Discrimination is a negative, destructive and marginalizing attitude as old as the history of humanity. It becomes visible in many different forms such as racism, sexism, nationalism, sectarianism, religiousness, and classism. When we look at the sources of discriminatory attitudes and tendencies, we encounter a wide range of reasons. For example, factors such as wrong learning, created fears, distorted feelings of hatred, scientific, philosophical, political thoughts, religiouspolitical personalities, and flawed educational understandings can be shown as some of these. In this (...) study, while the meaning, source, problems and solutions to the problem of religious intolerance, which is one of the discriminatory attitudes, are discussed from historical and social perspectives, the views of the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum are taken into consideration. (shrink)

The paper is composed of two parts. The first part covers juvenile delinquency with all its characteristics. When analyzing the delinquency, we gave a special place to the socio-pathological phenomena which is more and more present and the rate is higher from year to year. Social pathology is a huge issue that requires special commitment, first, for its detection and then prevention. Within the delinquency, we also cover the most common crimes committed by juveniles. In the second part of this (...) paper, the authors deal in more details with a specific form of crime which can also be committed by juveniles: child sexual abuse and pedophilia. First, the difference between child sexual abuse and pedophilia will be discussed, a difference that is of particular importance in cases where minors are abusers. Furthermore, the main characteristics of cases when both perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse are minors will be addressed. Although these criminal offenses are rarer in practice unlike the criminal offenses and deviant behaviors treated in the first part, however, knowing the main characteristics and specifics of such cases is of particular importance for the legal-criminal treatment of the perpetrators of these criminal offenses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Lumps and Bumps”Katherine Arens (bio)“Lumps and Bumps” offers a fresh look at nosological classifications in terms of their genesis in eighteenth-century philosophy by acknowledging the proximity of philosophy to the sciences of the mind in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially in Germany. Today, strict borders are drawn between these fields by mainstream practitioners, but work like Radden’s makes a strong case for acknowledging not only multiculturalism, (...) but also the historicity of science. As such, it is exemplary interdisciplinary work tracing a set of concepts (here, a taxonomy of mental illness) back to its sources. Yet Radden tacitly raises other questions significant for the interrelationships between psychology/psychiatry and philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.First, Radden quite rightly points to the fact that taxonomies defining mental illness will differ across cultures (e.g., that Scottish and German “faculty psychologies” differed). Yet her question can be inverted to ask a historical question: how can taxonomies of mental illness be used to interrogate the very construct of “the European Enlightenment” itself (in a sense, offering a variant on Michel Foucault’s Birth of a Clinic). This question is significant, since the “Enlightenment” has an internationalist contour in the history of philosophy that it may well not have had in medicine.In what way, for example, can Hume and Locke be considered more direct references for Kant than his philosophical nemesis, Johann Gottfried Herder, or physiologists La Mettrie (French) and Albrecht von Haller (Swiss)? Today, these two questions seem to lie on opposite sides of acknowledged disciplinary boundaries, across discourses of the various sciences, and they are not generally asked by intellectual historians, since they lie in different cultural traditions. Yet the German Idealist tradition that came out of the Enlightenment in the generation between Wolf and Kant had different boundaries between philosophy and the natural sciences than did its English equivalent. In this sense, then, Radden has made an argument that could be used to indicate how far the British empiricists actually influenced Kant, as an index of how science crosses both disciplinary and national boundaries.Second, Radden’s work raises a methodological issue for interdisciplinary work on the emergence of psychology: how one can trace the rapid mutation of critical terminology within the evolution of a single discipline across time. Even if some differentiation between affect and cognition was in place from the time of Kant all the way through to the DSM, for instance, the historical and cultural behavioral phenomena to which that distinction refers need to be specified in each context in which they occur, in different [End Page 15] times and places. Psychology between Kant and Kraepelin exemplifies this “interdisciplinarity” of an evolving field. Was psychology to be institutionalized as part of philosophy departments, or of physiology, or of education? The research in these three fields was carried out in almost identical terms in the early nineteenth century, but what that research means needs to be further historicized.For example, “reason” and “passion” occur as reference concepts in Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, just as they do in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Heloise and Confessions, and in Richardson’s Pamela. Yet the behaviors that are identified as “passionate” differ across cultures, and so need to be defined today in ways that acknowledge chains of influence as they existed at that time, not as reconstructed for other purposes.The third issue raised by Radden’s study and needing further study is the question of power politics in science. Each use of terms has its own strategic importance, and every act of classification is potentially political. When classification schema are exported, imported, rejected, or upheld, the practitioner/professional not only makes a scientific statement, but a social one as well, by adhering to a set of professional organizations, institutions, and other power configurations in which the schema appear. In the case of Kant’s taxonomy of mind, one might ask what the significance was when he added “will” to the reason/passion dichotomy that pervaded his sources. What has he gained or lost by using these terms in the context of faculty psychology?Similarly, what is the cultural significance of that third... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DEAD MAN WALKING: ON THE CINEMATIC TREATMENT OF LICENSED PUBLIC KILLING Edmund Arens University ofLucerne I regret that so many people do not understand, but I know that they have not watched the state imitate the violence they so abhor. (Sister Helen Prejean) ~T\eadMan Walking, thehighlyacclaimed second film directed by Tim -Z-^Robbins, seems appropriate for discussion in the symposium's context oíFilm andModernity: Violence, Sacrifice andReligion. This film on the (...) one hand thematizes different forms ofviolence and victimization; on the other hand it presents divergent forms ofreligion. And it does so in a way which not only demonstrates the interplay of violence and religion but also opens up the chance of transcending various kinds of sacrificial structures inhabiting that interplay. We can approach DeadMan Walking in five steps. After some general remarks about this film as a work of art, I will briefly review the story line. In the part called Themes and Topics, I will outline some of the predominant topics addressed in this movie. The fourth step is devoted to the interrelation of Violence, Victimization and Redemption. Finally, the religious or theological question comes into view under the heading of Proximity and Testimony, an aspect which at the same time has a definite link to law and the legal system. I. DeadMan Walking as a Work of Art According to Susan Sontag, film "currently is the most vivid, the most stimulating, and the most important of all genres of art" (Sontag 13). But Edmund Arens15 whether a particular film really can be considered as a work of art depends on a number of presuppositions, a few of which I shall mention here. Without going too deeply into the debate on the nature and purpose of aesthetic production, there are at least some requirements which point to a work ofart. Roughly speaking, it is defined by putting matter and form into a certain relation, by creating or producing a certain structure, by adopting a certain style and by organizing the material by means ofgenres (all ofwhich relates to the classical notion of poesis). Secondly, a work of art deals with perception in a double way: while it implies a certain perception ofreality, it also invites the audience to participate in this perception and thus to deepen, alter, or correct the perception that they experienced (something which relates to aisthesis). Thirdly, art aims at having certain emotional effects on the public that are either purifying or edifying (something which since Aristotle has been discussed as katharsis). Ifthese three dimensions (cf. Jauss; Siller) are always involved in works ofart, we can ask how in DeadMan Walking the interplay ofpoesis, aisthesis, and katharsis is at work. Under certain conditions a film is a creative work ofart. In this case, the motion picture, whether documentary or fictitious, includes an aesthetic creation of an imagined reality. It does not simply mirror reality but always reconstructs or reshapes it. In fictional film narrative, everyday reality is disrupted and rearranged by means of a variety of formal and material techniques. The treatment of reality necessarily involves the question of representation. What Paul Ricoeur considered as decisive for narrative fiction, applies to narrative fiction films as well: they make use of "calculated dissonance" which disrupts everyday reality and thereby points to a "redescription ofreality" (Ricoeur 1975; 1976; 1986). We shall see later on how this process, attributed especially to certain metaphors, works in the case ofDeadMan Walking. Besides the topic ofrepresentation, any kind of art raises the question of perception. Art implies a certain perception and at the same time it offers or invites—in the case of visual art—the audience to perceive reality in a different or deeper manner. In amovie the audience, whether by a manipulative "aesthetics of overwhelming"1 or by an aesthetics of disclosing, is moved emotionally and imaginatively, the aim being to direct their attention to the secret ofthe things shown and thus to direct or redirect their view ofreality. From the point of view of a pragmatic theory of action (cf. Arens 1994; 1997b) which additionally takes up Ricoeur's most important insights, I would 'The term has been coined by Heiner Müller; quoted from Kirsner... (shrink)

