Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease impairs working memory, but the exact nature of this deficit in terms of the underlying cognitive mechanisms is not well understood. In this study patients with mild clinical symptoms of PD were compared with matched healthy control subjects on a computerized battery of tests designed to assess spatial working memory and verbal working memory. In the spatial working memory task, subjects were required to recall a sequence of four locations. The verbal working memory task was methodologically identical (...) except for the modality of the stimuli used, requiring subjects to orally recall a sequence of six digits. In either case, half of the sequences were structured in a way that allowed ‘chunking’, while others were unstructured. This manipulation was designed to dissociate the strategic component of task performance from the memory-load component. Mild medicated patients with PD were impaired only on the structured versions of the verbal working memory tasks. The analogous deficit in the spatial working memory was less pronounced. These findings are in agreement with the hypothesis that working memory deficits in PD reflect mainly the executive component of the tasks and that the deficits may be at least partly modality-independent. (shrink)

Den här boken är en inledning till den s.k. predikatlogiken. Predikatlogiken studerar argument vars giltighet beror på ord såsom ”allting”, ”någonting” och ”ingenting”. Boken innehåller fem kapitel. Det första kapitlet är en kort inledning till predikatlogik. Kapitel 2 handlar om syntax. Det tar upp flera predikatlogiska språk, det beskriver hur dessa är uppbyggda och hur de förhåller sig till olika naturliga språk. Kapitel 3 handlar om semantik. Vad betyder olika symboliska tecken? Vad har olika satser för sanningsvillkor? Kapitel 4 handlar (...) om bevisteori. Det går bl.a. igenom hur man kan avgöra om ett argument är predikatlogiskt giltigt eller inte. Det nämner tre olika bevismetoder/härledningsmetoder: axiomatiska system, naturlig deduktion och semantiska tablåer. Kapitlet innehåller många exempel. Om man vill lära sig mer om logik, kan det vara bra att försöka bemästra alla dessa olika metoder. Kapitel 5 innehåller viss allmän information om predikatlogiken och fler övningar. Predikatlogiken är en utvidgning av den s.k. satslogiken, som bl.a. beskrivs i boken Satslogik: En Introduktion. För att förstå materialet i den här boken bör läsaren först ha studerat Satslogik: En Introduktion eller någon liknande bok. Predikatlogik: En Introduktion innehåller en stor mängd övningar som kan hjälpa läsaren att öva upp sina logiska förmågor. (shrink)

FN:s allmänna förklaring om de mänskliga rättigheterna innehåller en katalog över ett antal mänskliga fri- och rättigheter. I den här uppsatsen argumenterar jag för att det krävs en kvantifierad deontisk logik för att förstå den logiska formen hos flera av de normer som uttrycks i denna förklaring. Jag kommer att gå igenom ett antal argument som intuitivt är giltiga, men som inte kan bevisas i klassisk logik. Därefter kommer jag att visa hur dessa argument kan formaliseras och bevisas med hjälp (...) av kvantifierad deontisk logik. Diskussionen ger stöd åt uppfattningen att vi behöver en kvantifierad deontisk logik för att analysera många typer av normativa uttryck och kastar också förhoppningsvis nytt ljus över hur vissa centrala utsagor i FN:s allmänna förklaring bör tolkas och vilken logisk form de har. (shrink)

Den här uppsatsen handlar om fritt val (FV) tillåtelser (FVT). Jag går igenom den s.k. fritt val tillåtelser paradoxen och nämner några möjliga lösningar på denna. Därefter presenterar jag mitt eget förslag på hur man bör förstå tillåtelser av detta slag och hur man kan lösa (FVT) paradoxen. Jag tar upp några potentiella invändningar mot denna analys och visar hur dessa kan bemötas. Ibland har (FVT) paradoxen använts som ett argument emot s.k. standard deontisk logik (SDL). Jag argumenterar för att (...) man kan acceptera förekomsten av (FV) tillåtelser utan att behöva förkasta (SDL). Däremot pekar diskussionen på behovet av en kvantifierad deontisk logik. (shrink)

