Thinking is overrated: golfers perform best when distracted and under pressure; firefighters make the right calls without a clue as to why; and you are yourself ill advised to look at your steps as you go down the stairs, or to try and remember your pin number before typing it in. Just do it, mindlessly. Both empirical psychologists and the common man have long worked out that thinking is often a bad idea, but philosophers still hang on to an intellectualist (...) picture of human action. This book challenges that picture and calls on philosophers to wake up to the power of mindlessness: it is our habits, skills and conventions that help us cope with a world way too diverse for us to hope to always reinterpret it. The book presents the empirical evidence that has been accumulating over the last few decades and offers a philosophical analysis of mindless phenomena such as habits, skilled activity, automatic actions, emotional and spontaneous reactions and social conventions, arguing that traditional philosophical theories of action should be revised to do justice to this forgotten but important part of our lives: when we act mindlessly, we are free and fully rational even though we neither deliberate nor are aware of what we are doing. (shrink)

Ethics Without Intention tackles the questions raised by difficult moral dilemmas by providing a critical analysis of double effect and its most common ethical and political applications. The book discusses the philosophical distinction between intended harm and foreseen but unintended harm. This distinction, which, according to the doctrine of double effect, makes a difference to the moral justification of actions, is widely applied to some of the most controversial ethical and political questions of our time: collateral damages in wars and (...) acts of terrorism; palliative care, euthanasia, abortion, and embryo research; self-defence, suicide, and self-sacrifice. It is also crucial to the now notorious theoretical cases of the trolley problem and the knobe effect. -/- Di Nucci approaches the doctrine of double effect from four key directions: its historical origins, which can be traced further back than the classic attribution to Aquinas; its theoretical coherence, which is the subject of a lively contemporary debate in philosophy; its moral intuitiveness, which has always been taken for granted but has recently begun to be questioned; and finally its relevance to the difficult moral and political decisions of our time. An engaging and comprehensive introduction to the doctrine of double effect. (shrink)

I analyse an argument according to which medical artificial intelligence represents a threat to patient autonomy—recently put forward by Rosalind McDougall in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The argument takes the case of IBM Watson for Oncology to argue that such technologies risk disregarding the individual values and wishes of patients. I find three problems with this argument: it confuses AI with machine learning; it misses machine learning’s potential for personalised medicine through big data; it fails to distinguish between evidence-based (...) advice and decision-making within healthcare. I conclude that how much and which tasks we should delegate to machine learning and other technologies within healthcare and beyond is indeed a crucial question of our time, but in order to answer it, we must be careful in analysing and properly distinguish between the different systems and different delegated tasks. (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson has recently proposed a new argument for the thesis that killing the one in the Trolley Problem is not permissible. Her argument relies on the introduction of a new scenario, in which the bystander may also sacrifice herself to save the five. Thomson argues that those not willing to sacrifice themselves if they could may not kill the one to save the five. Bryce Huebner and Marc Hauser have recently put Thomson's argument to empirical test by asking (...) people what they should do in the new trilemma case, in which they may also sacrifice themselves. They found that the majority judge that they should either kill the one or sacrifice themselves; Huebner and Hauser argue that those numbers speak against Thomson's argument. But Thomson's argument was about the dialectical effect of the new trilemma on the traditional dilemma, rather than about the trilemma itself. Here I present the results of a study in which I asked subjects first what they should do in the trilemma and then what they should do in the traditional Trolley Problem. I found that, if asked first about the trilemma, subjects then have the intuition that killing the one in the traditional Bystander at the Switch is not permissible?exactly what Thomson's argument had predicted. (shrink)

In a series of papers, 137–158; 1994, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23, 61–74, 1999) Fine develops his hylomorphic theory of embodiments. In this article, we supply a formal semantics for this theory that is adequate to the principles laid down for it in. In Section 1, we lay out the theory of embodiments as Fine presents it. In Section 2, we argue on Cantorian grounds that the theory needs to be stabilized, and sketch some ways forward, discussing various choice points (...) in modeling the view. In Section 3, we develop a formal semantics for the theory of embodiments by constructing embodiments in stages and restricting the domain of the second-order quantifiers. In Section 4 we give a few illustrative examples to show how the models deliver Finean hylomorphic consequences. In Section 5, we prove that Fine’s principles are sound with respect to this semantics. In Section 6 we present some inexpressibility results concerning Fine’s various notions of parthood and show that in our formal semantics these notions are all expressible using a single mereological primitive. In Section 7, we prove several mereological results stemming from the model theory, showing that the mereology is surprisingly robust. In Section 8, we draw some philosophical lessons from the formal semantics, and in particular respond to Koslicki’s main objection to Fine’s theory. In the appendix we present proofs of the inexpressibility results of Section 6. (shrink)

