In this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but (...) each property could have had an instance, and would have been located in its instances if it had any. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a theory on which each of a thing’s abundant properties is immanent in that thing. On the version of the theory I will propose, universals are abundant, each instantiated universal is immanent, and each uninstantiated universal is such that it could have been instantiated, in which case it would have been immanent. After setting out the theory, I will defend it from David Lewis’s argument that such a combination of immanence and abundance is absurd. I (...) will then advocate the theory on the grounds that it accomplishes all of Lewis’s “new work” while providing a gain in parsimony and a new account of fine-grained content. I will close with a discussion of how the theory also affords a new reply to two objections to uninstantiated universals: Armstrong’s charge that they are inconsistent with naturalism, and a Benacerraf-Field-style objection about epistemic access. (shrink)

The individual self and its critics -- The individualist assumptions of bioethical frameworks -- The genetic self is the connected self -- The failures of individual ethics in the genetic era -- The communal turn -- Developing alternatives: benefit sharing -- Developing alternatives: trust -- The ethical toolbox part one: recognising goods and harms -- The ethical toolbox part two: applying appropriate practices -- Possible futures.

Relative to an ordinary context, an utterance of the sentence ‘Everything is in the car’ communicates a proposition about a restricted domain. But how does this work? One possibility is that quantifier expressions like 'everything' are context sensitive and range over different domains in different contexts. Another possibility is that quantifier expressions are not context sensitive, but have a fixed, absolutely general meaning, and ordinary utterances communicate a restricted content via Gricean mechanisms. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, the (...) latter view has both a number of methodological and also intuitive advantages over the former. I then reply to three objections to the latter view: the binding argument (due to Stanley and Szabo), the availability-based attack (due to Recanati), and an argument based on Recanati’s scope principle. (shrink)

All athletes experience victory and defeat, but how many truly learn from the experience of sport? For ancient Greek philosophers, sport was an integral part of education. Today, athletics programs remain in schools, but we face a growing gap between the modern sports experience and enduring educational values. This book seeks to bridge that gap by advocating a philosophical approach to the sports experience. Combining issues and ideas from traditional philosophy with contemporary analyses of sport and applied "thinking activities," this (...) book invites athletes to learn about life from their experience of sport. The text works its way from internal reflection to social interaction by addressing four important topics: self-discovery, responsibility, respect, and citizenship. This sequence is important because authentic self-knowledge is an essential foundation for effectively dealing with the personal and social challenges faced by philosophical athletes. Reid discusses specific issues such as violence, racism, and performance-enhancing drugs in their relevant contexts, although philosophical athletes focus on the big picture, approaching each issue from a complete vision of themselves, their moral commitments, and their social roles. Athletes as diverse as the teenage college recruit and the aging weekend-warrior will gain insight into their sports experience and into their lives. This philosophical approach maximizes what we can learn from sport and gives us the best chance for leading better lives because of it. (shrink)

This study investigates the hypothesis that the advantage corporate social performance (CSP) yields in attracting human resources depends on the degree of job choice possessed by the job seeking population. Results indicate that organizational CSP is positively related to employer attractiveness for job seekers with high levels of job choice but not related for populations with low levels suggesting advantages to firms with high levels of CSP in the ability to attract the most qualified employees.

Virtue ethics and virtue epistemology shift the focus of evaluation from thin concepts to thick ones. Simon Blackburn has argued that a shift to thick ethical concepts dooms us to talking past one another. I contend that virtue epistemologists can answer Blackburn's objection, thus salvaging genuine disagreement about the epistemically thick. Section I introduces the standard cognitivist and non-cognitivist analyses of thick concepts. Section II argues that thick epistemic concepts are subject to combinatorial vagueness. I contend that virtue epistemologists share (...) vague concepts of intellectual virtue and open-mindedness. Section III addresses Allan Gibbard's worry that appealing to vagueness exacerbates the problem. I conclude that for genuine disagreement to occur, the parties must (1) share vague concepts; and (2) agree on the goals of their conceptual analyses. (shrink)

McTaggart famously argued that time is unreal. Today, almost no one agrees with his conclusion.1 But his argument remains thelocus classicusfor both the A–theory and the B-theory of time. I want to show how McTaggart's argument provided the impetus for both of these opposing views of the nature of time. I will also present and defend what I take to be the correct view of the nature of time.