Logiska Övningar är en övningsbok i logik och en introduktionsbok i teoretisk filosofi. Den är indelad i sju kapitel. Varje kapitel, förutom det första, behandlar en eller flera klassiska grenar av den teoretiska filosofin. Det första kapitlet är en allmän inledning till boken och till filosofi som ämne. Övriga kapitel behandlar följande områden. Logik & Argumentationsteori (kapitel 2). Hur bör vi tänka och argumentera? Kunskapsteori (kapitel 3). Vad är kunskap och hur får vi kunskap om verkligheten? Metafysik (kapitel 4). Hur (...) är verkligheten ytterst beskaffad? Vad existerar? Vetenskapsfilosofi (kapitel 5). Vad är vetenskap? Hur får vi vetenskaplig kunskap? Språkfilosofi (kapitel 6). Vad är ett språk? Hur förhåller sig språket till vårt tänkande och till verkligheten? Medvetandefilosofi (kapitel 7). Vad är en människa? Hur förhåller sig kropp och själ till varandra? Logiska Övningar innehåller mer än 5000 tankekedjor eller argument. Genom att studera dessa kan läsaren öva upp sin förmåga att analysera och värdera olika filosofiska härledningar, samt att tänka och resonera logiskt. Boken kan användas i undervisning i filosofi och logik på en grundläggande nivå eller för självstudier. Läsningen kompletteras lämpligen med en eller flera introduktionsböcker till logik, som behandlar olika fundamentala logiska fakta och metoder. -/- Produkt information Publicerad: September 14, 2019 Språk: Svenska Format: Paperback Antal sidor: 708 sidor. (shrink)

Logiska Övningar är en övningsbok i logik och en introduktionsbok i praktisk filosofi. Den är indelad i sju kapitel. Varje kapitel, förutom det första, behandlar en eller flera klassiska grenar av den praktiska filosofin. Det första kapitlet är en allmän inledning till boken och till filosofi som ämne. Övriga kapitel behandlar följande områden. Metaetik (kapitel 2). Finns det objektiva normer och värderingar? Hur vet vi vad som är rätt eller fel, gott eller ont? Normativ etik (kapitel 3). Hur bör vi (...) leva våra liv och vad bör vi sträva efter? Tillämpad etik (kapitel 4). Hur kan vi tillämpa våra normativa teorier på praktiska problem? Politisk filosofi & Rättsfilosofi (kapitel 5). Hur ser det goda samhället ut? Hur bör våra lagar vara utformade? Estetik (kapitel 6). Vad är konst? Vad innebär det att påstå att någonting är vackert? Religionsfilosofi (kapitel 7). Vad är en religion? Finns det en övernaturlig verklighet? Logiska Övningar innehåller mer än 5000 tankekedjor eller argument. Genom att studera dessa kan läsaren öva upp sin förmåga att analysera och värdera olika filosofiska härledningar, samt att tänka och resonera logiskt. Boken kan användas i undervisning i filosofi och logik på en grundläggande nivå eller för självstudier. Läsningen kompletteras lämpligen med en eller flera introduktionsböcker till logik, som behandlar olika fundamentala logiska fakta och metoder. -/- Produkt information Publicerad: November 24, 2020 Språk: Svenska Format: Paperback Antal sidor: 826 sidor. (shrink)

Misconduct in science is often viewed and analyzed through the lenses of normative ethics and moral philosophy. However, notions and methods in the philosophy of science could also provide rather penetrative explanatory insights into the nature and causes of scientific misconduct. A brief illustration in this regard, using as examples the widely popular Popperian falsification and the Kuhnian scientific paradigm, is provided. In multiple areas of scientific research, failure to seek falsification in a Popperian manner constitutes a questionable research practice (...) and could lead to “falsification” in the context of research misconduct. On the other hand, scientific misconduct is often facilitated by its perpetrators using the familiarity, expectations and confines of a Kuhnian paradigm to blend in fabricated data/results. A rudimentary application of these philosophical notions could be useful in our understanding of the nature and cause of research misconduct, and facilitate mitigation of the latter through educational means. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or (...) meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries. (shrink)

The recent emergence of reprogramming technologies to convert brain cell types or epigenetically alter neurons and neural progenitors in vivo and in situ hold significant promises in brain repair and neuronal aging reversal. However, given the significant epigenetic and transcriptomic changes to components of the existing neuronal cells and network, we question if these reprogramming technology might inadvertently alter or erase memory engrams, conceivably resulting in changes in narrative identity or personality. We suggest that the nature of these alterations might (...) be less predictable compared to memory and personality changes known to be associated with diseases, drugs or brain stimulation therapies. While research in applying reprogramming technologies to neurological ailments and aging should continue, more targeted analyses should be put in place in animal experiments to gauge the severity and degree of memory alterations, and appropriate risk and benefit analyses should be conducted before these technologies move into human trials. (shrink)

In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the relation of consciousness, the will, and our intentional and voluntary actions. Wegner claims that our experience and common sense view according to which we can influence our behavior roughly the way we experience that we do it is an illusion.

