise to fame based on discourse about hydroxychloroquine. We then discuss why we trust in experts like scientist-practitioners. This is followed by an examination of how social indicators of trust like status, epistemic authority, influence and values have informed Dr. Raoult's reputation. We conclude with recommendations for how to improve the selection and evaluation social indicators of trust and reputations. Our aim here, instead of making a claim about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or Dr. Raoult's reputation per se, is to outline through this case study how social indicators of trust inform reputation and the challenge they present to evaluating expertise. (shrink)

If we want to understand why mathematical knowledge is extraordinarily reliable, we need to consider both the nature of mathematical arguments and mathematical practice as a social practice. Mathematical knowledge is extraordinarily reliable because arguments in mathematics take the form of deductive mathematical proofs. Deductive mathematical proofs are surveyable in the sense that they can be checked step by step by different experts, and a purported proof is only accepted as a proof by the mathematical community once a number of (...) experts have checked the proof. Hence, the reliability of the body of mathematical knowledge is in part obtained through the surveyability of proofs and the social process of proof validation. This chapter reviews work relating to (1) the norm in the mathematical community of only counting as argument deductive mathematical proof, and (2) the norm of only counting as deductive mathematical proof an argument that has been confirmed to be a deductive mathematical proof by a number of experts. The chapter also presents cases of unusual mathematical proofs or arguments that challenge these norms. (shrink)

The recent proposal by the Independent Expert Panel of the Stop Ecocide initiative to include the crime of ecocide in the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute has raised expectations for preventing and remedying severe environmental harm through international prosecution. As alluring as this image is, we argue that ecocide prosecutions may be the most difficult, perhaps even impossible, in precisely the cases that the ICC would need to be concerned with; namely, the gravest global incidents of environmental harm, including those (...) associated with planetary climate change. We explore a series of questions about the panel's formulation of ecocide that resonate with longer debates around criminalizing environmental harm but take on new dimensions amid the Anthropocene and after twenty years of ICC trials. Ecocide must contend with the hard lessons learned concerning the ICC's limitations in realizing justice in a fraught international political context and also with fundamental challenges to knowledge and legitimacy arising from the uncertainty and dynamic socioenvironmental context of the Anthropocene. The proposed amendment, if adopted, risks ineffective prosecutions or even perverse outcomes for the environment itself. This risk, however, may characterize any effort to prosecute ecocide internationally in the Anthropocene unless the terms of international criminal law are fundamentally rethought. (shrink)

Nevin & Grace's approach is an interesting and useful attempt to find ways to measure “core” effects of a history of exposure to reinforcement. The momentum analogy makes intuitive sense, and the evidence for its utility is increasing. Several questions remain, however, about how the analogy will fare in the case of concurrent rather than sequential activities, about the use of extinction as a method to test resistance to change, and about the generality of some of the effects.

We present a case study of how mathematicians write for mathematicians. We have conducted interviews with two research mathematicians, the talented PhD student Adam and his experienced supervisor Thomas, about a research paper they wrote together. Over the course of 2 years, Adam and Thomas revised Adam’s very detailed first draft. At the beginning of this collaboration, Adam was very knowledgeable about the subject of the paper and had good presentational skills but, as a new PhD student, did not (...) yet have experience writing research papers for mathematicians. Thus, one main purpose of revising the paper was to make it take into account the intended audience. For this reason, the changes made to the initial draft and the authors’ purpose in making them provide a window for viewing how mathematicians write for mathematicians. We examined how their paper attracts the interest of the reader and prepares their proofs for validation by the reader. Among other findings, we found that their paper prepares the proofs for two types of validation that the reader can easily switch between. (shrink)