Philosophers debate about which logical system, if any, is the One True Logic. This involves a disagreement concerning the sufficient conditions that may single out the correct logic among various candidates. This paper discusses whether there are necessary conditions for the correct logic; that is, I discuss whether there are features such that if a logic is correct, then it has those features, although having them might not be sufficient to single out the correct logic. Traditional rationalist arguments suggest that (...) the necessary conditions of thought are necessary and sufficient conditions singling out the correct logical and mathematical theories. In the contemporary debate, Chalmers advocates a view along this line. Jago, analogously, suggests that the necessary conditions for thought—or, as he calls them, our basic epistemic expectations—single out a family of logical and mathematical theories. Warren and Williamson, on the other hand, argue that there are no necessary conditions of thought. I argue that there are necessary conditions for thought, and these are necessary but not sufficient conditions to be the correct logic; indeed, these are features that all logics—correct or incorrect—share. No view we can understand is ruled out by the necessary conditions for thought, but we cannot understand quite any view. Human linguistic and conceptual abilities are genetically constrained, and these constraints are our best guide to the boundaries of logic. Arguing for this, I tackle two dogmas of modern rationalism: namely, the view that the biological constraints of human cognition have no bearing on the boundaries of the epistemic space, and the view that the boundaries of thought coincide with the boundaries of language. (shrink)

I argue against Appel's recent proposal – in this JOURNAL – that there is a fundamental human right to sexual pleasure, and that therefore the sexual pleasure of severely disabled people should be publicly funded – by thereby partially legalizing prostitution. I propose an alternative that does not need to pose a new positive human right; does not need public funding; does not need the legalization of prostitution; and that would offer a better experience to the severely disabled: charitable non-profit (...) organizations whose members would voluntarily and freely provide sexual pleasure to the severely disabled. (shrink)

General-elimination harmony articulates Gentzen’s idea that the elimination-rules are justified if they infer from an assertion no more than can already be inferred from the grounds for making it. Dummett described the rules as not only harmonious but stable if the E-rules allow one to infer no more and no less than the I-rules justify. Pfenning and Davies call the rules locally complete if the E-rules are strong enough to allow one to infer the original judgement. A method is given (...) of generating harmonious general-elimination rules from a collection of I-rules. We show that the general-elimination rules satisfy Pfenning and Davies’ test for local completeness, but question whether that is enough to show that they are stable. Alternative conditions for stability are considered, including equivalence between the introduction- and elimination-meanings of a connective, and recovery of the grounds for assertion, finally generalizing the notion of local completeness to capture Dummett’s notion of stability satisfactorily. We show that the general-elimination rules meet the last of these conditions, and so are indeed not only harmonious but also stable. (shrink)

Serious actualism is the prima facie plausible thesis that things couldn’t have been related while being nothing. The thesis plays an important role in a number of arguments in metaphysics, e.g., in Plantinga’s argument for the claim that propositions do not ontologically depend on the things that they are about and in Williamson’s argument for the claim that he, Williamson, is necessarily something. Salmon has put forward that which is, arguably, the most pressing challenge to serious actualists. Salmon’s objection is (...) based on a scenario intended to elicit the judgment that merely possible entities may nonetheless be actually referred to, and so may actually have properties. It is shown that predicativism, the thesis that names are true of their bearers, provides the resources for replying to Salmon’s objection. In addition, an argument for serious actualism based on Stephanou, 219–250 2007) is offered. Finally, it is shown that once serious actualism is conjoined with some minimal assumptions, it implies property necessitism, the thesis that necessarily all properties are necessarily something, as well as a strong comprehension principle for higher-order modal logic according to which for every condition there necessarily is the property of being a thing satisfying that condition. (shrink)