Douglas proposes a new ideal in which values serve an essential function throughout scientific inquiry, but where the role values play is constrained at key points, protecting the integrity and objectivity of science.

This volume encompasses deeply critical dialogues that question how the field of psychology exists within and is shaped by the current neoliberal political context. Spanning from psychoanalysis to post-colonial theory, these far-reaching discussions consider how a greater ethical responsiveness to human experience and sociopolitical arrangements may reopen the borders of psychological discourse. With the understanding that psychology grows in the soil of neoliberal terrain and is a chief fertilizer for neoliberal expansion, the interviews in this book explore alternative possibilities for (...) this field of study might function. By offering their own unique responses regarding the current condition of their respective disciplines, these scholars critically consider the current conceptual frameworks that set the theoretical boundaries of psychology, and contemplate the ethical responsibilities currently affecting the field. This book will prove essential for scholars and students across several disciplines including psychology, philosophy, ethics, and post-colonial and socio-cultural studies, as well as practicing mental health professionals with an interest in the importance of psychological and social theory. (shrink)

Rose and Schaffer (forthcoming) argue that teleological thinking has a substantial influence on folk intuitions about composition. They take this to show (i) that we should not rely on folk intuitions about composition and (ii) that we therefore should not reject theories of composition on the basis of intuitions about composition. We cast doubt on the teleological interpretation of folk judgments about composition; we show how their debunking argument can be resisted, even on the assumption that folk intuitions have a (...) teleological source; and we argue that, even if folk intuitions about composition carry no weight, theories of composition can still be rejected on the basis of the intuitions of metaphysicians. (shrink)

Much of the discussion of Naive Realism about veridical experience has focused on a consequence of adopting it—namely, disjunctivism about perceptual experience. However, the motivations for being a Naive Realist in the first place have received relatively little attention in the literature. In this paper, I will elaborate and defend the claim that Naive Realism provides the best account of the phenomenal character of veridical experience.

This study examines the similarities and differences in pre- and post-Sarbanes-Oxley corporate ethics codes and codes of conduct using the framework of structuration theory. Following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation in 2002 in the United States, publicly traded companies there undertook development and revision of their codes of ethics in response to new regulatory requirements as well as incentives under the U.S. Corporate Sentencing Guidelines, which were also revised as part of the SOX mandates. Questions that remain are (...) whether these new or revised codes are effective means of communicating changed ethical foci and attitudes in organizations. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is used to identify differences and similarities across time and industries by analyzing word networks of 46 pre- and post-SOX corporate codes of ethics. Analyses focus on content and structure of generated word networks as well as resulting factors that emerged from the texts. Results are interpreted from the structuration perspective that content and structure of codes are constrained and enabled by system structures while they function to produce and reproduce those structures. Results indicate that corporate codes of ethics are formal discourses of ethics, laws, and control. Code structure has changed across time, with an increased emphasis on compliance in post-SOX codes. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of findings. (shrink)

This paper brings Karl Rahner’s understanding of human ex-sistence (L. ex ‘out, forth’ and sistere ‘to stand’)—that is, human ‘standing forth’—to bear upon the phenomenon of black rage in the United States. The reason for this application is the emancipatory potential of Rahner’s transcendental realism, which basically understands human life as a dynamism at once rooted ‘in the world’ and yet called, in obediential potency, to the qualitative ‘more’. Rahner’s anthropological understanding allows for an investigation of the existential struc ture (...) and possibilities of black rage which may benefit black ex-sistence by showing how the dynamism of human life accounts for and justifies this rage as well as what liberating possibilities open up for the enraged. (shrink)