It has been a common belief among scientists, including mathematicians, that young scientists are especially good at bringing about scientific change. A number of studies suggest, however, that older scientists are not more resistant to change than young scientists are. It is nonetheless worth examining why a scientist’s or mathematician’s outsider status – due to age, educational background, or something else – can sometimes be effective in enabling scientific change. This paper focuses on the case of the solving of (...) the Four Color Problem by Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel. Building on Donald MacKenzie’s paper ‘Slaying the kraken: The sociohistory of a mathematical proof’, I argue that Haken’s outsider status is central to understanding his success with the problem. On this basis, I offer an argument against Margaret Gilbert’s account of why a scientist’s outsider status can be effective in enabling scientific change. (shrink)

This article explores variation in how immigrant Muslim women in Oslo, Norway, interpret and practice gender relations within the framework of Islam. Religion, family, and work are important sites for the formation, negotiation, and change of gender relations. The article therefore discusses the views and experiences of immigrant Muslim women concerning wife-husband relations and participation in the labor market. Four analytical types of views toward gender relations are introduced, and the variation in gender practices and views found among Muslim women (...) in Oslo is discussed in relation to these types. The analysis suggests that immigrant Muslim women use Islam as a flexible resource for interpreting gender relations. It also shows that while women generally uphold a religious ideal of complementary gender roles, their actual practice often contradicts with and contests this ideal. (shrink)

The visual attention (VA) span is defined as the amount of distinct visual elements which can be processed in parallel in a multi-element array. Both recent empirical data and theoretical accounts suggest that a VA span deficit might contribute to developmental dyslexia, independently of a phonological disorder. In this study, this hypothesis was assessed in two large samples of French and British dyslexic children whose performance was compared to that of chronological-age matched control children. Results of the French study show (...) that the VA span capacities account for a substantial amount of unique variance in reading, as do phonological skills. The British study replicates this finding and further reveals that the contribution of the VA span to reading performance remains even after controlling IQ, verbal fluency, vocabulary and single letter identification skills, in addition to phoneme awareness. In both studies, most dyslexic children exhibit a selective phonological or VA span disorder. Overall, these findings support a multi-factorial view of developmental dyslexia. In many cases, developmental reading disorders do not seem to be due to phonological disorders. We propose that a VA span deficit is a likely alternative underlying cognitive deficit in dyslexia. (shrink)

This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light of current discourses on citizenship, gender and migration. It discusses how various processes in the mosques can be interpreted as contradictory and complex by sometimes increasing the participation of women and promoting liberation, while at other times constraining women'ss activities through various forms of discipline and control. Women are vital for the building of religious institutions among Muslim immigrant communities, and they are slowly achieving more (...) space in such institutions. They are also being included in new forms of participation in some mosques. Recently, some Muslim women in Norway have made public calls for the reinterpretation of the Qur'an in ways that are more inclusive towards women. Despite pressures from both within and outside the mosques, however, Muslim congregations in Norway can still be described as patriarchal gender regimes where the participation and citi- zenship of women depends on the willingness of men to include them. (shrink)

The objective in the present paper is to analyze the aspect of subjectivity having to do with construing motion and change where no motion and change exists outside the representation, that is, in cases where the conceptualizer does not intend to convey the idea that these properties exist in the state of affairs described. In the process of doing so, I will elaborate on a critique of the notion of fictivity as it is currently being used in cognitive linguistics.

This paper argues that American television fiction with supernatural themes offers Danish teenage audiences a playground for exploring different religious imaginations in a continuous process of internal negotiations; thereby transforming their imaginations. This process of the mediatization of religion is strengthened by three dominating factors: the absence of a homogenous religious worldview in Danish culture, the importance of high production values and visual credibility to supernatural concepts in these shows, and the appeal of transformed religious content in open-structured serial narratives. (...) This essay presents the findings of an empirical qualitative study of seventy-two Danish teenagers and considers two primary parameters for the case-based reception study: the teenagers' levels of fandom and their connection with institutionalized religion. In other words, how are religious imaginations transformed in relation to viewers' level of commitment to the television fiction and to traditional institutionalized religion? (shrink)