We think less than we think. My thesis moves from this suspicion to show that standard accounts of intentional action can't explain the whole of agency. Causalist accounts such as Davidson's and Bratman's, according to which an action can be intentional only if it is caused by a particular mental state of the agent, don't work for every kind of action. So-called automatic actions, effortless performances over which the agent doesn't deliberate, and to which she doesn't need to pay attention, (...) constitute exceptions to the causalist framework, or so I argue in this thesis. Not all actions are the result of a mental struggle, painful hesitation, or the weighting of evidence. Through practice, many performances become second nature. Think of familiar cases such as one's morning routines and habits: turning on the radio, brushing your teeth. Think of the highly skilled performances involved in sport and music: Jarrett's improvised piano playing, the footballer's touch. Think of agents' spontaneous reactions to their environment: ducking a blow, smiling. Psychological research has long acknowledged the distinctiveness and importance of automatic actions, while philosophy has so far explained them together with the rest of agency. Intuition tells us that automatic actions are intentional actions of ours all the same (I have run a survey which shows that this intuition is widely shared): not only our own autonomous deeds for which we are held responsible, but also necessary components in the execution and satisfaction of our general plans and goals. But do standard causal accounts deliver on the intentionality of automatic actions? I think not. Because, in automatic cases, standard appeals to intentions, beliefs, desires, and psychological states in general ring hollow. We just act: we don't think, either consciously or unconsciously. On the reductive side, Davidson's view can't but appeal to, at best, unconscious psychological states, the presence and causal role of which is, I argue, inferred from the needs of a theory, rather than from evidence in the world. On the non-reductive side, Bratman agrees, with his refutation of the Simple View, that we can't just attach an intention to every action that we want to explain. But Bratman’s own Single Phenomenon View, appealing to the mysterious notion of 'motivational potential', merely acknowledges the need for refinement without actually providing one. So I propose my own account of intentional action, the 'guidance view', according to which automatic actions are intentional: differently from Davidson and Bratman, who only offer necessary conditions in order to avoid the problem of causal deviance, I offer a full-blown account: E's phi-ing is intentional if and only If phi-ing is under E's guidance. This account resembles one developed by Frankfurt, with the crucial difference that Frankfurt – taking 'acting with an intention' and 'acting intentionally' to be synonymous – thinks that guidance is sufficient only for some movement being an action, but not for some movement being an intentional action. I argue that, on the other hand, Frankfurt's concept of guidance can be developed so that it is sufficient for intentional action too. In Chapter One I present and defend my definition of ‘automatic action’. In Chapter Two I show that such understanding of automatic actions finds confirmation in empirical psychology. In Chapter Three I show that Davidson's reductive account of intentional action does not work for automatic actions. In Chapter Four I show that the two most influential non-reductive accounts of intentional action, the Simple View and Bratman's Single Phenomenon View, don't work either. And in Chapter Five I put forward and defend my positive thesis, the 'guidance view'. Also, in the Appendix I present the findings of my survey on the intentionality of automatic actions. (shrink)

Cet article se demande si un dialogue entre la civilisation chinoise et Leo Strauss est possible et à quelles conditions. Il décrit le contexte d’introduction de Strauss en Chine, en se concentrant sur Liu Xiaofeng, l’un des straussiens les plus influents de la Chine contemporaine. L’analyse de son interprétation de la critique straussienne de la modernité occidentale fait ressortir deux distorsions fondamentales : là où Strauss considérait l’« enseignement tyrannique » comme quelque chose de théorique, Liu en fait un plan (...) d’action politique ; au lieu de reconnaître la modernité des bases idéologiques de l’État fondé par Mao Zedong, il les interprète au crible de la tradition. Cette double déformation contredit l’intention de Strauss en tant que philosophe zététique et socratique. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is an important anomaly to the causalist/compatibilist paradigm in the philosophy of action and free will. This anomaly, which to my knowledge has gone unnoticed so far, can be found in the philosophy of Harry Frankfurt. Two of his most important contributions to the field – his influential counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities and his ‘guidance’ view of action – are incompatible. The importance of this inconsistency goes far beyond the issue (...) of coherence within Frankfurt’s philosophy. I shall argue that this inconsistency represents an important anomaly within the causalist/compatibilist framework; so that we should start to seriously consider having to move on from the established paradigm. (shrink)

I argue that it is possible for prospective mothers to wrong prospective fathers by bearing their child; and that lifting paternal liability for child support does not correct the wrong inflicted to fathers. It is therefore sometimes wrong for prospective mothers to bear a child, or so I argue here. I show that my argument for considering the legitimate interests of prospective fathers is not a unique exception to an obvious right to procreate. It is, rather, part of a growing (...) consensus that procreation can be morally problematic and that generally talking of rights in this context might not be warranted. Finally, I argue that giving up a right to procreate does not imply nor suggest giving up on women’s absolute right to abort, which I defend. (shrink)