The graduate course in research ethics in the Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering at the National University of Singapore consists of a semester long mandatory course titled: “Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity.” The course provides students with guiding principles for appropriate conduct in the professional and social settings of scientific research and in making morally weighted and ethically sound decisions when confronted with moral dilemmas. It seeks to enhance understanding and appreciation of the moral reasoning underpinning various rules (...) and legislative constraints associated with research subjects and procedures. Further, students are trained to critically analyse cases and issues associated with scientific misconduct preparing them to act in a responsible and effective manner should they encounter such cases. The diverse background and training of the cohort also provide a unique setting and opportunity for student-initiated collaborative interdisciplinary learning. This article offers a reflective account of the course and some preliminary insights into learning outcomes. (shrink)

How should medical services be distributed within society? Who should pay for them? Is it right that large amounts should be spent on sophisticated technology and expensive operations, or would the resources be better employed in, for instance, less costly preventive measures? These and others are the questions addreses in this book. Norman Daniels examines some of the dilemmas thrown up by conflicting demands for medical attention, and goes on to advance a theory of justice in the distribution of health (...) care. The central argument is that health care, both preventive and acute, has a crucial effect on equality of opportunity, and that a principle guaranteeing equality of opportunity must underly the distribution of health-care services. Access to care, preventive measures, treatment of the elderly, and the obligations of doctors and medical administrations are fully discussed, and the theory is shown to underwrite various practical policies in the area. (shrink)

Bülow and Helgesson discussed the practice of gift/honorary authorships and expounded on a most devious form of these, termed ‘hostage authorship’. The authors drew a parallel of such situations in research and publishing with the problem of ‘dirty hands’. In this case, acceding, albeit with regrets, may well be ‘… what we ought to do, even if it requires us to do something that is intrinsically bad’, especially if ‘this is both practically necessary and proportionate to the end’. Here, I (...) caution against this being a morally cogent, normative course of action. Tangible benefits from research not yet performed or published could not be predicted with any certainty, and as such could not be deemed sufficiently important to override moral constraints of justice and fairness. The utilitarian argument for any measure of beneficence with ‘dirty hands’ could therefore be nothing more than a self-serving act, or a self-exonerating form of moral disengagement. Such actions could have lasting ill effects on junior... (shrink)

Reasoning about situations we take to be impossible is useful for a variety of theoretical purposes. Furthermore, using a device of impossible worlds when reasoning about the impossible is useful in the same sorts of ways that the device of possible worlds is useful when reasoning about the possible. This paper discusses some of the uses of impossible worlds and argues that commitment to them can and should be had without great metaphysical or logical cost. The paper then provides an (...) account of reasoning with impossible worlds, by treating such reasoning as reasoning employing counterpossible conditionals, and provides a semantics for the proposed treatment. (shrink)

Scientific research is supposed to acquire or generate knowledge, but such a purpose would be severely undermined by instances of research misconduct (RM) and questionable research practices (QRP). RM and QRP are often framed in terms of moral transgressions by individuals (bad apples) whose aberrant acts could be made conducive by shortcomings in regulatory measures of organizations or institutions (bad barrels). This notion presupposes, to an extent, that the erring parties know exactly what they are doing is wrong and morally (...) culpable, but had nonetheless proceeded to commit wrongful acts. However, a confession of intent to deceived is often not readily admitted by perpetrators of RM. I posit that beyond the simplistic notion of conscious moral transgression, deficits in epistemic virtues and/or the prevalence of epistemic vices have important roles to play in initiating and driving RM/QRP. For the individual perpetrator, deficits in epistemic virtues could lead to or amplify errors in one’s desperate attempt to be accomplished or to excel, and pushes one across the ethical line or down the slippery slope of misconduct. Likewise, a lack of epistemic virtue within perpetrators’ institution or organization could make it conducive for deceitful acts and suppress indications and warning signs for the former. Furthermore, epistemic vices exhibited by reviewers, editors and journals could also promote RM/QRP. In this view, epistemic failings, rather than widespread moral deficiencies of individuals within the research ecosystem, may underlie the prevalence of RM/QRP. (shrink)

Précis for a book symposium, with contributions from Meg Wallace, Louis deRosset, and Chris Tillman and Joshua Spencer.