Recent attempts to revive counterinsurgency strategies for use in Afghanistan and Iraq have been marked by a determination to learn lessons from history. Using the case of the campaign against the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya of 1952—60, this article considers the reasons for this engagement with the past and the issues that have emerged as a consequence. The article disputes the lessons from British colonial history that have been learned by military planners, most obviously the characterization of nonmilitary (...) forms of British counterinsurgency as nonviolent. Although it contests some of these supposed precedents for successful counterinsurgency in British military history, the article also identifies more generalizable elements of the Kenyan case. Particular emphasis is given to the effects on the nature of counterinsurgency, a reliance on locally recruited allies, and the decentralization of command. (shrink)

The study of traumatic experiences led Freud to investigate what he termed a compulsion to repeat. The present paper takes up the idea of a tendency to repeat something that reinforces psychic pain and asks which kind of agency is possible in the light of traumatic repetitions. First, the experiential roots of repetitive doings induced by trauma are investigated. Might a compulsion to repeat belong to the sphere of the kind of tendencies which Husserl terms “generally unconscious”? And if so, (...) does this sphere bring us to the limit of phenomenology where we might need to cooperate with psychoanalysis to make sense of the manifestations of such an unconscious sphere? This is proposed in section two. In section three, Freud’s notion of the compulsion to repeat is discussed. At this point, the repetitive activity of the mind is investigated as the traumatized person’s ongoing struggle to survive with the trauma and as a struggle to understand what survival in this case even means. In section four, an attempt is made to describe the kind of agency involved in the repetitive activity of the mind. The paper concludes that weak agency is possible in traumatic repetition when understood as the person’s ongoing attempt to compose a future for what has been lost. (shrink)

The implicit activities of the living body in sports (such as heart rate, involuntary gestures, stress, reflex, emotional regulation and interaction expressions) emerge in the consciousness of the lived body without our voluntary control. We demonstrate physiological emersion, and how, including in dramaturgical perception, physiological flows and processes collide with the image of a whole body. In this paper, we introduce corporeal non-property as the missing (?) link between phenomenology and neuroscience, renewed by research on the cerebral unconscious and the (...) perception of their lived body. Rather than mindfulness, physical activity obliges the subject to learn the unconscious and his motor skills from his living body: a new psychoanalysis of sport is thus established by studying what emerges from the activity of the living body up to the level of the conscious description of motor action. In this paper, we explain why that awareness occurs, and why it matters for the understanding of unconscious activity of the athlete’s living body. This is potentially interesting, although it needs, as a theory, to overcome the obvious reliance of the body on unconscious or habitual/automated physiological processes. But the incorporation of body techniques forms a habitus. (shrink)

Retractions are rare in science, but there is growing concern about the impact retracted papers have. We present data on the retractions in the journal Science, between 1983 and 2017. Each year, approximately 2.6 papers are retracted; that is about 0.34% of the papers published in the journal. 30% of the retracted papers are retracted within 1 year of publication. Some papers are retracted almost 12 years after publication. 51% of the retracted papers are retracted due to honest mistakes. Smaller (...) research teams of 2–4 scientists are responsible for a disproportionately larger share of the retracted papers especially when it comes to retractions due to honest mistakes. In 60% of the cases all authors sign the retraction notice. (shrink)