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was signed by Turkey in 2000 and has been in force since September 23rd, 2003. For this reason, the Covenant is considered as act of parliament in our domestic law, and unlike the general procedure of application of the law, it can not be alleged to contradict the Constitution (According to Article 90 of the Turkish Constitution). The article 12 of the Covenant defines the right to health and its content. In (...) the article 12 of the Covenant, in its General Comment No. 14 published in 2000, the right to the highest attainable standard of health was interpreted and commented upon. This document contains a detailed description of the right to health, its content, and its obligations to State parties. Although this Comment of the Covenant is not binding, it is a document to which the State parties refer when taking measures related to health services. Every publication and comment on the right to health was based on the General Comment 14 of the Covenant. The Article 12 was reinterpreted by the Covenant on May 2nd, 2016 in the context of rights to sexual and reproductive health. İit has been emphasized that legal, procedural, practical and social barriers limit the access of individuals to full range sexual and reproductive health services. It has also been pointed out that accessibility of sexual and reproductive health services is a distant target for women and girls. Moreover, it has been stated that discrimination that increases exclusion in legislation and practice limits lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) individuals and disabled people'senjoyment of sexual and reproductive health rights. For this reason, it is stated that although commenting on the rights of sexual health and reproductive health is included in 14 comments, it is important to make an interpretation about them. This comment is an interpretation of a binding Convention. Therefore; It is a document that will provide guidance on measures to be taken by States Parties in respect of their rights to sexual health and reproductive health. At the same time, obstacles to discrimination in medical practice bring important approaches in terms of respect for autonomy and respect for private life. In our article, information about the content of the ESKHK's interpretation and possible reflections of this content in the field of medical law and ethics will be given. (shrink)

We start by presenting three different views that jointly imply that every person has many conscious beings in their immediate vicinity, and that the number greatly varies from person to person. We then present and assess an argument to the conclusion that how confident someone should be in these views should sensitively depend on how massive they happen to be. According to the argument, sometimes irreducibly de se observations can be powerful evidence for or against believing in metaphysical theories.

In this paper I explore the psychology of ritual performance and present a simple graphical model that clarifies several issues in William Irons’s theory of religion as a “hard-to-fake” sign of commitment. Irons posits that religious behaviors or rituals serve as costly signals of an individual’s commitment to a religious group. Increased commitment among members of a religious group may facilitate intra-group cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion. Here I propose a proximate explanation for (...) how individuals are able to pay the short-term costs of ritual performance to achieve the long-term fitness benefits offered by religious groups. The model addresses three significant problems raised by Irons’s theory. First, the model explains why potential free-riders do not join religious groups even when there are significant net benefits that members of religious groups can achieve. Second, the model clarifies how costly a ritual must be to achieve stability and prevent potential free-riders from joining the religious group. Third, the model suggests why religious groups may require adherents to perform private rituals that are not observed by others. Several hypotheses generated from the model are also discussed. (shrink)

Introduction: Ever fallen in love with -- How the Games are political -- The promise of London 2012 and why it won't be kept -- Five new Olympic rings -- Reimagining Olympism -- Not just running after gold -- Further reading and resources: Going the extra mile.

In this paper I explore the psychology of ritual performance and present a simple graphical model that clarifies several issues in William Irons’s theory of religion as a “hard-to-fake” sign of commitment. Irons posits that religious behaviors or rituals serve as costly signals of an individual’s commitment to a religious group. Increased commitment among members of a religious group may facilitate intra-group cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion. Here I propose a proximate explanation for (...) how individuals are able to pay the short-term costs of ritual performance to achieve the long-term fitness benefits offered by religious groups. The model addresses three significant problems raised by Irons’s theory. First, the model explains why potential free-riders do not join religious groups even when there are significant net benefits that members of religious groups can achieve. Second, the model clarifies how costly a ritual must be to achieve stability and prevent potential free-riders from joining the religious group. Third, the model suggests why religious groups may require adherents to perform private rituals that are not observed by others. Several hypotheses generated from the model are also discussed. (shrink)

In order to reduce internal dissonance and emotional pain, the personality plays a causal role in confabulating consistency among our beliefs, values and actions. To the extent that we are unaware of our own moral ''blind spots," a prima facie duty to engage in self-knowledge exists. Only then can we reduce injustices incurring from moral arrogance.

