This article is a review of Tom Tyler’s CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers, a timely and crucial contribution to critical animal studies scholarship. CIFERAE is a remarkable and careful analysis of epistemological anthropocentrism – in particular, what Tyler calls a “first-and-foremost anthropocentrism” - and the ways in which animals ‘figure’ in the history of Western thought. Moreover, the text prompts a critique of ‘the human’ and the formation of the ‘we.’ As such, Tyler’s philosophical investigation or bestiary pertains not (...) only to theories of knowledge, but holds significant ethical and political implications. (shrink)

The concept of natural, common life is distinguished from life as political existence in the opening lines of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer – a schism within ‘life’ that has profound consequences for Agamben’s political theory and ontology. Agamben claims that bare life now “dwells in the biological body of every living being” . As such, it is necessary to ascertain what the ‘life’ of biopolitics is – the life capable of politicization. The notion of natural living being is central to (...) Agamben’s account, and yet it remains an ambiguous and indeterminate concept. This conceptual ambiguity is informed by Agamben’s account of anthropogenesis and the relation between the ‘human’ and the realm of animality, to which the concept of negativity is pivotal. Negativity is also central to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. However, for Merleau-Ponty the ontology of Nature and man constitute “the leaves of one sole Being” . Animality and human being are emergent; Merleau-Ponty adamantly maintains, “there is no rupture” . This paper analyzes the notion of negativity in Agamben and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of Being and life, and contends that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy gives rise to an ontology that offers a more open and productive account of animality and nature. In Agamben’s account, negativity is constitutive of man, which gives rise to an irreducible disjuncture between Being and life. For Merleau-Ponty, negativity is ‘in’ Being. There is no tension between Being and ‘life’: Nature is “a leaf or layer of total Being,” and we must conceive of “the ontology of Nature as the way toward ontology”. (shrink)

Philosophies of Difference engages with the concept of difference in relation to a number of fundamental philosophical and political problems. Insisting on the inseparability of ontology, ethics and politics, the essays and interview in this volume offer original and timely approaches to thinking nature, sexuate difference, racism, and decoloniality. The collection draws on a range of sources, including Latin American Indigenous ontologies and philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Mills, and Eduardo Viveiros (...) de Castro. -/- The contributors think embodiment and life by bringing continental philosophy into generative dialogue with fields including plant studies, animal studies, decoloniality, feminist theory, philosophy of race, and law. Affirming the importance of interdisciplinarity, Philosophies of Difference contributes to a creative and critical intervention into established norms, limits, and categories. Invoking a conception of difference as both constitutive and generative, this collection offers new and important insights into how a rethinking of difference may ground new and more ethical modes of being and being-with. Philosophies of Difference unearths the constructive possibilities of difference for an ethics of relationality, and for elaborating non-anthropocentric sociality. -/- The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in Australian Feminist Law Journal. (shrink)

How do you make decisions under ignorance? That is, how do you decide when you lack subjective probabilities for some of your options’ possible outcomes? One answer is that you follow the Laplace Rule: you assign an equal probability to each state of nature for which you lack a subjective probability (that is, you use the Principle of Indifference) and then you maximize expected utility. The most influential objection to the Laplace Rule is that it is sensitive to the individuation (...) of states of nature. This sensitivity is problematic because the individuation of states seems arbitrary. In this paper, however, I argue that this objection proves too much. I argue that all plausible rules for decisions under ignorance are sensitive to the individuation of states of nature. (shrink)

Anna Mahtani describes a puzzle meant to show that the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle is incomplete as it stands and, since it cannot be completed in a satisfactory manner, decades of debate in welfare economics and ethics are undermined. In this paper, we provide a better solution to the puzzle which saves the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle from this challenge. We also explain how the plausibility of our solution is reinforced by its similarity to a standard solution to an analogous puzzle in (...) quantified epistemic logic. We also show that even if the puzzle were to remain unsolved, its impact on welfare economics and ethics would be limited. (shrink)

This article develops a new measure of freedom of choice based on the proposal that a set offers more freedom of choice than another if, and only if, the expected degree of dissimilarity between a random alternative from the set of possible alternatives and the most similar offered alternative in the set is smaller. Furthermore, a version of this measure is developed, which is able to take into account the values of the possible options.