This article presents factors and criteria of interview in auto-confrontation with an objective of professional didactic, which we frequently conduct in our collaborative researches, when we analyze the activity. Our aim is to initiate reflections and debates about the status conferred to auto-confrontation in a process of research and about the issue answers by such method in professional training. Observing that auto-confrontation is discussing in human and social sciences as a tool of investigation, as a method or as scientific object, (...) we try to identify dimensions that make it to be both a method of investigation and a tool of professional training. Since we explain why auto-confrontation considering in theoretical context of professional didactic constitutes a tool for professional involvement, and that, in such case, it integration in vocational training engineering is relevant. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a novel propositional semantics based on the framework of branching time. The basic idea is to replace the moment-history pairs employed as parameters of truth in the standard Ockhamist semantics by pairs consisting of a moment and a consistent, downward closed set of so-called transitions. Whereas histories represent complete possible courses of events, sets of transitions can represent incomplete parts thereof as well. Each transition captures one of the alternative immediate future possibilities open at a (...) branching point. The transition semantics exploits the structural resources a branching time structure has to offer and provides a fine-grained picture of the interrelation of modality and time. In addition to temporal and modal operators, a so-called stability operator becomes interpretable as a universal quantifier over the possible future extensions of a given transition set. The stability operator allows us to specify how and how far time has to unfold for the truth value of a sentence at a moment to become settled and enables a perspicuous treatment of future contingents. We show that the semantics developed along those lines generalizes and extends extant approaches: both Peirceanism and Ockhamism can be viewed as limiting cases of the transition approach that build on restricted resources only, and on both accounts, stability collapses into truth. (shrink)

In February 2020, the British Medical Association will be surveying members for their views on what the BMA’s position on physician-assisted dying should be. The BMA is currently opposed to physician-assisted dying in all its forms, a position that was agreed in 2006 at the annual representative meeting, the Association’s policy-making conference.1 As previously reported in Ethics briefing,2 the decision to survey members follows a motion passed at last year’s ARM which called on the BMA to “carry out a poll (...) of members to ascertain their views on whether the BMA should adopt a neutral position with respect to a change in the law on assisted dying”. The results from the survey will not determine BMA policy. Rather, the results be published ahead of this year’s ARM and provided to those attending to inform a debate and discussion on the BMA’s policy position. More information about the survey, including a briefing pack of useful information, and information for BMA members on how to participate can be found online at www.bma.org.uk/PAD. ### High Court rejects Judicial reviews on assisted suicide The High Court has refused permission for two separate challenges to the law on assisted suicide in the UK to proceed to a full hearing. In the first case, Phil Newby, who has motor neuron disease, applied for judicial review of the law on assisted suicide and asked for the court to carry out a detailed examination of what he termed “legislative facts” – that is, an examination of the existing evidence on the “costs, risks and benefits” of regulating assisted suicide – including a cross-examination of relevant expert witnesses.1 Handing down the judgement, Lord Justice Irwin and Mrs Justice May, held that assisted dying …. (shrink)

The British Medical Association and Royal College of Physicians have published new guidance, endorsed by the General Medical Council, on decision-making about clinically assisted nutrition and hydration and adults who lack capacity to consent. The development of the guidance follows a series of legal cases which has created confusion about the precise circumstances in which an application to the court is required before CANH is withdrawn which has culminated with the decision of the Supreme Court in National Health Service Trust (...) versus Y. 1 This confirmed that there is no requirement to go to court, providing there is agreement as to the patient’s best interests, the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 have been observed, and the relevant professional guidance has been followed. The new guidance covers all decisions to start, restart, continue, or stop providing CANH in patients who are not imminently dying, in circumstances where CANH is the primary life-sustaining treatment being provided. It goes beyond the category of patients in permanent vegetative state or minimally conscious state who have previously been the subject of court applications, and also covers decisions for patients with neurodegenerative conditions and patients who have suffered a sudden onset brain injury in addition to having multiple comorbidities or general frailty which is likely to impact on life expectancy. It provides a clear statement of doctors’ legal responsibilities, covers the importance of robust best interests’ assessments and sets out the process to be followed for sufficient independent scrutiny of decisions. In light of some of the identified problems with decisions about CANH, a particular focus of the guidance is on the importance of regular best interests’ assessments, and it provides detailed practical guidance about how to approach these. The development of …. (shrink)