This paper argues that the idea of a computer is unique. Calculators and analog computers are not different ideas about computers, and nature does not compute by itself. Computers, once clearly defined in all their terms and mechanisms, rather than enumerated by behavioral examples, can be more than instrumental tools in science, and more than source of analogies and taxonomies in philosophy. They can help us understand semantic content and its relation to form. This can be achieved because they have (...) the potential to do more than calculators, which are computers that are designed not to learn. Today’s computers are not designed to learn; rather, they are designed to support learning; therefore, any theory of content tested by computers that currently exist must be of an empirical, rather than a formal nature. If they are designed someday to learn, we will see a change in roles, requiring an empirical theory about the Turing architecture’s content, using the primitives of learning machines. This way of thinking, which I call the intensional view of computers, avoids the problems of analogies between minds and computers. It focuses on the constitutive properties of computers, such as showing clearly how they can help us avoid the infinite regress in interpretation, and how we can clarify the terms of the suggested mechanisms to facilitate a useful debate. Within the intensional view, syntax and content in the context of computers become two ends of physically realizing correspondence problems in various domains. (shrink)

The practice of taking hand-written notes in lectures has been rediscovered recently because of several studies on its learning efficacy in the mainstream media. Students are enjoined to ditch their laptops and return to pen and paper. Such arguments presuppose that notes are taken in order to be revisited after the lecture. Learning is seen to happen only after the event. We argue instead that student’s note-taking is an educational practice worthy in itself as a way to relate to the (...) live event of the lecture. We adopt a phenomenological approach inspired by Vilém Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures, which assumes that a gesture like note-taking is always an event of thinking with media in which a certain freedom is expressed. But Flusser’s description of note-taking focusses on the individual note-taker. What about students’ note-taking in a lecture hall as a collective gesture? Nietzsche considered note-taking ‘mechanical,’ as if students were automatons who mindlessly transcribed a verbal flow, while Benjamin considered it an inaesthetic gesture: at best, boring; at worst, ‘painful to watch.’ In contrast, we argue that the educational potentiality of note-taking—or better, note-making—can be grasped only if we account for its mediaticity (as writing that displaces the voice), together with but distinct from its political potentiality as a collective mediality (as a ‘means without end’). Note-taking enables us to see how collective thinking emerges in the lecture, a kind of thinking that belongs neither to the lecturer nor the student, but emerges in the relation of attention established between the lecturer, students and their object of thought. (shrink)

The practice of taking hand-written notes in lectures has been rediscovered recently because of several studies on its learning efficacy in the mainstream media. Students are enjoined to ditch their laptops and return to pen and paper. Such arguments presuppose that notes are taken in order to be revisited after the lecture. Learning is seen to happen only after the event. We argue instead that student’s note-taking is an educational practice worthy in itself as a way to relate to the (...) live event of the lecture. We adopt a phenomenological approach inspired by Vilém Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures, which assumes that a gesture like note-taking is always an event of thinking with media in which a certain freedom is expressed. But Flusser’s description of note-taking focusses on the individual note-taker. What about students’ note-taking in a lecture hall as a collective gesture? Nietzsche considered note-taking ‘mechanical,’ as if students were automatons who mindlessly transcribed a verbal flow, while Benjamin considered it an inaesthetic gesture: at best, boring; at worst, ‘painful to watch.’ In contrast, we argue that the educational potentiality of note-taking—or better, note-making—can be grasped only if we account for its mediaticity (as writing that displaces the voice), together with but distinct from its political potentiality as a collective mediality (as a ‘means without end’). Note-taking enables us to see how collective thinking emerges in the lecture, a kind of thinking that belongs neither to the lecturer nor the student, but emerges in the relation of attention established between the lecturer, students and their object of thought. (shrink)

One of the persistent debates that has animated thinkers concerns the nature of consciousness. Is it merely an epiphenomenon that can be reduced to matter or does it belong to a different ontological domain? In recent times, this question has been reformulated as the hard problem of how material brain states can give rise to the mental states that we seem to experience. One of the answers to the hard problem has been to deflate the question and simply deny that (...) there is a problem. This chapter argues that this approach often associated with Dennett and embraced by Siderits is problematic within the framework of Buddhist philosophy given the latter’s strong insistence on observing how things appear to the mind. This essay further argues that Buddhism offers resources to deal with the hard problem through the Madhyamaka philosophy, which argues that it does not make sense to think how things are and that we should be content to deal with how things appear. In this perspective, the task of explaining consciousness is neither to eliminate appearances à la Dennett nor to discover what the mind really is in itself, but to learn how to correlate better the various appearances though which the mental is given (the first and third person perspectives). In this way, the hard problem ceases to be a mystery and becomes an object of scientific inquiry that relies on the ever tighter observation of the neuro-phenomenological correlation between first and third person perspectives. (shrink)

The sociotechnical concept of closure requires researchers to identify the relevant social groups and technological frames associated with a technology, and also to map the social, political, economic, and other forces which, over time, reduce an artifacts's interpretative flexibility to a more singular and homogeneous sociotechnical formation. The closure concept has proven very useful, but I argue that its success has led it to acquire a quasi-objective status that can unnecessarily restrict the power of sociotechnical analyses. Rather than being used (...) as a meta-theoretical key that can unlock the genealogy of an artifact, closure can become a theoretical thing whose history has to be explained. Rather than using closure to explain the artifact, therefore, we wind up looking for closure itself. I argue instead for a sociotechnical theory in which artifacts, relevant social groups, and technological frames are never closed but are always open to new interpretations. (shrink)

A common view is that ceteris paribus clauses render lawlike statements vacuous, unless such clauses can be explicitly reformulated as antecedents of ?real? laws that face no counterinstances. But such reformulations are rare; and they are not, we argue, to be expected in general. So we defend an alternative sufficient condition for the non-vacuity of ceteris paribus laws: roughly, any counterinstance of the law must be independently explicable, in a sense we make explicit. Ceteris paribus laws will carry a plethora (...) of explanatory commitments; and claims that such commitments are satisfied will be as (dis) confirmable as other empirical claims. (shrink)