These new essays on J. L. Austin's philosophy constitute the first major study of his thought in decades.

Robert Sinclair: Quine on Evidence: Quine's influential “Epistemology Naturalized” is typically read as arguing for the replacement of the “normative” project of traditional epistemology with a psychological description of the causal processes involved in belief acquisition. Recent commentators have rejected this view, arguing that rather than eliminate normative concerns, Quine's proposal seeks to locate them within his scientific conception of epistemology. This chapter examines this debate concerning the normative credentials of Quine's naturalized account of knowledge and its consequences for understanding (...) the role of justification and evidence within his epistemology. It explains how Quine's appeal to psychology should be seen as addressing normative concerns over the evidential connections between theory and observation and further indicates how he addresses issues involving evidence and justification. It concludes by considering some later changes in Quine's epistemology that may be seen as challenging his attempt to address the evidential support of science. (shrink)

Cinema and Agamben brings together a group of established scholars of film and visual culture to explore the nexus between the moving image and the influential work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Including two original texts by Agamben himself, published here for the first time in English translation, these essays facilitate a unique multidisciplinary conversation that fundamentally rethinks the theory and praxis of cinema. In their resourceful analyses of the work of artists such as David Claerbout, Jean-Luc Godard, Philippe Grandrieux, (...) Michael Haneke, Jean Rouch, and others, the authors put to use a range of key concepts from Agamben's rich body of work, like biopolitics, de-creation, gesture, potentiality and profanation. Sustaining the eminently interdisciplinary scope of Agamben's writing, the essays all bespeak the importance of Agamben's thought for forging new beginnings in film theory and for remedying the elegiac proclamations of the death of cinema so characteristic of the current moment. (shrink)

In this paper we shed new light on the Argument from Disagreement by putting it to test in a computer simulation. According to this argument widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by any moral facts, either because no such facts exist or because they are epistemically inaccessible or inefficacious for some other reason. Our simulation shows that if our moral opinions were influenced at least a little bit by moral facts, we (...) would quickly have reached consensus, even if our moral opinions were affected by factors such as false authorities, external political shifts, and random processes. Therefore, since no such consensus has been reached, the simulation gives us increased reason to take seriously the Argument from Disagreement. Our conclusion is however not conclusive; the simulation also indicates what assumptions one has to make in order to reject the Argument from Disagreement. The simulation algorithm we use builds on the work of Hegselmann and Krause (J Artif Soc Social Simul 5(3); 2002, J Artif Soc Social Simul 9(3), 2006). (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to show that a study of Gilbert Ryle’s work has much to contribute to the current debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism with respect to skill and know-how. According to Ryle, knowing how and skill are distinctive from and do not reduce to knowing that. What is often overlooked is that for Ryle this point is connected to the idea that the distinction between skill and mere habit is a category distinction, or a distinction in form. (...) Criticizing the reading of Ryle presented by Jason Stanley, we argue that once the formal nature of Ryle’s investigation is recognized it becomes clear that his dispositional account is not an instance of reductionist behaviorism, and that his regress argument has a broader target than Stanley appears to recognize. (shrink)

In 'A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs' Donald Davidson attacks a picture of language which, he says, is prevalent among philosophers and linguists. Davidson's criticism, even if correct, is not radical enough. The common irregularities of everyday language, such as malapropisms, nicknames, and slips of the tongue, not only imply that linguistic meanings are not governed by conventions that are learned in advance of occasions of interpretation, but undermine the very idea that linguistic meaning can be accounted for in terms of (...) systematic meaning-theories. Davidson continues to hold that Tarskian truth-definitions should play a central role in philosophical accounts of language, but if the goal is to describe rather than to improve or otherwise change language, we must give up the aspiration towards theoretical systematicity altogether. In this connection, Davidson's approach is compared with those of Quine and Wittgenstein. It is argued that Davidson's unwillingness to give up the notion that meaning is systematic is best explained in terms of his vacillating between treating meaning-theories as mere representations of the linguistic abilities of a speaker and seeing them as playing a more substantial role in communication. (shrink)