### British Medical association survey on physician-assisted dying closes Previous Ethics briefings have highlighted the survey of members on physician-assisted dying being carried out by the British Medical Association.1 This survey closed at midnight on Thursday 27 February. In total, 29 011 members responded – 20.1% of all members who received an invitation to participate – making this one of the largest surveys of medical opinion carried out on this issue, ever. The results of the survey will not make BMA (...) policy, but will inform a debate and discussion at the organisation’s main policy-making conference, the annual representative meeting in June this year. You can find out more about the survey and how it was carried out at www.bma.org.uk/PAD This page will continue to be updated when more information about the survey results is available. ### Royal College of General Practitioners remains opposed to a change in the law on assisted dying In October 2019, the Royal College of General Practitioners began surveying its members on the College’s position on physician-assisted dying. The College published its results on 21 February. Of the 49 539 members invited to participated, 6674 responded – a response rate of 13.47%.2 In response to a question about what the College’s position on the law on assisted dying should be: Following the results of the survey, the RCGP Council decided that the College should continue to oppose a change in the law on assisted dying. ### Belgian doctors acquitted in country’s first criminal euthanasia case As noted in previous Ethics briefings, three Belgian doctors faced criminal charges of “unlawfully poisoning” a …. (shrink)

An Amnesty International briefing, published in July 2020, highlights the grave risks health workers are facing globally, particularly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.1 The report uses data from 63 countries across the world from January to June 2020 and is rich with examples. While recognising that information about the pandemic is constantly evolving, and each country is in a separate phase of the outbreak, Amnesty International draws attention to several troubling trends. By virtue of the role undertaken by (...) health workers, they face a greater exposure to COVID-19, which has contributed to many of the concerns they now deal with. The briefing notes the evidence of the higher death rate from health workers compared with the general population in countries ranging from Denmark to Argentina, while also pointing out the significantly higher death rate in BAME health workers raised by the BMA in the UK.2 PPE shortages had been reported in nearly all of the 63 countries analysed. Many health workers globally stated that they had to buy their own PPE and others described cases of ‘improvisation’, when suitable PPE was not available, such as using bin bags or raincoats. Furthermore, health workers in several countries had experienced increases in workload with formal measures to extend health workers’ contracted hours passed in some countries as well as further changes to their terms and conditions of service. There were also reports of increased mental stress, particularly from those working in ICUs; the increased work and stress is not being matched with suitable compensation or remuneration. Despite many countries passing special benefits for health workers, it was commonly stated that these benefits had not been received yet or that they did not apply to all health workers, with cleaners and other lower-paid yet vital roles excluded. Deeply concerning …. (shrink)

Retractions are rare in science, but there is growing concern about the impact retracted papers have. We present data on the retractions in the journal Science, between 1983 and 2017. Each year, approximately 2.6 papers are retracted; that is about 0.34% of the papers published in the journal. 30% of the retracted papers are retracted within 1 year of publication. Some papers are retracted almost 12 years after publication. 51% of the retracted papers are retracted due to honest mistakes. Smaller (...) research teams of 2–4 scientists are responsible for a disproportionately larger share of the retracted papers especially when it comes to retractions due to honest mistakes. In 60% of the cases all authors sign the retraction notice. (shrink)

There seems to be a minimal core that every theory wishing to accommodate the intuition that the future is open must contain: a denial of physical determinism (i.e. the thesis that what future states the universe will be in is implied by what states it has been in), and a denial of strong fatalism (i.e. the thesis that, at every time, what will subsequently be the case is metaphysically necessary).1 Those two requirements are often associated with the idea of (...) an objective temporal flow and the non-reality of the future. However, at least certain ways to frame the “openness” intuition do not rely on any of these. Branching Time Theory (BTT) is one such: it is compatible with the denial that time flow is objective and it is couched in a language with a (prima facie) commitment to an eternalist ontology. BTT, though, urges us to resist certain intuitions about the determinacy of future claims, which arguably do not lead either to physical determinism or to fatalism. Against BTT, supporters of the Thin Red Line Theory (TRL) argue that their position avoids determinism and fatalism, while also representing the fact that there is a future which is “special” because it is the one that will be the case. But starting with Belnap and Green 1994, some have objected to the tenability of TRL, mainly on metaphysical grounds. In particular, those argue that “positing a thin red line amounts to giving up objective indeterminism,”2 and that “has unacceptable consequences, ranging from a mistreatment of actuality to an inability to talk coherently about what would have happened had what is going to happen not taken place.”3 In this paper, we wish to reframe the.. (shrink)