Developing residents’ communication skills has been a goal of residency training programmes since the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education codified it as a core competency. In this article, a case that features problematic communication between a generalist and specialist physician is drawn upon, and it is suggested how their communication might become open and effective through a practice of reason exchange. This is a practice of giving reasons, listening to reasons given by others, evaluating reasons and deciding which particulars (...) of situations constitute reasons to act and reasons how to act. Drawing on recent literature in teaching communication to radiology residents, it is proposed that practices of reason exchange are part of the skill set generally referred to as “negotiation skills” that should be cultivated in all residents. Particularly, in cases in which generalist and specialist physicians disagree about the reasons to do something, not do something or do something this way or that way, how well physicians are trained to practice reason exchange depends on whether they can communicate effectively and negotiate disagreement collegially. (shrink)

Grossmann's argument for the “fearful ape hypothesis” rests on an incomplete review of infant responses to emotional faces. An alternate interpretation of the literature argues the opposite, that an early preference for happy faces predicts cooperative learning. Questions remain as to whether infants can interpret affect from faces, limiting the conclusion that any “fear bias” means the infant is fearful.

I propose a distinction between two concepts: affliction and atrocity. I argue that an ethical position with respect to history’s horrors can be understood as a practice of refusing to permit affliction to be seen as atrocity. This is a practice of resisting the urge to quantify or qualify affliction in subjecting it to a count of bodies, which would be taken to totalize all the suffering in a given situation. We should, I contend, resist thinking that affliction qualified as (...) atrocity, subject to a count of bodies or the like, captures affliction itself. I then discuss several instances of the qualification of affliction as atrocity, including the Sétif and Guelma massacre, the crucifixion of Christ, and the biblical story of the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. I conclude by making a case that it’s ethically imperative that we recollect the self’s abnegation to those who aren’t counted, those who can’t be counted because they are afflicted without atrocity. (shrink)

According to the “standard framing” of racial appeals in political speech, politicians generally rely on coded language to communicate racial messages. Yet recent years have demonstrated that politicians often express quite explicit forms of racism in mainstream political discourse. The standard framing can explain neither why these appeals work politically nor how they work semantically. This paper moves beyond the standard framing, focusing on the politics and semantics of one type of explicit appeal, candid racial communication. The linguistic vehicles of (...) CRC are neither true code words, nor slurs, but a conventionally defined class of “racialized terms.”. (shrink)

According to the “standard framing” of racial appeals in political speech, politicians generally rely on coded language to communicate racial messages. Yet recent years have demonstrated that politicians often express quite explicit forms of racism in mainstream political discourse. The standard framing can explain neither why these appeals work politically nor how they work semantically. This paper moves beyond the standard framing, focusing on the politics and semantics of one type of explicit appeal, candid racial communication. The linguistic vehicles of (...) CRC are neither true code words, nor slurs, but a conventionally defined class of “racialized terms.”. (shrink)

The purpose of the patent system is to provide incentives for the development of new and useful products and processes. Such products and processes are generally referred to as ‘inventions’. Whilst patents have historically been sought and granted for mechanical and chemical inventions only, the biotechnology revolution of the last 30 years has radically changed this by precipitating a mass of patent applications in respect of living and biological matter. Applications of this nature have forced a re-examination by courts and (...) policy makers of traditional understandings of what can be patented. In particular, they have forced consideration of the extent (if any) to which life and nature can be viewed as ‘inventions’ so as to be capable of supporting a patent. In considering this question the central guiding principle has been the distinction, on which all of patent law is said to rest, between man-made inventions on the one hand and discoveries of nature on the other. (shrink)

A familiar anti-sceptical response (à la Sosa) to radical sceptical scenarios employs the safety of knowledge. Radical sceptical scenarios are purported to be too modally remote to really threaten knowledge of ordinary propositions. Why? Because knowledge requires safety, and safety requires the target belief to be true in all nearby possible worlds, but radical sceptical scenarios purportedly take place at distant possible worlds. Hence, the safety theorist claims that radical sceptical scenarios don’t challenge our knowledge of ordinary propositions. But it's (...) alleged by Sosa and others that there's one radical sceptical scenario that can’t be dismissed so easily: the dream scenario. After all, unlike evil demons and brains in vats, ‘dreaming is a daily part of our lives…it is too close for comfort’. In this paper, I sketch an argument to the effect that there's good reason to think that the dream of dream scepticism describes a modally remote possibility, in which case I argue that if the safety-based anti-sceptical response is successful against the evil demon sceptical scenario, the brain in a vat sceptical scenario, and other Cartesian sceptical scenarios in this mould, then it's successful against the dream sceptical scenario as well. (shrink)

"[R]easons for action must have their source in goals, desires, or intentions....[T]he possession of rationality is not sufficient to provide a source for relevant reasons,...certain desires, goals, or intentions are also necessary." ;So says Gilbert Harman. So say many other philosophers, from Aristotle to Hume to Harman and David Gauthier. To these many philosophers, this is a home truth, as obvious as the nose on your face. And yet as many philosophers---from the Stoics to Kant to Nagel and Korsgaard---reject this (...) view, and could not find it more obviously false. Any disagreement of this nature, which forces the disputants to find arguments for claims that seem to them self-evident and undeniable, is likely to generate a long, complicated and nasty war. Fortunately for the world, already subject to more fundamentalist clashes than one cares to count, this particular war stays mostly on paper and inside the walls of the academy, without any literal casualties. ;In this dissertation, I join the ranks of those who oppose Harman and his compatriots. I bring what I believe is a new strategy to the field of engagement. The strategy involves two stages. First, we are to undertake a thorough examination of what our opponents mean when they say that goals, desires, or intentions are the "source" of reasons; no one has ever satisfactorily cashed in this metaphor, and I propose to do so. The second stage follows naturally from the first, for in seeing what our opponents mean, we see a crucial weakness in their position: their troops are mercenary, and can be recruited to our side. The second stage is this recruitment. (shrink)