Cinema and Agamben brings together a group of established scholars of film and visual culture to explore the nexus between the moving image and the influential work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Including two original texts by Agamben himself, published here for the first time in English translation, these essays facilitate a unique multidisciplinary conversation that fundamentally rethinks the theory and praxis of cinema. In their resourceful analyses of the work of artists such as David Claerbout, Jean-Luc Godard, Philippe Grandrieux, (...) Michael Haneke, Jean Rouch, and others, the authors put to use a range of key concepts from Agamben's rich body of work, like biopolitics, de-creation, gesture, potentiality and profanation. Sustaining the eminently interdisciplinary scope of Agamben's writing, the essays all bespeak the importance of Agamben's thought for forging new beginnings in film theory and for remedying the elegiac proclamations of the death of cinema so characteristic of the current moment. (shrink)

This unique collection of articles on emotion by Wittgensteinian philosophers provides a fresh perspective on the questions framing the current philosophical and scientific debates about emotions and offers significant insights into the role of emotions for understanding interpersonal relations and the relation between emotion and ethics.

This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between Kripke's (...) work and Wittgenstein, specifically concerning the standard meter, contingent apriori and rule-following. The contributions shed light on how Kripke's philosophical outlook was influenced by Wittgenstein, and how mainstream analytic philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy can fruitfully engage with one another. Kripke and Wittgenstein will be of interest to philosophers working on Wittgenstein, Kripke, and the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This bookis about the roots of managerial rationality. A theoretical base, founded on the concept of 'memetics' is developed in order to explain human thinking and human reason as products of cultural evolution. Cultural change and development are explained by simple, value-driven memetic mechanisms like 'ritualization' and 'extremization'.

A straightforward way to handle moral uncertainty is simply to follow the moral theory in which you have most credence. This approach is known as My Favourite Theory. In this paper, I argue that, in some cases, My Favourite Theory prescribes choices that are, sequentially, worse in expected moral value than the opposite choices according to each moral theory you have any credence in. In addition this, problem generalizes to other approaches that avoid intertheoretic comparisons of value, such as My (...) Favourite Option, the Borda Rule, Variance Normalization, and the Principle of Maximizing Expected Normalized Moral Value. (shrink)

One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irrationally. This worry does not apply to (...) BI-terminating decision problems, where at each choice node backward induction prescribes a move that terminates further action. For BI-terminating decision problems, it is enough to assume that rationality and trust in rationality are retained at choice nodes reachable by rational moves. The old money pump with foresight was not BI-terminating. In this paper, we present a new money pump with foresight, one that is both BI-terminating and considerably simpler. (shrink)

Given reductionism about people, personal persistence must fundamentally consist in some kind of impersonal continuity relation. Typically, these continuity relations can hold from one to many. And, if they can, the analysis of personal persistence must include a non-branching clause to avoid non-transitive identities or multiple occupancy. It is far from obvious, however, what form this clause should take. This paper argues that previous accounts are inadequate and develops a new proposal.

Questions of ethics and the study of culture are tightly interwoven. Are we to see ethics as one thread in the fabric created by human culture or does ethics rather transcend culture? The discussions in this volume take place within this spectrum. Eleven Wittgenstein scholars explore how ethics is embedded in everyday activities and speech. The topics dealt with range from the ways we speak about human practices and nature, religious belief, gender, and moral understanding to questions about Wittgensteinâ (TM)s (...) views on ethics and what it means to understand and attend to a particular individual. Central points of departure are, firstly, that ethics cannot be reduced to any specific cultural form and, secondly, that how we conceive of language is crucially connected with how we perceive the relation between culture and ethics. The points of view put forth frequently pose radical questions to the mainstream of philosophy. The different uses to which Wittgensteinâ (TM)s thought is put also raise important questions about how one should understand the role of language, ethics and culture in his philosophy. (shrink)

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.