Self‐evidently the standard work on the topic its whole title defines, Sir Michael Dummett’s Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics (FPM) is also the most profound and creative discussion in recent decades of the problems confronting the branch of philosophy mentioned after the colon. Chapters 14‐18 and 23‐24 of this book constitute a continuous and challenging diagnosis of these problems.1 They culminate in the proposal that these problems present an impasse that can be escaped only by adopting a constructivist understanding of (...) mathematical generality. Dummett’s case for that conclusion is no less complexly over‐layered than the problems themselves. By contrast my aims in this discussion of his case are limited in various ways, and three of these should be mentioned straightaway. In the first place, I will aim to consider a case that, if sound, would warrant a constructivist understanding of generality in mathematics generally (and so I will not be considering lines of argument specific to set theory, or to those parts of mathematics plausibly dependent on notions intrinsic to set theory). Secondly, I aim to consider a case which, while general in its application within mathematics, is not more general than that (and so would not warrant a broader anti‐realism). Reasons for these first two limitations are discussed in section 1. A third limitation is that I will aim only to understand Dummett’s case, and not to assess it. Perhaps some will think this third limitation calls for explanation or excuse. I think it needs no excuse and that the explanation is obvious. When we are dealing with fundamentally important work by a great philosopher, understanding is often ambition enough. In Michael Dummett’s work, that is what we are dealing with. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with two closely related problems: the first is the general question of border-line cases; the second is a suggested identification of the notions of ambiguity and vagueness. In the first part of the paper I propose to discuss border-line cases in the following way: I shall say what is meant by “border-line cases,” discuss their genesis, enumerate and evaluate the different methods of resolving such cases, and make a brief comment or two the (...) bearing, if any, that such cases have on logical theory. In the second part it will be suggested that the notion of vagueness can be reduced to the status of a special but important case of ambiguity; I hold that such a reduction would effect both an economy and a clarification. (shrink)

Parfit’s Branch Line argument is intended to show that the relation of survival is possibly a one-many relation and thus different from numerical identity. I offer a detailed reconstruction of Parfit’s notions of survival and personal identity, and show the argument cannot be coherently formulated within Parfit’s own setting. More specifically, I argue that Parfit’s own specifications imply that the “R-relation”, i.e., the relation claimed to capture of “what matters in survival,” turns out to hold not only along (...) but also across the branches representing the development of a reduplicated person. This curious fact of ‘interbranch survival,’ as I call it, has gone unnoticed so far. The fact that the R-relation also holds across branches creates a trilemma for Parfit’s approach. Either the envisaged notion of personal identity is circular, or the R-relation fails as a reconstruction of the common sense notion of survival, or talk about persons ‘branching’ (being reduplicated etc.) remains semantically empty. In the paper’s last section I suggest that my criticism does not detract from the larger systematic significance of Parfit’s argument. The argument is simply terminologically miscalibrated. Even though Parfit’s branch line argument fails to establish the conceptual separability of survival and identity, it can be used to show the separability of sameness and numerical identity, which should have similar implications for meta-ethics as the original argument. (shrink)

[B]ecause I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an illusion will follow but that you will acquiesce in it.Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.“Are you watching closely?”The last line of Parfit’s description of the “branch-line case” of tele-transportation, the very epicenter of his hugely influential thought experiment that famously proposes a radically new (...) view on “personal identity,” runs as follows: “[W]hile I stand here speechless, I can see and hear myself, in the studio on Mars, starting to speak.”1 Parfit, notoriously, goes on to argue that the “branch-line” version of me, the “I” in the.. (shrink)