Evidentialism as an account of epistemic justification is the position that a doxastic attitude, D, towards a proposition, p, is justified for an intentional agent, S, at a time, t, iff having D towards p fits S’s evidence at t, where the fittingness of an attitude on one’s evidence is typically analyzed in terms of evidential support for the propositional contents of the attitude. Evidentialism is a popular and well-defended account of justification. In this paper, I raise a problem for (...) evidentialism on the grounds that there can be epistemic circumstances in which a proposition is manifestly and nonmisleadingly supported by an agent’s total evidence, and yet believing the proposition is not justified for the agent. As I argue, in order for an agent to have justification to believe a proposition, it needs to be the case that the belief as possessed by the agent could exhibit certain epistemic good making features, e.g., the propositional content of the belief as possessed by the agent would be supported by the agent’s evidence. As I demonstrate, the fact that a proposition, p, is supported by an agent’s total evidence at a time, t, doesn’t guarantee that a belief in p as possessed by the agent at t could exhibit any epistemic good making features, including having propositional contents (i.e., p) that would be supported by the agent’s evidence. Thus, the fact that a proposition is supported by an agent’s evidence doesn’t guarantee that the agent has justification to believe the proposition. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists propose the idea that plants are cognitive, which has been met with criticisms. These criticisms focus on the fact that plants do not possess the properties traditionally associated with cognition. By contrast, several proponents introduce novel ways to conceptualize cognition. How should we make sense of this debate? In this paper, I argue that the plant cognition debate is not about whether plants meet a set of well-delineated and agreed-upon criteria according to which they count as cognitive. (...) Rather, many proponents are hypothesizing about cognition. They construe COGNITION not as an expression of what cognition is, but rather as a conjecture about what cognition might be. These conjectures orient research that can uncover novel similarities amongst the phenomena to which these concepts extend. In defending this view, I argue that investigating plant cognition is valuable, even if the results of these investigations lead us to reject the claim that plants are cognitive. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the many arguments and controversies concerning abortion. While it argues for ethical and legal positions on the issues, it focuses on how to think about the issues, not just what to think about them. It is an ideal resource to improve your understanding of what people think, why they think that and whether their (and your) arguments are good or bad, and why. It's ideal for classroom use, discussion groups, organizational learning, and personal reading. -/- (...) From the Preface -/- To many people, abortion is an issue for which discussions and debates are frustrating and fruitless: it seems like no progress will ever be made towards any understanding, much less resolution or even compromise. -/- Judgments like these, however, are premature because some basic techniques from critical thinking, such as carefully defining words and testing definitions, stating the full structure of arguments so each step of the reasoning can be examined, and comparing the strengths and weaknesses of different explanations can help us make progress towards these goals. -/- When emotions run high, we sometimes need to step back and use a passion for calm, cool, critical thinking. This helps us better understand the positions and arguments of people who see things differently from us, as well as our own positions and arguments. And we can use critical thinking skills help to try to figure out which positions are best, in terms of being supported by good arguments: after all, we might have much to learn from other people, sometimes that our own views should change, for the better. -/- Here we use basic critical thinking skills to argue that abortion is typically not morally wrong. We begin with less morally-controversial claims: adults, children and babies are wrong to kill and wrong to kill, fundamentally, because they, we, are conscious, aware and have feelings. We argue that since early fetuses entirely lack these characteristics, they are not inherently wrong to kill and so most abortions are not morally wrong, since most abortions are done early in pregnancy, before consciousness and feeling develop in the fetus. -/- Furthermore, since the right to life is not the right to someone else’s body, fetuses might not have the right to the pregnant woman’s body—which she has the right to—and so she has the right to not allow the fetus use of her body. This further justifies abortion, at least, until technology allows for the removal of fetuses to other wombs. Since morally permissible actions should be legal, abortions should be legal: it is an injustice to criminalizing actions that are not wrong. -/- In the course of arguing for these claims, we: 1. discuss how to best define abortion; 2. dismiss many common “question-begging” arguments that merely assume their conclusions, instead of giving genuine reasons for them; 3. refute some often-heard “everyday arguments” about abortion, on all sides; explain why the most influential philosophical arguments against abortion are unsuccessful; 4. provide some positive arguments that at least early abortions are not wrong; 5. briefly discuss the ethics and legality of later abortions, and more. -/- This essay is not a “how to win an argument” piece or a tract or any kind of apologetics. It is not designed to help anyone “win” debates: everybody “wins” on this issue when we calmly and respectfully engage arguments with care, charity, honesty and humility. This book is merely a reasoned, systematic introduction to the issues that we hope models these skills and virtues. Its discussion should not be taken as absolute “proof” of anything: much more needs to be understood and carefully discussed—always. (shrink)

Socrates (in the Meno) denied that virtues like courage could be taught, whereas Protagoras defended this claim. Compassion is discussed below in this context; it is distinguished from related, but different, moral qualities, and the role of imagination is emphasised. 'Sympathy's and role-modelling views of compassion's acquisition are criticised. Compassion can indeed be taught, but neither by the example of a few, isolated physicians nor by creation of Departments of Compassion. In replying to one standard objection to teaching compassion, it (...) is emphasised that scientific competence and compassion aren't mutually exclusive. (shrink)

Given the many marvelous things animals can do and moreover the success we have in employing the intentional stance towards animals, it seems to be almost unthinkable to say that animals could not act at all. Nonetheless, this is exactly what I argue for. I claim that strictly speaking there is no animal action, only behaviour. I defend this claim in three steps. Firstly, I recapitulate some of the weighty grounds that speak in favour of animal agency. Secondly, I explain (...) why I still doubt that animals act. The argument is that the account of agency that I take to be the most attractive one entails that animals can't act. Since this account of agency is non-standard, I spend the bulk of the paper with providing a sketch of what, according to it, actions are. Finally, I explain why it is still so natural and promising to regard animals as agents, although in fact they aren't. As one might put it: of course they act, only strictly speaking they don't. (shrink)