Our ability to locate moral responsibility is often thought to be a necessary condition for conducting morally permissible medical practice, engaging in a just war, and other high-stakes endeavors. Yet, with increasing reliance upon artificially intelligent systems, we may be facing a wideningresponsibility gap, which, some argue, cannot be bridged by traditional concepts of responsibility. How then, if at all, can we make use of crucial emerging technologies? According to Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach, the advent of so-called ‘artificial moral (...) agents’ (AMAs) is inevitable. Still, this notion may seem to push back the problem, leaving those who have an interest in developing autonomous technology with a dilemma. We may need to scale-back our efforts at deploying AMAs (or at least maintain human oversight); otherwise, we must rapidly and drastically update our moral and legal norms in a way that ensures responsibility for potentially avoidable harms. This paper invokes contemporary accounts of responsibility in order to show how artificially intelligent systems might be held responsible. Although many theorists are concerned enough to develop artificial conceptions ofagencyor to exploit our present inability to regulate valuable innovations, the proposal here highlights the importance of—and outlines a plausible foundation for—a workable notion ofartificial moral responsibility. (shrink)

This two-part volume collects the complete fragments and most important testimonies for the leading presocratic philosophers. The Greek and Latin texts are translated on facing pages and accompanied by a brief commentary for each philosopher.

A retraction notice is a formal announcement for the removal of a paper from the literature, which is a weighty matter. Xu et al. (Science and Engineering Ethics, 29(4), 25 2023) reported that 73.7% of retraction notices indexed by the Web of Science (1927–2019) provided no information about institutional investigations that may have led to the retractions, and recommended that Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) retraction guidelines should make it mandatory to disclose institutional investigations leading to retractions in such notices. (...) While this recommendation would add to the transparency of the retraction process, a blanket mandate as such could be potentially problematic. For research misconduct (RM)-positive cases, a mandatory investigative disclosure may be abused by some to deflect responsibility. More importantly, a mandatory disclosure could harm authors and institutions in RM-negative cases (i.e. those stemming from honest errors with no misconduct). I illustrate with case vignettes the potential epistemic injustice and confusion that a mandate for investigation disclosure in retraction notices could incur, and suggest a more nuanced approach to its implementation. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible (...) in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

This book develops an Aristotelian account of the virtue of practical intelligence or "phronesis"--an excellence of deliberating and making choices--which ...

This paper proposes a new account of bounded or minimal doxastic rationality (in the sense of Cherniak 1986), based on the notion that beliefs are answers to questions (à la Yalcin 2018). The core idea is that minimally rational beliefs are linked through thematic connections, rather than entailment relations. Consequently, such beliefs are not deductively closed, but they are closed under parthood (where a part is an entailment that answers a smaller question). And instead of avoiding all inconsistency, minimally rational (...) believers only avoid blatant inconsistencies (where some beliefs are blatantly inconsistent when they contradict one another on a particular question). Rather than cohering into a single overall world view, beliefs are more loosely connected in what is best described as a web of questions. This view of minimally rational belief naturally gives rise to an account of deductive inquiry on which deductive reasoning is a matter of posing new questions. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which (...) have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Zahlreiche Fußballvereine der 1. und 2. Bundesliga sind aus Fusionen hervorgegangen, doch bislang ist kaum etwas über dieses Phänomen in der Sportwissenschaft bekannt. Ziel des Aufsatzes ist es, mittels einer organisationssoziologischen Brille den SC Paderborn 07, als Bundesligaverein, der aus mehreren Fusionen hervorgegangen ist und als solcher verschiedene Traditionslinien in sich vereint, zu beleuchten. Dabei werden insbesondere die sozialen Folgen in den Blick genommen.

While the contemporary philosophical literature is replete with discussion of the control or freedom required for moral responsibility, only more recently has substantial attention been devoted to the knowledge or awareness required, otherwise called the epistemic condition. This area of inquiry is rapidly expanding, as are the various positions within it. This chapter introduces two major positions: the reasonable expectation view and the quality of will view. The chapter then explores two dimensions of the epistemic condition that serve as fault (...) lines along which these two views diverge. The first dimension concerns different kinds of ignorance. The second concerns what agents can be directly blameworthy for. The chapter closes by sketching a novel approach that incorporates advantages of opposing positions on this topic. (shrink)