Marya Schechtman has raised a series of worries for the Psychological Continuity Theory of personal identity (PCT) stemming out of what Derek Parfit called the ‘Extreme Claim’. This is roughly the claim that theories like it are unable to explain the importance we attach to personal identity. In her recent Staying Alive (2014), she presents further arguments related to this and sets out a new narrative theory, the Person Life View (PLV), which she sees as solving the problems as well (...) as bringing other advantages over the PCT. I look over some of her earlier arguments and responses to them as a way in to the new issues and theory. I argue that the problems for the PCT and advantages that the PLV brings are all merely apparent, and present no reason for giving up the former for the latter. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom's Four-Case Argument is among the most famous and resilient manipulation arguments against compatibilism. I contend that its resilience is not a function of the argument's soundness but, rather, the ill-gotten gain from an ambiguity in the description of the causal relations found in the argument's foundational case. I expose this crucial ambiguity and suggest that a dilemma faces anyone hoping to resolve it. After a thorough search for an interpretation which avoids both horns of this dilemma, (...) I conclude that none is available. Rather, every metaphysically coherent interpretation invites either a hard- or soft-line reply to Pereboom's argument. I then consider a recharacterization of the dilemma which seems to clear the way for the defence of a revised Four-Case Argument. I address this rejoinder by identifying a still more fundamental problem shared by all viable interpretations of the manipulation cases, showing that each involves a type of manipulation which undermines the victim's agency. Because this diagnosis supports a soft-line reply to every viable interpretation of the argument and can be endorsed by any compatibilist, I consider it the final piece of the Soft-line Solution to the Four-Case Argument. Finally, I suggest a new taxonomy of manipulation arguments, arguing that none that employs the suppressive variety of manipulation found in Pereboom's argument offers a threat to compatibilism. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom's Four-Case Argument is among the most famous and resilient manipulation arguments against compatibilism. I contend that its resilience is not a function of the argument's soundness but, rather, the ill-gotten gain from an ambiguity in the description of the causal relations found in the argument's foundational case. I expose this crucial ambiguity and suggest that a dilemma faces anyone hoping to resolve it. After a thorough search for an interpretation which avoids both horns of this dilemma, (...) I conclude that none is available. Rather, every metaphysically coherent interpretation invites either a hard- or soft-line reply to Pereboom's argument. I then consider a recharacterization of the dilemma which seems to clear the way for the defence of a revised Four-Case Argument. I address this rejoinder by identifying a still more fundamental problem shared by all viable interpretations of the manipulation cases, showing that each involves a type of manipulation which undermines the victim's agency. Because this diagnosis supports a soft-line reply to every viable interpretation of the argument and can be endorsed by any compatibilist, I consider it the final piece of the Soft-line Solution to the Four-Case Argument. Finally, I suggest a new taxonomy of manipulation arguments, arguing that none that employs the suppressive variety of manipulation found in Pereboom's argument offers a threat to compatibilism. -/- (For direct download option, search Kristin M. Mickelson, Soft-line Solution). (shrink)

This paper follows Part I of our essay on case-intensional first-order logic ). We introduce a framework of branching histories to take account of indeterminism. Our system BH-CIFOL adds structure to the cases, which in Part I formed just a set: a case in BH-CIFOL is a moment/history pair, specifying both an element of a partial ordering of moments and one of the total courses of events that that moment is part of. This framework allows us to define (...) the familiar Ockhamist temporal/modal connectives, most notably for past, future, and settledness. The novelty of our framework becomes visible in our discussion of substances in branching histories, i.e., in its first-order part. That discussion shows how the basic idea of tracing an individual thing from case to case via an absolute property is applicable in a branching histories framework. We stress the importance of keeping apart extensionality and moment-definiteness, and give a formal account of how the specification of natural sortals and natural qualities turns out to be a coordination task in BH-CIFOL. We also provide a detailed answer to Lewis’s well-known argument against branching histories, exposing the fallacy in that argument. (shrink)

These guide-lines were produced for the Social Concern Track at Lausanne II. Their aim is to enable people who are engaged in evangelism in social action ministries to write up their experiences so that they and others can reflect on the theology underlying their approach. The guide-lines have since been widely used by people in different parts of the world. The findings of the case studies at Lausanne II were published in Transformation, January 1990.