One natural way to argue for the existence of some subjective constraint on agents’ obligations is to maintain that without that particular constraint, agents will sometimes be obligated to do that which they lack the ability to do. In this paper, I maintain that while such a strategy appears promising, it is fraught with pitfalls. Specifically, I argue that because the truth of an ability ascription depends on an (almost always implicit) characterization of the relevant possibility space, different metaethical accounts (...) take obligation to be constrained by different senses of ability. As a result, what initially looks to be a point of consensus—that ability constrains obligation—turns out to be a point of contention, and arguments with this at the foundation are much more likely to obscure, rather than resolve, metaethical disputes. Despite this, appeals to ability in metaethics aren’t doomed to be fruitless. On the contrary, if we can independently establish a particular sense of ability as the normatively relevant one, then we have good grounds for ruling out metaethical accounts that are inconsistent with it. In the final section, I make just such an argument. What seems right about the thought that ability constrains obligation is that an agent cannot be obligated to do that which her circumstances prevent her from doing. I argue that only a sense of ability that is both epistemically and motivationally restricted adequately respects the limits of agential control. (shrink)

In chapter 3, we reflected on the view that the fallacies on the traditional list are inherently dialectical. The answer proposed there was that, with the possible exception of, e.g., begging the question and many questions, they are not. The aim of the present chapter is to cancel theispossibility by showing that begging the question and many questions are not in fact dialectical fallacies. The reason for this is not that question-begging and many questions aren’t (at least dominantly) dialectical (...) practices. The reason is that, dialectical or not, they are not fallacies. That begging the question, BQ for short, is a fallacy is an idea which originates with Aristotle. Given logic’s already long history, it should not be surprising that Aristotle’s views of these matters have in some ways been superseded. But the traditional view retains the original connection between conception and instantiation. Whereas BQ in Aristotle’s sense is said to be a fallacy in Aristotle’s sense, so too is BQ in the modern sense said to be a fallacy in the modern (i.e., EAUI) sense.[1] As currently conceived of, BQ and fallacies can be characterized in the following ways. (shrink)

Consider two epistemic experts—for concreteness, let them be two weather forecasters. Suppose that you aren’t certain that they will issue identical forecasts, and you would like to proportion your degrees of belief to theirs in the following way: first, conditional on either’s forecast of rain being x, you’d like your own degree of belief in rain to be x. Secondly, conditional on them issuing different forecasts of rain, you’d like your own degree of belief in rain to be some (...) weighted average of the forecast of each. Finally, you’d like your degrees of belief to be given by an orthodox probability measure. Moderate ambitions, all. But you can’t always get what you want. (shrink)

Imagine that there exists a good, essentially omniscient and omnipotent being named Jove, and that there exists nothing else. No possible being is more powerful or knowledgable. Out of his goodness, Jove decides to create. Since he is all-powerful, there is nothing but the bounds of possibility to prevent him from getting what he wants. Unfortunately, as he holds before his mind the host of worlds, Jove sees that for each there is a better one. Although he can create any (...) of them, he can't create the best of them because there is no best. Faced with this predicament, Jove first sorts the worlds according to certain criteria. For example, he puts on his left worlds in which some inhabitants live lives that aren't worth living and on his right worlds in which every inhabitant's life is worth living; he puts on his left worlds in which some horrors fail to serve an outweighing good and on his right worlds in which no horror fails to serve an outweighing good. (We encourage the reader to use her own criteria.) Then he orders the right hand worlds according to their goodness and assigns to each a positive natural number, the worst of the lot receiving '1', the second worst '2', and so on. Next, he creates a very intricate device that, at the push of a button, will randomly select a number and produce the corresponding world. Jove pushes the button; the device hums and whirs and, finally, its digital display reads '777': world no. 777 comes into being. (shrink)

Quassim Cassam (Cassam, Extremism, Routledge, 2022a) and Paul Katsafanas (Katsafanas, Philosopher’s Imprint 19:1–20, 2019) have argued that fanaticism and extremism are morally and epistemically vicious. I suggest an alternative approach that: (i) explains what makes fanaticism and extremism vicious in the very many cases in which they are; but also (ii) allows for cases in which fanaticism and extremism aren’t vices and may even be liberatory-virtues. My hope is that this approach might serve as a resource for those in (...) liberatory struggles. (shrink)

One relatively straightforward way in which academics could have more impact on global poverty is by doing more to help people make wise decisions about issues relevant to such poverty. Academics could do this by conducting appropriate kinds of research on those issues and sharing what they have learned with the relevant decision makers in accessible ways. But aren’t academics already doing this? In the case of many of those issues, I think the appropriate answer would be that they (...) could do so much better. As an illustration, I examine the academic input into one decision about an issue concerning global poverty in some detail in this paper. I argue that that input has been seriously deficient, and suggest some ways in which it might be improved. Building on this discussion, I then formulate two questions that can be applied to any such decision, answers to which would indicate the quality of the input academics are currently providing. In cases where that input is deficient, and the decision in question an important one, I suggest that academics consider organising themselves in ways that will improve that input. I finish by briefly discussing how Academics Stand Against Poverty might help them do so. (shrink)

A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS-- BUT A FEW CHOICE WORDS CAN SPEAK VOLUMES! _ If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't More People Happy? Bottled Water Is for Suckers Clones Are People Too At Least the War on the Environment Is Going Well Don't Believe Everything You Think The Revolution Will Be Tweeted _ Long before blogs, tweets, and sound bites, people were telling the world how they felt in brief, blunt bursts of information plastered on the (...) backs of their cars. Whether they're political or religious, passionate or proud, controversial or corny, these brightly colored, boldly lettered mini manifestos are declarations of who we are, where we stand, and what we'd rather be doing. But as bestselling author and noted philosopher Jack Bowen reveals, there's much more to the pop-culture phenomenon of bumper stickers than rolling one-liners and drive-by propaganda--no less, in fact, than a wise, funny, poignant, contentious, and truthful discourse on the human condition. _ Mixing pop culture with the ideas of historically prominent philosophers and scientists, If You Can Read This exposes the deeper wisdom couched behind these slogans--or, as need be, exposes where they have gone wrong. If you brake for big ideas, now's the time. _. (shrink)