In teaching courses on Karl Rahner to undergraduates, I have come to appreciate the importance of finding a starting point with which students readily connect. After much thought, I begin these courses with an extended consideration of the human person. This starting point has the advantage not only of being Rahner’s but also of being one which seems attractive to students. I have found little evidence that students have to be convinced about the importance of self-concern. I am careful to (...) emphasize, however, that in Rahner’s understanding of the dynamism of conversio and reditio this starting point never allows for any form of narcissistic subjectivism. Starting with the concreteness of our lives naturally leads to other considerations which also seem attractive to students: the burden of self-responsibility, the sense of awe and wonder, the need for hope. These are among some of the concerns which I try to address when teaching Rahner. (shrink)

Many have argued that moral judgment is driven by one of two types of processes. Rationalists argue that reasoned processes are the source of moral judgments, whereas sentimentalists argue that emotional processes are. We provide evidence that both positions are mistaken; there are multiple mental processes involved in moral judgment, and it is possible to manipulate which process is engaged when considering moral dilemmas by presenting them in a non-native language. The Foreign-Language Effect is the activation of systematic reasoning processes (...) by thinking in a foreign language. We demonstrate that the FLE extends to moral judgment. This indicates that different types of processes can lead to the formation of differing moral judgments. One implication of the FLE is that it raises the possibility that moral judgments can be made more systematic, and that the type of processing used to form them might be relevant to normative and applied ethics. (shrink)

Animal welfare has a long history of disregard. While in recent decades the study of animal welfare has become a scientific discipline of its own, the difficulty of measuring animal welfare can still be vastly underestimated. There are three primary theories, or perspectives, on animal welfare - biological functioning, natural living and affective state. These come with their own diverse methods of measurement, each providing a limited perspective on an aspect of welfare. This paper describes a perspectival pluralist account of (...) animal welfare, in which all three theoretical perspectives and their multiple measures are necessary to understand this complex phenomenon and provide a full picture of animal welfare. This in turn will offer us a better understanding of perspectivism and pluralism itself. (shrink)

The present era of biological annihilation lends significant urgency to the need to radically reconfigure human-animal-nature relations along more ethical lines and sustainable trajectories. This article engages with largely post-humanist scholarship to offer up an in-depth qualitative analysis of a set of semi-structured interviews, conducted in August 2017-2018 with 26 radical environmental activists (REAs) from a variety of movements. These activists are posited as contemporary manifestations of the 'post-anthropocentric paradigm shifts' that challenge traditional notions of human separateness from - and (...) superiority to - the nonhuman world. However, despite being broadly categorised as post-humanist or post-anthropocentric in their efforts to deconstruct hierarchical and dualistic constructions of the human-animal-nature relationship, considerable variations abound in terms of who and what REAs value and on what basis. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the nature of REAs' post-anthropocentric sensibilities and mobilisations, and considers implications for the development of more ethical modes of human-animal-nature relationality that value and respect the irreducible alterity of nonhuman others. (shrink)

In colonial states and settings, constitutional arrangements are often forged within contexts that serve to maintain structural racism against Indigenous people. In 2013 the New Zealand government initiated national conversations about the constitutional arrangements in Aotearoa. Māori leadership preceded this, initiating a comprehensive engagement process among Māori in 2010, which resulted in a report by Matike Mai Aotearoa which articulated a collective Māori vision of a written constitution congruent with te Tiriti o Waitangi by 2040.This conceptual article explores the Matike (...) Mai Aotearoa report on constitutional transformation as a novel means to address structural racism within the health system as a key domain within the constitutional sphere. Matike Mai suggests alternative conceptual structural formations through its focus on the kāwanatanga, the relational and the tino rangatiratanga sphere. This framework is informed by a range of Indigenous ethical values such as tikanga, belonging, and balance that can usefully inform the redesign of the health sector.We assert that constitutional transformation and decolonization are potentially powerful ethical sources of disruption to whiteness and structural racism. We argue that, to eliminate entrenched health disparities, change processes need to be informed by the Indigenous inspirations expressed in the Matike Mai report. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper, after briefly arguing for the assumption that experiential content is propositional, I’ll distinguish three interpretations of the claim that experience has content (the Mild, Medium, and Spicy Content Views). In the second section, I’ll flesh out Naïve Realism in greater detail, and I’ll reconstruct what I take to be the main argument for its incompatibility with the Content Views. The third section will be devoted to evaluation of existing arguments for the Mild Content (...) View (the arguments from accuracy and appearing), and the development of what I take to be a stronger argument (the argument from belief generation). In the final section, I’ll identify a flaw in the argument for the incompatibility of Naïve Realism with the Content Views, which opens the door to a reconciliation. (shrink)