I defend a hard-line reply to Derk Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. Pereboom accuses compatibilists who take a hard-line reply to his manipulation argument of adopting inappropriate initial attitudes towards the cases central to his argument. If Pereboom is correct he has shown that a hard-line response is inadequate. Fortunately for the compatibilist, Pereboom’s list of appropriate initial attitudes is incomplete and at least one of the initial attitudes he leaves out provides room for a revised hard- (...) class='Hi'>line reply to be successfully mounted against the multiple-case argument. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom has advanced a four-case manipulation argument that, he claims, undermines both libertarian accounts of free action not committed to agent-causation and compatibilist accounts of such action. The first two cases are meant to be ones in which the key agent is not responsible for his actions owing to his being manipulated. We first consider a “hard-line” response to this argument that denies that the agent is not morally responsible in these cases. We argue that this response (...) invites a dialectically uncharitable reading of the argument. We then propose an alternative interpretation; it affirms that, at least prima facie, the manipulated agent in the first two cases is not responsible. Finally, we question Pereboom’s rationale for why the manipulation in these cases subverts responsibility. (shrink)

The rationale for pursuing the development and use of Germ-Line selection and modification techniques is examined in this essay. The argument is put forth that it is the moral obligation of the medical profession to make available to the public any technology that can cure or prevent pathology leading to death and disability, in both the present and future generations. Society should pursue the development of strategies for preventing or correcting, at the Germ-Line level, genetic features that will (...) lead to, or enhance, pathological conditions. Because prenatal screening and even early embryo screening and selection can prevent only a subset of known genetic disorders, direct genetic intervention is the only way in which certain couples can exercise their rights to reproductive health. Finally, the arguments most often raised against the pursuit of and use of methods for Germ-Line intervention shall be discussed. Keywords: Germ-Line therapy, pre-implantation embryo screening gamete modification, risk and uncertainty CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Cases involving certain kinds of manipulation seem to challenge compatibilism about responsibility-grounding free will. To deal with such cases many compatibilists give what has become known as a ‘soft line’ reply. In this paper I present a challenge to the soft line reply. I argue that any relevant case involving manipulation—and to which a compatibilist might wish to give a soft line reply—can be transformed into one supporting a degree of moral responsibility through the addition of libertarian (...) elements (such as alternative possibilities of a kind unavailable under determinism and executive control of the sort commonly associated with agent-causation). From a compatibilist’s perspective the subtraction of libertarian elements should make no difference to any assessment of the agent’s responsibility. The compatibilist should therefore judge the agent morally responsible after the removal of the libertarian elements. Yet removal of the libertarian elements returns the case to its original form and thus what started out as a soft line has now collapsed into a hard line reply. Various ways of resisting my argument are considered, but each is shown to carry important burdens. (shrink)

Frankfurt-type cases with covered manipulation received a great attention in the debates about freedom of will and moral responsibility. They pretend to give the refutation of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities and to show that we can intuitively blame or praise an agent who was not able to do otherwise. In this paper, I will try to make explicit some basic intuitions underlying the agent’s responsibility in Frankfurt-type cases, which were surprisingly ignored in the contemporary debates. The key intuition is (...) that the responsibility of the agent in Frankfurt-type cases is always grounded at the point of overcoming the uncertainty preceding action. This overcoming is crucially important for agent’s responsibility and immune to any manipulation of counterfactual intervener. (shrink)