Supporters of open borders sometimes argue that the state has no pro tanto right to restrict immigration, because such a right would also entail a right to exclude existing citizens for whatever reasons justify excluding immigrants. These arguments can be defeated by suggesting that people have a right to stay put. I present a new form of the exclusion argument against closed borders which escapes this “right to stay put” reply. I do this by describing a kind of exclusion that (...) has not been discussed in depth, which I call “territorial exclusion.” Territorial exclusion is the process according to which the group that wishes to exclude current citizens secedes from the territory in which those citizens reside. I argue that the wrongness of territorial exclusion explains why there is no pro tanto right for a state to exclude immigrants, because otherwise there would be a pro tanto right for the state to kick people out by seceding from the territory they inhabit. Because kicking people out like this is typically wrong, borders cannot be closed. (shrink)

I defend the cosmopolitan instrumentalist theory of secession, according to which a group has a right to secede only if this would promote cosmopolitan justice. I argue that the theory is preferable to other theories of secession because it is an entailment of cosmopolitanism, which is independently attractive, and because, unlike other theories of secession, it allows us to give the answers we want to give in cases like secession of the rich or secession that would make things worse for (...) minorities. I defend the view against the objections that it allows for colonialism and annexation, that it is not a distinct theory, and that it is impractical. (shrink)

Irregularities in data/results of scientific research might be spotted pre-publication by co-workers and reviewers, or post-publication by readers typically with vested interest. The latter might consist of fellow researchers in the same subject area who would naturally pay closer attention to a published paper. However, it is increasingly apparent that there are readers who interrogate papers in detail with a primary intention to identify potential problems with the work. Here, we consider post-publication peer review (PPPR) by individuals, or groups of (...) individuals, who perform PPPRs with a perceptible intention to actively identify irregularities in published data/results and to expose potential research fraud or misconduct, or intentional misconduct exposing (IME)-PPPR. On one hand, such activities, when done anonymously or pseudonymously with no formal discourse, have been deemed as lacking in accountability, or perceived to incur some degree of maleficence, and have been labelled as vigilantism. On the other, these voluntary works have unravelled many instances of research misconduct and have helped to correct the literature. We explore the tangible benefits of IME-PPPR in detecting errors in published papers and from the perspectives of moral permissibility, research ethics, and the sociological perspective of science. We posit that the benefits of IME-PPPR activities that uncover clear evidence of misconduct, even when performed anonymously or pseudonymously, outweigh their perceived deficiencies. These activities contribute to a vigilant research culture that manifests the self-correcting nature of science, and are in line with the Mertonian norms of scientific ethos. (shrink)

Cases of research misconduct in the ecological and environmental sciences appear to be relatively rare. A controversial paper published in Science in 2016 documenting the effects of microplastics on the feeding and innate behaviours of fish larvae has recently been retracted, with the authors found guilty of scientific misconduct. In addition to the expected fallout, such as individual and institutional reputational damage from a research misconduct finding, this case has two possibly wider-ranging ramifications. Firstly, there may be a presumptive notion (...) that a strong negative effect could be more successfully published than a neutral effect. This presumption would belie the true stringency and rigor of research adopted by workers in the field. Secondly, the case may have a negative impact on the public’s perception of and trust in legitimate and good science that addresses critical environmental issues, such as anthropogenic climate change. (shrink)

This chapter introduces readers to the view that praise is a form of address, or is communicative in the sense of seeking uptake from its target. The proposal that praise is communicative will seem counterintuitive if we take blame to be our paradigm of what it is for a responsibility-response to be communicative. This is because blame is communicative in a manner that intuitively presupposes some normative failure; it involves calling its target to account (or answer) for some wrongdoing. But, (...) the ‘rightdoer’ already properly regarded the relevant reasons in acting praiseworthily. So, there is nothing for which the praiseworthy agent must similarly account or answer for. How then could praise be communicative in sense of seeking uptake from its target? This chapter develops the view that praise is communicative in that it invites the praiseworthy agent to accept credit by co-valuing their action in the evaluative terms supplied by the praiser. This proposal is defended against three objections, namely that it is descriptively inadequate regarding our actual practices, that it is morally mistaken about when we owe others a response, and that it implies redundant communication. (shrink)

This volume provides a detailed account of the syntax of expressive language, that is, utterances that express, rather than describe, the emotions and attitudes of the speaker... Daniel Gutzmann demonstrates that expressivity has strong syntactic reflexes that interact with the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of these utterances, and argues that expressivity is in fact a syntactic feature on a par with other established features such as tense and gender. Evidence for this claim is drawn from three detailed case studies (...) of expressive adjectives, intensifiers, and vocatives; their puzzling properties are accounted for through a minimalist approach to syntactic features and agreement, which shows that expressivity can partake in agreement operations, trigger movement, and be selected for syntactically. The analysis not only supports the hypothesis of expressive syntax, but also highlights the hidden role that grammar may play in phenomena that are traditionally considered to be solely semantic in nature" -- Publisher. (shrink)