I argue that the empirical literature on priming effects does not warrant nor suggest the conclusion, drawn by prominent psychologists such as J. A. Bargh, that we have no free will or less free will than we might think. I focus on a particular experiment by Bargh – the ‘elderly’ stereotype case in which subjects that have been primed with words that remind them of the stereotype of the elderly walk on average slower out of the experiment’s room than control (...) subjects – and I show that we cannot say that subjects cannot help walking slower or that they are not free in doing do. I then illustrate how these cases can be reconciled and normalized within a Davidsonian theory of action to show that, in walking slower, subjects are acting intentionally. My argument applies across various experiments, including those of goal priming. In the final section I argue that the only cases in which priming effects are efficacious are so-called Buridan cases. (shrink)

I argue that so-called automatic actions – routine performances that we successfully and effortlessly complete without thinking such as turning a door handle, downshifting to 4th gear, or lighting up a cigarette – pose a challenge to causalism, because they do not appear to be preceded by the psychological states which, according to the causal theory of action, are necessary for intentional action. I argue that causalism cannot prove that agents are simply unaware of the relevant psychological states when they (...) act automatically, because these content-specific psychological states aren’t always necessary to make coherent rational sense of the agent’s behaviour. I then dispute other possible grounds for the attribution of these psychological states, such as agents’ own self-attributions. In the final section I introduce an alternative to causalism, building on Frankfurt’s concept of guidance. (shrink)

This article is concerned with an exploration of a family of systems—called immune logics—that arise from certain dualizations of the well-known family of infectious logics. The distinctive feature of the semantic of infectious logics is the presence of a certain “infectious” semantic value, by which two different though equivalent things are meant. On the one hand, it is meant that these values are zero elements for all the operations in the underlying algebraic structure. On the other hand, it is meant (...) that these values behave in a value-in-value-out fashion for all the operations in the underlying algebraic structure. Thus, in a rather informal manner, we will refer to immune logics as those systems whose underlying semantics count with a certain “immune” semantic value behaving in a way that is somewhat dual to that of the infectious values. In a more formal manner, carrying out this dualization will prove to be not as straightforward as one could imagine, since the two characterizations of infectiousness discussed above lead to two different outcomes when one tries to conduct them. We explore these alternatives and provide technical results regarding them, and the various logical systems defined using such semantics. (shrink)

I argue that we should give up the fight to rescue causal theories of action from fundamental challenges such as the problem of deviant causal chains; and that we should rather pursue an account of action based on the basic intuition that control identifies agency. In Section 1 I introduce causalism about action explanation. In Section 2 I present an alternative, Frankfurt’s idea of guidance. In Section 3 I argue that the problem of deviant causal chains challenges causalism in two (...) important respects: first, it emphasizes that causalism fails to do justice to our basic intuition that control is necessary for agency. Second, it provides countless counterexamples to causalism, which many recent firemen have failed to extinguish – as I argue in some detail. Finally, in Section 4 I argue, contra Al Mele, that control does not require the attribution of psychological states as causes. (shrink)

I defend the argument that if embryo loss in stem cell research is morally problematic, then embryo loss in in vivo conception is similarly morally problematic. According to a recent challenge to this argument, we can distinguish between in vivo embryo loss and the in vitro embryo loss of stem cell research by appealing to the doctrine of double effect. I argue that this challenge fails to show that in vivo embryo loss is a mere unintended side effect while in (...) vitro embryo loss is an intended means and that, even if we refine the challenge by appealing to Michael Bratman's three roles of intention, the distinction is still unwarranted. (shrink)