1 There is a Standard Objection to the idea that concepts might be prototypes (or exemplars, or stereotypes): Because they are productive, concepts must be compositional. Prototypes aren't compositional, so concepts can't be prototypes (see, e.g., Margolis, 1994).2 However, two recent papers (Osherson and Smith, 1988; Kamp and Partee, 1995) reconsider this consensus. They suggest that, although the Standard Objection is probably right in the long run, the cases where prototypes fail to exhibit compositionality are relatively exotic and involve (...) phenomena which any account of compositionality is likely to find hard to deal with; for example, the effects of quantifiers, indexicals, contextual constraints, etc. KP are even prepared to indulge a guarded optimism: "... when a suitably rich compositional theory... is developed, prototypes will be seen ... as one property among many which only when taken altogether can support a compositional theory of combination" (p.56). In this paper, we argue that the Standard Objection to prototype theory was right after all: The problems about compositionality are insuperable in even the most trivial sorts of examples; it is therefore as near to certain as anything in cognitive science ever gets that the structure of concepts is not statistical. Theories of categorization, concept acquisition, lexical meaning and the like, which assume the contrary simply don't work. We commence with a general discussion of the constraints that an account of concepts must meet if their compositionality is to explain their productivity. We'll then turn to a criticism of proposals that OS2 and KP make for coping with some specific cases. (shrink)

We’re often unsure what morality requires, but we need to act anyway. There is a growing philosophical literature on how to navigate moral uncertainty. But much of it asks how to rationally pursue the goal of acting morally, using decision-theoretic models to address that question. I argue that using these popular approaches leaves some central and pressing questions about moral uncertainty unaddressed. To help us make sense of experiences of moral uncertainty, we should shift away from focusing on what it’s (...) rational to do when facing moral uncertainty, and instead look directly at what it’s moral to do about moral uncertainty—for example, how risk averse we morally ought to be, or which personal sacrifices we’re morally obligated to make in order to reduce our risk of moral wrongdoing. And orthodox, expectation-maximizing, decision-theoretic models aren’t well-suited to this task—in part because they presuppose the answers to some important moral questions. For example, if approaching moral uncertainty in a moral way requires us to “maximize expected moral rightness,” that’s, itself, a contentious claim about the demands of morality—one that requires significant moral argument, and that I ultimately suggest is mistaken. Of course, it’s possible to opt, instead, for a variety of alternative decision-theoretic models. But, in order to choose between proposed decision-theoretic models, and select one that is well-suited to handling these cases, we first would need to settle more foundational, moral questions—about, for example, what we should be willing to give up in order to reduce the risk that we’re acting wrongly. Decision theory may be able to formalize the conclusions of these deliberations, but it is not a substitute for them, and it won’t be able to settle the right answers in advance. For now, when we discuss moral uncertainty, we need to wade directly into moral debate, without the aid of decision theory’s formalism. (shrink)

An “insightful” and in-depth look at anti-science politics and its deadly results (Maria Konnikova, New York Times–bestselling author of The Biggest Bluff). Thomas Jefferson said, “Wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” But what happens when they aren’t? From climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense, we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress—and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need (...) them most, scientists and the very idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded war on science, and the results are deadly. Whether it’s driven by identity politics, ideology, or industry, the result is an unprecedented erosion of thought in Western democracies as voters, policymakers, and justices actively ignore scientific evidence, leaving major policy decisions to be based more on the demands of the most strident voices. This compelling book investigates the historical, social, philosophical, political, and emotional reasons why evidence-based politics are in decline and authoritarian politics are once again on the rise on both left and right—and provides some compelling solutions to bring us to our collective senses, before it's too late. “If you care about attacks on climate science and the rise of authoritarianism, if you care about biased media coverage and shake-your-head political tomfoolery, this book is for you.”—The Guardian. (shrink)

Individuals who share friendships for utility or pleasure, Aristotle says, do not love each other in themselves, but in so far as some benefit accrues to them from each other. Friendships for utility aren't limited to business transactions, though. It's possible for Data to form relationships in order to achieve some other goal. An android without emotions is incapable of caring for another. Friendships can also be formed for the sake of pleasure and mutual enjoyment during communal activities. Friendship (...) and consequentialism are psychologically incompatible, for the only states of mind relevant to assessing the value of an act's consequences are states like purposes, goals, and desires. There are multiple forms of friendship, which require emotion. There's a difference between acting out of friendship and acting for the sake of the friendship or some other goal, which suggests that genuine friendships can't be accommodated by consequentialist ways of thinking. (shrink)

Philosophers perpetually find ourselves justifying our existence in a pragmatic go-go capitalistic world. Aren’t we the head-in-the-clouds people indulging in endless debates about how many angels fit on the head of a pin? The absent-minded professors who argue that the physical world might not exist- - even as we step aside to avoid that bus bearing down on us? The granola-heads who delight in pondering a world of brains-in-vats?

In chapter 3 of Wild Animal Ethics Johannsen argues for a collective obligation based on beneficence to intervene in nature in order to reduce the suffering of wild animals. In the same chapter he claims that the non-identity problem is merely a “theoretical puzzle” which doesn’t affect our reasons for intervention. In this paper I argue that the non-identity problem affects both the strength and the nature of our reasons to intervene. By intervening in nature on a large scale we (...) change which animals come into existence. In doing so, we enable harmful animals to inflict harms on other animals, and we put other animals in harm’s way. The harms that these animals will inflict and endure are foreseeable. Furthermore, since non-human animals aren’t moral agents, harmful animals cannot be morally responsible for their harmful actions. I argue therefore that by causing animals to exist, knowing that they will inflict and suffer harms, we become morally responsible for those harms. By engaging in identity-affecting actions then we take on secondary moral duties towards the animals we have thereby caused to exist, and these secondary moral duties may be extremely demanding, even more so than the initial costs of intervention. Finally, these duties are duties of justice rather than duties of beneficence, and as such are more stringent than purely beneficence-based moral reasons. Furthermore, this conclusion flows naturally from several plausible principles which Johannsen explicitly endorses. (shrink)

One can feel guilty without thinking that one actually is guilty of moral wrongdoing. For example, one can feel guilty about eating an ice cream or skipping aerobics, even if one doesn't take a moralistic view of self-indulgence. And one can feel guilty about things that aren't one's doing at all, as in the case of survivor's guilt about being spared some catastrophe suffered by others. Guilt without perceived wrongdoing may of course be irrational, but I think it is (...) sometimes rational, and I want to explore how it can be. (shrink)