This paper argues that praise is governed by a norm of standing, namely the evaluative commitment condition. Even when the target of praise is praiseworthy and known to be so by the praiser, praise can be inappropriate owing to the praiser’s lacking the relevant evaluative commitment. I propose that uncommitted praisers lack the standing to praise in that, owing to their lack of commitment to the relevant value, they have not earned the right to host the co-valuing that is the (...) communicative aim of praise. (shrink)

Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that explains (...) and predicts the decisions of agents who, like ourselves, fail to be logically omniscient: that is, of agents whose beliefs may not be deductively closed, or even consistent. (Winner of the 2021 Isaac Levi Prize.). (shrink)

1. Happiness, then and now -- Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning -- Happiness as eudaimonia -- Happiness and virtuous activity -- New directions from old debates -- 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate -- Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis -- 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self -- Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis -- Epictetus and the stoic self -- The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesis -- The embodied conception of the self -- The embodied conception and psychological (...) well-being -- The Stoics' case against the embodied conception. (shrink)

After 50 years of debate, the ethics of aggregation has reached a curious stalemate, with both sides arguing that only their theory treats people as equals. I argue that, on the issue of equality, both sides are wrong. From the premise that “each counts for one,” we cannot derive the conclusion that “more count for more”—or its negation. The familiar arguments from equality to aggregation presuppose more than equality: the Kamm/Scanlon “Balancing Argument” rests on what social choice theorists call “(Positive) (...) Responsiveness,” Kamm’s “Aggregation Argument” assumes that “equal” lives are fungible, and Hsieh et al. have it that spreading goods broadly best approximates equality. In each case, the crucial premise is not equality itself but a further idea that Taurek, I argue, can safely reject. I conclude with a conjecture: there is no theory-neutral argument that settles the question of whether the numbers count. (shrink)

Az ELTE filozófiaoktatójának új könyve, ahogy alcíme világosan állítja a vallás filozófiai alapjainak feltárására vállalkozik. Vagyis a következő alapvető kérdéseket igyekszik megválaszolni: Mi a vallás? Mi a vallási hit; és mi lehet ennek a hitnek a tartalma? (Ez utóbbit nevezi könyvében “vallási reprezentációnak”.) Tömör, de rendkívül intenzív vizsgálódása vérbeli filozófia, fogalmi megismerés és elemzés, amelynek egyik lábát a középkori filozófia beható ismerete, másik lábát pedig a kortárs, ún. angolszász filozófia nyelvfilozófiai alapú módszerei adják, amint a megismeréstudomány és evolúcióbiológia felismerései támogatnak. (...) A végeredmény egy elegáns és világos érvelés, nem apológia és nem bálványdöntés, hanem egy igen eredeti vallásfilozófiai alapozás, amely a vallás, a hit, mint antropológiai jellemző megértéséhez is közelebb visz. A szándékoltan rövid, de jól hasznosítható irodalomjegyzékkel záruló kiadvány filozófiai jártasságot feltételez olvasójáról. (shrink)

A trenchant defense of hierarchy in different spheres of our lives, from the personal to the political All complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Just Hierarchy contends that this stigma is a mistake. In fact, as Daniel Bell and Wang Pei show, it is neither possible nor advisable to do away with social hierarchies. Drawing their arguments from Chinese thought and culture as well (...) as other philosophies and traditions, Bell and Wang ask which forms of hierarchy are justified and how these can serve morally desirable goals. They look at ways of promoting just forms of hierarchy while minimizing the influence of unjust ones, such as those based on race, sex, or caste. Which hierarchical relations are morally justified and why? Bell and Wang argue that it depends on the nature of the social relation and context. Different hierarchical principles ought to govern different kinds of social relations: what justifies hierarchy among intimates is different from what justifies hierarchy among citizens, countries, humans and animals, and humans and intelligent machines. Morally justified hierarchies can and should govern different spheres of our social lives, though these will be very different from the unjust hierarchies that have governed us in the past. A vigorous, systematic defense of hierarchy in the modern world, Just Hierarchy examines how hierarchical social relations can have a useful purpose, not only in personal domains but also in larger political realms. (shrink)

In this volume of newly commissioned essays, leading moral philosophers offer a comprehensive overview of virtue ethics.