Necessitism, Contingentism, and Theory Equivalence is a dissertation on issues in higher-order modal metaphysics. Consider a modal higher-order language with identity in which the universal quantifier is interpreted as expressing universal quantification and the necessity operator is interpreted as expressing metaphysical necessity. The main question addressed in the dissertation concerns the correct theory formulated in this language. A different question that also takes centre stage in the dissertation is what it takes for theories to be equivalent.The whole dissertation consists of (...) an extended argument in defence of the truth of two seemingly inconsistent higher-order modal theories, specifically: 1.Plantingan Moderate Contingentism, a theory based on Plantinga’s [1] modal metaphysics that is committed to, among other things, the contingent being of some individuals and the necessary being of all possible higher-order entities;2.Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism, a theory advocated by Williamson [3] which is committed to, among other things, the necessary being of every possible individual as well as of every possible higher-order entity.Part of the case for these theories’ joint truth relies on defences of the following metaphysical theses: Thorough Serious Actualism, the thesis that no things could have been related while being nothing, and Higher-Order Necessitism, the thesis that necessarily, every higher-order entity is necessarily something. It is shown that Thorough Serious Actualism and Higher-Order Necessitism are both implicit commitments of very weak logical theories. The defence of Higher-Order Necessitism constitutes a powerful challenge to Stalnaker’s [2] Thorough Contingentism, a theory committed to, among other things, the view that there could have been some individuals as well as some entities of any higher-order that could have been nothing.In the dissertation it is argued that Plantingan Moderate Contingentism and Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism are in fact equivalent, even if they appear to be jointly inconsistent. The case for this claim relies on the Synonymy account, a novel account of theory equivalence developed and defended in the dissertation. According to this account, theories are equivalent just in case they have the same commitments and conception of logical space.By way of defending the Synonymy account’s adequacy, the account is applied to the debate between noneists, proponents of the view that some things do not exist, and Quineans, proponents of the view that to exist just is to be some thing. The Synonymy account is shown to afford a more nuanced and better understanding of that debate by revealing that what noneists and Quineans are really disagreeing about is what expressive resources are available to appropriately describe the world.By coupling a metatheoretical result with tools from the philosophy of language, it is argued that Plantingan Moderate Contingentism and Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism are synonymous theories, and so, by the lights of the Synonymy account, equivalent. Given the defence of their extant commitments made in the dissertation, it is concluded that Plantingan Moderate Contingentism and Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism are both correct. A corollary of this result is that the dispute between Plantingans and Williamsonians is, in an important sense, merely verbal. For if two theories are equivalent, then they “require the same of the world for their truth.”Thus, the results of the dissertation reveal that if one speaks as a Plantingan while advocating Plantingan Moderate Contingentism, or as a Williamsonian while advocating Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism, then one will not go wrong. Notwithstanding, one will still go wrong if one speaks as a Plantingan while advocating Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism, or as a Williamsonian while advocating Plantingan Moderate Contingentism.On the basis of a conception of the individual constants and predicates of second-order modal languages as strongly Millian, i.e., as having actually existing entities as their semantic values, in the appendix are presented second-order modal logics consistent with Stalnaker’s Thorough Contingentism. Furthermore, it is shown there that these logics are strong enough for applications of higher-order modal logic in mathematics, a result that constitutes a reply to an argument to the contrary by Williamson [3]. Finally, these logics are proven to be complete relative to particular “thoroughly contingentist” classes of models. (shrink)

I argue against the Doctrine of Double Effect’s explanation of the moral difference between terror bombing and strategic bombing. I show that the standard thought-experiment of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber which dominates this debate is underdetermined in three crucial respects: (1) the non-psychological worlds of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; (2) the psychologies of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; and (3) the structure of the thought-experiment, especially in relation to its similarity with the Trolley Problem. (1) If the two (...) worlds are not identical, then it may be these differences between the two worlds and not the Doctrine of Double Effect to explain the moral difference; (2a) if Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber have the same causal beliefs, then why does Terror Bomber set out to kill the children? It may then be this unwarranted and immoral choice and not the Doctrine of Double Effect that explains the moral difference; (2b) if the two have different causal beliefs, then we can’t rule out the counterfactual that, had Strategic Bomber had the same beliefs as Terror Bomber, she would have also acted as Terror Bomber did. Finally, (3) the Strategic Bomber scenario could also be constructed so as to be structurally equivalent to the Fat Man scenario in the Trolley Problem: but then the Doctrine of Double Effect would give different answers to two symmetrical cases. (shrink)

I distinguish between 'hard nudges' and 'soft nudges', arguing that it is possible to show that the latter can be compatible with informed consent - as Cohen has recently suggested; but that the real challenge is the compatibility of the former. Hard nudges are the more effective nudges because they work on less than conscious mechanisms such as those underlying our habits: whether those influences - which are often beyond the subject's awareness - can be reconciled with informed consent in (...) health care is the more challenging question. I suggest two directions for possible answers: on the one hand, looking at the growing empirical literature on mindless judgement and behaviour; and on the other hand considering a more diversified conception of consent, which I sketch. (shrink)