Is an outcome where many people are saved and one person dies better than an outcome where the one is saved and the many die? According to the standard utilitarian justification, the former is better because it has a greater sum total of well-being. This justification involves a controversial form of moral aggregation, because it is based on a comparison between aggregates of different people's well-being. Still, an alternative justification—the Argument for Best Outcomes—does not involve moral aggregation. I extend the (...) Argument for Best Outcomes to show that any utilitarian evaluation can be justified without moral aggregation. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off on each individual's expectation and then values prospects by the sum total (...) of those adjusted expectations. A standard objection to Ex-Post Prioritarianism is that it violates Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. In this article, I argue that Ex-Ante Prioritarianism suffers from much the same problem: it violates a sequential version of Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes sequences of choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. (shrink)

Simon Critchley's first book, The Ethics of Deconstruction, was originally published to great acclaim in 1992. This edition contains three new appendices and a new preface where Critchley reflects upon the origins, motivation and reception of The Ethics of Deconstruction.

Independence is the condition that, if X is preferred to Y, then a lottery between X and Z is preferred to a lottery between Y and Z given the same probability of Z. Is it rationally required that one’s preferences conform to Independence? The main objection to this requirement is that it would rule out the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences. In this paper, I put forward a sequential dominance argument with fairly weak assumptions for a variant of (...) Independence (called Independence for Constant Prospects), which shows that Allais and Ellsberg Preferences are irrational. Hence this influential objection (that is, the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences) can be rebutted. I also put forward a number of sequential dominance arguments that various versions of Independence are requirements of rationality. One of these arguments is based on very minimal assumptions, but the arguments for the versions of Independence which are strong enough to serve in the standard axiomatization of Expected Utility Theory need notably stronger assumptions. (shrink)

Kurt Gödel’s version of the Ontological Proof derives rather than assumes the crucial Possibility Claim: the claim that it is possible that something God-like exists. Gödel’s derivation starts off with a proof of the Possible Instantiation of the Positive: the principle that, if a property is positive, it is possible that there exists something that has that property. I argue that Gödel’s proof of this principle relies on some implausible axiological assumptions but it can be patched so that it only (...) relies on plausible principles. But Gödel’s derivation of the Possibility Claim also needs a substantial axiological assumption, which is still open to doubt. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze’s engagements with mathematics, replete in his work, rely upon the construction of alternative lineages in the history of mathematics, which challenge some of the self imposed limits that regulate the canonical concepts of the discipline. For Deleuze, these challenges provide an opportunity to reconfigure particular philosophical problems – for example, the problem of individuation – and to develop new concepts in response to them. The highly original research presented in this book explores the mathematical construction of Deleuze’s philosophy, (...) as well as addressing the undervalued and often neglected question of the mathematical thinkers who influenced his work. -/- In the wake of Alain Badiou’s recent and seemingly devastating attack on the way the relation between mathematics and philosophy is configured in Deleuze’s work, Simon Duffy offers a robust defence of the structure of Deleuze’s philosophy and, in particular, the adequacy of the mathematical problems used in its construction. By reconciling Badiou and Deleuze’s seeming incompatible engagements with mathematics, Duffy succeeds in presenting a solid foundation for Deleuze’s philosophy, rebuffing the recent challenges against it. -/- Simon B. Duffy is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Yale-NUS College, Singapore, and Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is the author of The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity, and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze (2006). (shrink)