How can we make moral progress on factory farming? Part of the answer lies in human moral psychology. Meat consumption remains high, despite increased awareness of its negative impact on animal welfare. Weakness of will is part of the explanation: acceptance of the ethical arguments doesn’t always motivate changes in dietary habits. However, we draw on scientific evidence to argue that many consumers aren’t fully convinced that they morally ought to reduce their meat consumption. We then identify two key (...) psychological mechanisms—motivated reasoning and social proof—that lead people to resist the ethical reasons. Finally, we show how to harness these psychological mechanisms to encourage reductions in meat consumption. A central lesson for moral progress generally is that durable social change requires socially-embedded reasoning. (shrink)

Can material objects be weakly located at regions of spacetime and yet fail to be exactly located anywhere? In this paper, I discuss a case which, at least according to one interpretation, answers affirmatively: the case of blending gunky water and wine, in gunky space. Perhaps after such a blend, the water and wine aren't exactly located anywhere while being weakly located at the location of the blend and any region which overlaps it. I show that the case is (...) interesting and complicated, and has consequences for some ideas found in papers by Daniel Nolan and Josh Parsons. (shrink)

Aren't we actually sick of sex, of difference, of emancipation, of culture? With this provocative taunt, the indomitable sociologist Jean Baudrillard challenges us to face up to our deadly, technologically empowered renunciation of mortality and subjectivity as he grapples with the complex issues that define our postmillennial world. What does the advent and proliferation of cloning mean for our sense of ourselves as human beings? What does the turn of the millennium say about our relation to time and history? (...) What does the instantaneous, virtual realm of cyberspace do to reality? In _The Vital Illusion_--as always--Baudrillard leads his readers to some surprising conclusions. Baudrillard considers how human cloning--as well as the "cloning" of ideas and social identities--heralds an end to sex and death and the divagations of living by instituting a realm of the Same, beyond the struggles of individuation. In this day and age when everything can be cloned, simulated, programmed, and genetically and neurologically managed, humanity shows itself unable to brave its own diversity, preferring instead to regress to the pathological eternity of self-replicating cells. By reverting to our viral origins as sexless immortal beings, we are, ironically, fulfilling a death wish, putting an end to our own species as we know it. Next, Baudrillard explores the "nonevent" that was and is the turn of the millennium. He provocatively puts forward the thesis that the arrival of the year 2000 could never take place because we could neither resolve nor leave behind our history, nor could we stop counting down toward our future. For Baudrillard, the millennial clock reading to the millionth of a second on its way to zero is the perfect symbol of our time: history decays rather than progresses. In closing, Baudrillard examines what he calls "the murder of the real" by the virtual. In a world of copies and clones in which everything can be made present in an instant by technology, we can no longer even speak of reality. Beyond Nietzsche's symbolic murder of God, our virtual world free of referents is in the process of exterminating reality, leaving no trace: "The corps(e) of the Real--if there is any--has not been recovered, is nowhere to be found." Peppered with Baudrillard's signature counterintuitive moves, prophetic visions, and dark humor, _The Vital Illusion_ exposes the contradictions that guide our contemporary culture and rule our lives. (shrink)

We can often permissibly choose a worse self-interested option over a better altruistic alternative. For example, it is permissible to eat out rather than donate the money to feed five hungry children for a single meal. If we eat out, we do something permissibly partial toward ourselves. If we donate, we go beyond the call of moral duty and do something supererogatory. Such phenomena aren’t easy to explain, and they rule out otherwise promising moral theories. Incommensurability and Ruth Chang’s (...) notion of parity can explain certain small improvement puzzles, but they can’t explain permissible partiality and supererogation. On the other hand, Josh Gert’s distinction between justifying and requiring weight can explain all three phenomena: permissible partiality, supererogation, and the relevant small improvement puzzle. Indeed, this chapter provides a reason to endorse the justifying/requiring weight distinction by showing that it provides the only extant explanation of all three phenomena. (shrink)

How can intellectuals who oppose the illegitimate war in Iraq come to similar terms with the U.S. neoconservatives, and their unrepentant British collaborators, who have stranded us in it? In the Tempest, Shakespeare’s most political play, comedy though it is meant to be, intellectuals are warned not to consider themselves guiltless. But how can those who marched against the war, or who tried to speak truth to power in other ways, be guilty of its misuses? Surely this is too harsh (...) a view of the role of the public intellectual. What choice did Prospero really have? He was exiled, hapless, stranded. What choice do intellectuals who are against the war have? We, too, are powerless. Aren’t we? (shrink)

“I can smell you”—spoken as a factive statement, it is jarring and if uttered to a stranger it seems transgressive. Telling someone you see them generates a sense of affirming their identity, but your smell is private. Perhaps smell isn’t the lead sense, but what I hope to make clear throughout this chapter is that our sense of smell allows us to perceive aspects of our own and other’s identity. The chapter aims to show that our unconscious perception of the (...) smell of ourselves and others partially constitutes the foundations for our sense of self. We are immersed within an invisible sea of odourous chemical currents, some derived from our environment with its everyday flux of objects while other odourous plumes derive from the humanity encompassing us. People have a rich bouquet of smells generated from the volatile chemical compounds emanating from them, including their bodily odours (BO), their adorned perfumes, and associated environmental smells from their abode hitchhiking on their person. As individuals we have a smell that is composed from these ranges of odours that allows us to recognize ourselves as an olfactory entity distinct from someone else’s BO bouquet. However, if forced to introspectively report our own smell we would be befuddled. We aren’t often aware of smelling ourselves (unless we are worried about stinking), and we have trouble recollecting the last time we volitionally engaged in exploratorily sniffing someone else. Thus, establishing a weak constitution relation between smelling and our sense of self is challenging. What will need to be revealed is something that escapes our daily awareness and introspective access, that is, that we are continually perceiving our own and other people’s smells. Moreover, these qualitative states occur outside of conscious awareness and yet generate an underlying aspect of our sense of self. Aside from jostling our intuitions about the foundations of our sense of self the evidence surveyed might also require reconceptualizing the conscious versus unconscious distinction in accommodating the nature of our olfactory self and other smelling. (shrink)