How does the use of military drones affect the legal, political, and moral responsibility of different actors involved in their deployment and design? This volume offers a fresh contribution to the ethics of drone warfare by providing, for the first time, a systematic interdisciplinary discussion of different responsibility issues raised by military drones. The book discusses four main sets of questions: First, from a legal point of view, we analyse the ways in which the use of drones makes the attribution (...) of criminal responsibility to individuals for war crimes more complicated and what adjustments may be required in international criminal law and in military practices to avoid ’responsibility gaps’ in warfare. From a moral and political perspective, the volume looks at the conditions under which the use of military drones by states is impermissible, permissible, or even obligatory and what the responsibilities of a state in the use of drones towards both its citizens and potential targets are. From a socio-technical perspective, what kind of new human machine interaction might drones bring and which new kinds of shared agency and responsibility? Finally, we ask how the use of drones changes our conception of agency and responsibility. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in ethics and to those in law, politics and the military involved in the design, deployment and evaluation of military drones. (shrink)

Our aim is to provide a sequent calculus whose external consequence relation coincides with the three-valued paracomplete logic `of nonsense' introduced by Dmitry Bochvar and, independently, presented as the weak Kleene logic K3W by Stephen C. Kleene. The main features of this calculus are (i) that it is non-reflexive, i.e., Identity is not included as an explicit rule (although a restricted form of it with premises is derivable); (ii) that it includes rules where no variable-inclusion conditions are attached; and (iii) (...) that it is hybrid, insofar as it includes both left and right operational introduction as well as elimination rules. (shrink)

In this article, our aim is to take a step towards a full understanding of the notion of paraconsistency in the context of metainferential logics. Following the work initiated by Barrio et al. [2018], we will consider a metainferential logic to be paraconsistent whenever the metainferential version of Explosion is invalid. However, our contribution consists in modifying the definition of meta-Explosion by extending the standard framework and introducing a negation for inferences and metainferences. From this new perspective, Tarskian paraconsistent logics (...) such as LP will not turn out to be metainferentially paraconsistent, in contrast to, for instance, non-transitive logics like ST. Finally, we will end up by defining a logic which is metainferentially paraconsistent at every level, and discussing whether this logic is uniform through translations. (shrink)

This paper argues against Appel's recent proposal—in this journal—that there is a fundamental human right to sexual pleasure, and that therefore the sexual pleasure of severely disabled people should be publicly funded—by thereby partially legalising prostitution. An alternative is proposed that does not need to pose a new positive human right; does not need public funding; does not need the legalisation of prostitution; and that would offer a better experience to the severely disabled: charitable non-profit organisations whose members would voluntarily (...) and freely provide sexual pleasure to the severely disabled. (shrink)

Ought parents, in general, to value being biologically tied to their children? Is it important, in particular, that both parents be biologically tied to their children? I will address these fundamental questions by looking at a fairly new practice within IVF treatments, so-called IVF-with-ROPA ( Reception of Oocytes from Partner ), which allows lesbian couples to „share motherhood‟ with one partner providing the eggs while the other becomes pregnant. I believe that IVF-with-ROPA is, just like other IVF treatments, morally permissible; (...) but here I argue that the increased biological ties which IVF-with-ROPA allows for do not have any particular value beside the satisfaction of a legitimate wish, because there is no intrinsic value in a biological tie between parents and children; further, I argue that equality within parental projects cannot be achieved by redistributing biological ties. (shrink)

My sexual rights puzzle according to which positive sexual rights are not compatible with negative sexual rights has been recently criticised in the Journal of Medical Ethics by Steven J Firth, who has put forward three objections to the puzzle. In this brief response, I analyse and reject each of these three objections.