This bestselling dictionary is written by one of the leading philosophers of our time, and it is widely recognized as the best dictionary of its kind. Comprehensive and authoritative, it covers every aspect of philosophy from Aristotle to Zen. With clear and concise definitions, it provides lively and accessible coverage of not only Western philosophical traditions, but also themes from Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy. New entries on philosophy of economics, social theory, neuroscience, philosophy of the mind, and moral (...) conceptions, bring this authoritative third edition up to date. It is the ideal introduction to philosophy for anyone with an interest in the subject, and it is an indispensable work of reference for students and teachers. (shrink)

The war in Vietnam claimed the lives of five million of its citizens, many of whom died in ways thought to have turned them into malevolent spirits who prey on the living. These angry ghosts are held responsible for a host of physical ailments and other misfortunes suffered by survivors of the war and their descendants. Known in the anthropological literature as possession illness, the cross‐cultural treatment for such maladies is typically provided by practitioners like mediums and exorcists, who cure (...) victims by interacting with noncorporeal entities. In Vietnam, such spirit healers were banned after the communist takeover of the North in 1945. This has posed a problem for the large numbers of Vietnamese who suffer from ghost‐induced sickness. This paper focuses on three victims of angry ghosts, presenting the common origin, context, and resolution of their suffering. In doing so, it provides an overview of Vietnamese beliefs about death and the after‐life, the ideal relationship between the living and the dead, and the connection between state politics and spirit practice. (shrink)

The widespread effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have negatively impacted upon many athletes’ mental health and increased reports of depression as well as symptoms of anxiety. Disruptions to training and competition schedules can induce athletes’ emotional distress, while concomitant government-imposed restrictions (e.g., social isolation, quarantines) reduce the availability of athletes’ social and emotional support. Written Emotional Disclosure (WED) has been used extensively in a variety of settings with diverse populations as a means to promote emotional processing. The (...) expressive writing protocol has been used to a limited extent in the context of sport and predominantly in support of athletes’ emotional processing during injury rehabilitation. We propose that WED offers an evidence-based treatment that can promote athletes’ mental health and support their return to competition. Research exploring the efficacy of the expressive writing protocol highlights a number of theoretical models underpinning the positive effects of WED; we outline how each of these potential mechanisms can address the multidimensional complexity of the challenging circumstances arising from the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., loss of earnings, returning to training and competition). Considerations and strategies for using WED to support athletes during the COVID-19 pandemic are presented. (shrink)

The Levelling-Down Objection is a standard objection to monistic egalitarian theories where equality is the only thing that has intrinsic value. Most egalitarians, however, are value pluralists; they hold that, in addition to equality being intrinsically valuable, the egalitarian currency in which we are equal or unequal is also intrinsically valuable. In this paper, I shall argue that the Levelling-Down Objection still minimizes the weight that the intrinsic badness of inequality could have in the overall intrinsic evaluation of outcomes, given (...) a certain way of measuring the badness of inequality, namely, the Additive Individual-Complaints Measure. (shrink)

I intend to argue that good friendship sometimes requires epistemic irresponsibility. To put it another way, it is not always possible to be both a good friend and a diligent believer.

Daniel C. Dennett has long maintained that the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism is confused. In a joint work with Christopher Taylor, he claims to have shown that the argument is based on a failure to understand Logic 101. Given a fairly plausible account of having the power to cause something, they claim that the argument relies on an invalid inference rule. In this paper, I show that Dennett and Taylor’s refutation does not work against a better, more standard version of (...) the Consequence Argument. Therefore, Dennett and Taylor’s alleged refutation fails. (shrink)

The return to religion has perhaps become the dominant cliche of contemporary theory, which rarely offers anything more than an exaggerated echo of a political reality dominated by religious war. Somehow, the secular age seems to have been replaced by a new era, where political action flows directly from metaphysical conflict. The Faith of the Faithless asks how we might respond. Following Critchley's Infinitely Demanding, this new book builds on its philosophical and political framework, also venturing into the questions of (...) faith, love, religion and violence. Should we defend a version of secularism and quietly accept the slide into a form of theism--or is there another way? From Rousseau's politics and religion to the return to St. Paul in Taubes, Agamben and Badiou, via explorations of politics and original sin in the work of Schmitt and John Gray, Critchley examines whether there can be a faith of the faithless, a belief for unbelievers. Expanding on his debate with Slavoj Zizek, Critchley concludes with a meditation on the question of violence, and the limits of non-violence. (shrink)