I argue that the right to sexual satisfaction of severely physically and mentally disabled people and elderly people who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases can be fulfilled by deploying sex robots; this would enable us to satisfy the sexual needs of many who cannot provide for their own sexual satisfaction; without at the same time violating anybody’s right to sexual self-determination. I don’t offer a full-blown moral justification of deploying sex robots in such cases, as not all morally relevant concerns can (...) be addressed here; rather, I put forward a plausible way of fulfilling acute sexual needs without thereby violating anybody’s sexual rights. (shrink)

I show that Pickard’s argument against the irresistibility of addiction fails because her proposed dilemma, according to which either drug-seeking does not count as action or addiction is resistible, is flawed; and that is the case whether or not one endorses Pickard’s controversial definition of action. Briefly, we can easily imagine cases in which drug-seeking meets Pickard’s conditions for agency without thereby implying that the addiction was not irresistible, as when the drug addict may take more than one route to (...) go meet her dealer. (shrink)

Nesse artigo temos como objetivo analisar a representação do conceito de liberdade na primeira temporada da série “Merli”, veiculada no canal de streaming Netflix. Nela, pretendemos verificar como o professor de Filosofia Merli Bergeron trabalha conceitos libertários e suscita reflexões críticas em seus alunos sobre os padrões de convívio socialmente impostos pelas instituições primárias e secundárias. Ao mesmo tempo, pretendemos abordar a personalidade do professor, discutindo sobre o convívio que ele mantém com os colegas de trabalho e seus alunos, assim (...) como em sua vida particular, para visualizarmos se, de fato, ele pratica aquilo que discursa aos estudantes durante suas aulas. Haverá um foco maior na relação dele com o aluno Ivan Basco, que sofre com agorafobia e recebe aulas particulares de Merli para superar sua situação de isolamento. Em um primeiro momento, com caráter introdutório, iremos discutir sobre a importância da discussão de liberdade na contemporaneidade. A seguir, exporemos conceitos formulados por diversos pensadores acerca do que é a liberdade e sua importância para a emancipação humana. A partir disso, serão abordadas informações básicas sobre a produção da série, como os diretores, veiculadores e atores envolvidos para, por fim, executarmos a análise dos capítulos do seriado e apresentarmos nossas considerações finais. Diversos teóricos pertinentes a esse trabalho serão utilizados na revisão bibliográfica. Como metodologias de análise fílmica usaremos, para verificação estrutural do filme, a metodologia de análise fílmica de Manuela Penafria e, para visualização das formas simbólicas, a Hermenêutica de Profundidade, proposta por John Thompson em “Ideologia e Cultura Moderna”. (shrink)

The argument for the moral permissibility of killing newborns is a challenge to liberal positions on abortion because it can be considered a reductio of their defence of abortion. Here I defend the liberal stance on abortion by arguing that the argument for the moral permissibility of killing newborns on ground of the social, psychological and economic burden on the parents recently put forward by Giubilini and Minerva is not valid; this is because they fail to show that newborns cannot (...) be harmed and because there are morally relevant differences between fetuses and newborns. (shrink)

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for a dialetheist (...) answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

Given a three-valued definition of validity, which choice of three-valued truth tables for the connectives can ensure that the resulting logic coincides exactly with classical logic? We give an answer to this question for the five monotonic consequence relations $st$, $ss$, $tt$, $ss\cap tt$, and $ts$, when the connectives are negation, conjunction, and disjunction. For $ts$ and $ss\cap tt$ the answer is trivial (no scheme works), and for $ss$ and $tt$ it is straightforward (they are the collapsible schemes, in which (...) the middle value acts like one of the classical values). For $st$, the schemes in question are the Boolean normal schemes that are either monotonic or collapsible. (shrink)

In a previous paper, I had argued that Strong’s counterexamples to Marquis’s argument against abortion—according to which terminating fetuses is wrong because it deprives them of a valuable future—fail either because they have no bearing on Marquis’s argument or because they make unacceptable claims about what constitutes a valuable future. In this paper I respond to Strong’s criticism of my argument according to which I fail to acknowledge that Marquis uses "future like ours" and "valuable future" interchangeably. I show that (...) my argument does not rely on not acknowledging that "future like ours" and "valuable future" are interchangeable; and that, rather, it is exactly by replacing "future like ours" with "valuable future" that I construct my argument against Strong. I conclude with some remarks on how Marquis’s concept of "future like ours" should be interpreted. (shrink)

The metaverse is the extension of this virtual world in which our avatars and other holograms will socialize. Should we speak of incarnation when it is virtual beings that represent us rather than physical bodies?

In 1957, Francis Crick outlined a startling vision of life in which the great diversity of forms and shapes of macromolecules was encoded in the one-dimensional sequence of nucleic acids. This paper situates Crick's new vision in the debates of the 1950s about protein synthesis and gene action. After exploring the reception of Crick's ideas, it shows how they differed radically from a different model of protein synthesis which enjoyed wide currency in that decade. In this alternative model, advocated by (...) Linus Pauling and other luminaries, three-dimensional templates directed the folding of proteins. Even though it was always considered somewhat speculative, this theory was supported by a number of empirical results originating in different experimental systems. It was eventually replaced by a model in which the forms and shapes of macromolecules resulted solely from their amino acid sequence, dramatically simplifying the problem of protein synthesis which Crick was attempting to solve in 1957. (shrink)

I argue that the arguments brought by Counsel for M to the English Court of Protection are morally problematic in prioritising subjective interests that are the result of ‘consistent autonomous thought’ over subjective interests that are the result of a more limited cognitive perspective.

I analyse the relationship between the Doctrine of Double Effect and the Trolley Problem: the former offers a solution for the latter only on the premise that killing the one in Bystander at the Switch is permissible. Here I offer both empirical and theoretical arguments against the permissibility of killing the one: firstly, I present data from my own empirical studies according to which the intuition that killing the one is permissible is neither widespread nor stable; secondly, I defend a (...) normative principle according to which killing the one in Bystander at the Switch is not permissible. In conclusion, there just is no trolley problem. (shrink)

The book outlines the historical development of Public Law and the state from ancient times to the modern day, offering an account of relevant events in parallel with a general historical background, establishing and explaining the relationships between political, religious, and economic events.

This paper shows that the counterexamples proposed by Strong in 2008 in the Journal of Medical Ethics to Marquis’s argument against abortion fail. Strong’s basic idea is that there are cases — for example, terminally ill patients — where killing an adult human being is prima facie seriously morally wrong even though that human being is not being deprived of a "valuable future". So Marquis would be wrong in thinking that what is essential about the wrongness of killing an adult (...) human being is that they are being deprived of a valuable future. This paper shows that whichever way the concept of "valuable future" is interpreted, the proposed counterexamples fail: if it is interpreted as "future like ours", the proposed counterexamples have no bearing on Marquis’s argument. If the concept is interpreted as referring to the patient’s preferences, it must be either conceded that the patients in Strong’s scenarios have some valuable future or admitted that killing them is not seriously morally wrong. Finally, if "valuable future" is interpreted as referring to objective standards, one ends up with implausible and unpalatable moral claims. (shrink)

In this thesis I defend optimism about philosophical progress, which is a form of anti-exceptionalism about philosophy. Pessimists maintain that philosophy lacks the distinctive features that make science progressive. Optimism maintains that philosophy is like science, in this respect. My argumentative strategy is the following. I review the literature on philosophical progress to identify the feature that, according to pessimists, philosophy lacks. Then, I develop a historical case study to show that philosophy has these features. The goal is showing that (...) philosophy makes progress by pessimistic standards. My strategy is novel because other optimists, including Stoljar and Dellsén, Firing, and Norton, focus on arguing that a certain set of conditions are sufficient for progress, contrary to what pessimists hold. I focus instead on arguing that, contrary to what pessimists hold, philosophy makes progress by their standards. The most common pessimistic argument is the following: first, pessimists argue that consensus is a necessary condition for progress, second, they argue that philosophy is pervaded by disagreement. It follows that philosophy is exceptional. Beebee, Chalmers, Dietrich, Goldberg, and Kornblith employ various versions of this reasoning. Optimistic responses to this argument typically grant the second premise and challenge the first. Instead, I follow Williamson in granting the first premise and challenging the second. My case study focuses on the work of Gottlob Frege, who is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy. I argue that there is consensus in contemporary philosophy about some of the views that Frege set forth. In fact, Frege’s case meets not only the pessimistic requirements for progress, Frege also produced all the epistemic goods that are associated to progress by participants in the more general debate about scientific progress. To show this, I review the literature about scientific progress, following Rowbottom’s analysis. Then I analyse various aspects of Frege’s work to show that it meets all the known conditions of progress. Thus, no matter what view about progress is correct, Frege made progress. Having argued that Frege made progress, I generalize my argument by considering three other authors that arguably made progress in the past. Moreover, I consider contemporary debates in contemporary philosophy to argue that philosophy continues to make progress to this day. Finally, I review some of the barriers to progress that seem indeed to be holding back philosophy, and other disciplines. Philosophy made progress in the past and continues to make progress to this day. But not all is good. Having ruled out pessimism about philosophical progress, we are in a better position to see how philosophy, and other disciplines, could be improved. (shrink)