The complex gestures of artwork remain an under-explored theoretical topos in contemporary visual culture studies. In our turbulent mediasphere where images are constantly mobilized to enact symbolic forms of warfare and where they get entangled in all kinds of cultural conflicts and controversies, a turn to the gestural life of images promises a particularly pertinent avenue of intellectual inquiry. As both a cultural phenomenon and a philosophical concept, the notion of gesture straddles several disciplines, such as anthropology, linguistics, performance, theater, (...) film and visual studies. In this volume, contributors ask: How may one speak not only of the gestures of the body but also of the gestures of the image? What constitutes gesturality in the image and, more broadly, what are the gestures of the aesthetic itself? By thinking about images within this conceptual framework, this volume seeks to renew our understanding of the image. (shrink)

It is shown that the Hilbert-Bernays-Quine principle of identity of indiscernibles applies uniformly to all the contentious cases of symmetries in physics, including permutation symmetry in classical and quantum mechanics. It follows that there is no special problem with the notion of objecthood in physics. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason is considered as well; this too applies uniformly. But given the new principle of identity, it no longer implies that space, or atoms, are unreal.

A compelling requirement on normative theories is that they should be satisfiable, that is, in every possible choice situation with a finite number of alternatives, there should be at least one performable act such that, if one were to perform that act, one would comply with the theory. In this paper, I argue that, given some standard assumptions about free will and counterfactuals, Objective Act Consequentialism violates this requirement.

Gender-inclusive language, such as the Swedish pronoun hen, may aid in breaking a binary notion of gender and avoid sexism. The present study followed the implementation of a gender-inclusive third-person pronoun singular in Swedish in two surveys with representative samples in 2015 and in 2018. The surveys comprised measures of attitudes toward, and use of, hen as well as possible predictors such as area of residence, age, preferred pronoun, political orientation, and interest in gender issues. Results showed that attitudes toward (...) hen became more positive and that use of hen increased between 2015 and 2018. About half of the population used hen in their communication in 2018, which is a 14-percentage-point increase from 2015. Younger age, she or hen as preferred pronoun, political left-wing orientation, and interest in gender issues predicted a more positive attitude and a more frequent use. Furthermore, the positive change between 2015 and 2018 was larger among younger people, indicating that hen will remain in the Swedish language. The present research is unique in that it follows a gender-fair language initiative during its implementation in representative samples, thereby providing insights for social movements aiming for gender-fair language. We also discuss the theoretical implications of a gender-inclusive pronoun in comparison with past studies on gender-fair language. (shrink)

In considering the debate about the meaning of ‘disease’, the positions are generally presented as falling into two categories: naturalist, e.g., Boorse, and normativist, e.g., Engelhardt and many others. This division is too coarse, and obscures much of what is going on in this debate. I therefore propose that accounts of the meaning of ‘disease’ be assessed according to Hare’s (1997) taxonomy of evaluative terms. Such an analysis will allow us to better understand both individual positions and their inter-relationships. Most (...) importantly, it will show that it is unlikely that there is a single unique disease-concept at issue. Rather, different authors are, for the most part, considering different concepts. (shrink)

A dialogue, in three parts, on utilitarian vulnerability to exploitation.

Jeremy Bentham is often interpreted as defending a satisficing, rather than maximizing, version of utilitarianism, where an act is right as long as it produces more pleasure than pain. This lack of maximization is surprising given Bentham’s maximizing slogan ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Against the satisficing interpretation, I argue that Bentham consistently defends a maximizing version of utilitarianism, where an act’s consequences are compared to those of not performing the act. I show that following this version of (...) utilitarianism requires that one realizes the greatest happiness for all affected individuals. (shrink)