When some objects are the parts of another object, they compose that object and that object is composite. This article is intended as an introduction to the central questions about composition and a highly selective overview of various answers to those questions. In §1, we review some formal features of parthood that are important for understanding the nature of composition. In §2, we consider some answers to the question: which pluralities of objects together compose something? As we will see, the (...) dominant answers are all of them and none of them. In §§3-4, we examine one of the main arguments that has driven philosophers to these extreme answers: the argument from vagueness. In §5, we turn to the question of whether composition is unique: is it sometimes the case that some things compose more than one thing? Finally, in §6, we turn from the question of which composites exist to the question of which composites exist fundamentally. (shrink)

In his seminal work, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman suggests that the common view of human intelligence is far too narrow and that emotions play a much greater role in thought, decision-making and individual success than is commonly acknowledged. The importance of emotion to human experience cannot be denied, yet the relationship between law and emotion is one that has largely been ignored until recent years. However, the last two decades have seen a rapidly expanding interest among scholars of all disciplines (...) into the way in which law and the emotions interact, including the law's response to emotion and the extent to which emotions pervade the practice of the law. In The Emotional Dynamics of Law and Legal Discourse a group of leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic explore these issues across key areas of private law, public law, criminal justice and dispute resolution, illustrating how emotion infuses all areas of legal thought. The collection argues for a more positive view of the role of emotion in the context of legal discourse and demonstrates ways in which the law could, in the words of Goleman, become more emotionally intelligent. (shrink)

This paper addresses what we consider to be the most pressing challenge for the emerging science of consciousness: the measurement problem of consciousness. That is, by what methods can we determine the presence of and properties of consciousness? Most methods are currently developed through evaluation of the presence of consciousness in humans and here we argue that there are particular problems in application of these methods to nonhuman cases—what we call the indicator validity problem and the extrapolation problem. The first (...) is a problem with the application of indicators developed using the differences between conscious and unconscious processing in humans to the identification of other conscious vs. nonconscious organisms or systems. The second is a problem in extrapolating any indicators developed in humans or other organisms to artificial systems. However, while pressing ethical concerns add urgency to the attribution of consciousness and its attendant moral status to nonhuman animals and intelligent machines, we cannot wait for certainty and we advocate the use of a precautionary principle to avoid causing unintentional harm. We also intend that the considerations and limitations discussed in this paper can be used to further analyze and refine the methods of consciousness science with the hope that one day we may be able to solve the measurement problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Pretense is generally thought to constitutively involve imagination. We argue that this is a mistake. Although pretense often involves imagination, it need not; nor is it a kind of imagination. The core nature of pretense is closer to imitation than it is to imagination, and likely shares some of its motivation with the former. Three main strands of argument are presented. One is from the best explanation of cross‐cultural data. Another is from task‐analysis of instances of pretend play. And the (...) third concerns the different ways in which pretense (especially childhood pretense) and imagination impact one's evaluative/affective systems. (shrink)

Over the past decade, feminist philosophers have gone a long way toward identifying and explaining the phenomenon that has come to be known as epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice is injustice occurring within the domain of knowledge (e.g., knowledge production and transmission), which typically impacts structurally marginalized social groups. In this paper, we argue that, as they currently work, algorithms on social media exacerbate the problem of epistemic injustice and related problems of social distrust. In other words, we argue that algorithms (...) on social media recreate and reify the conditions that lead to some groups being systematically denied the full status of knowers, thereby corrupting the epistemic terrain and, with it, systems of social trust and cooperation. We argue that algorithms do this in two ways—namely, via what we are calling algorithmic targeting and algorithmic sorting. (shrink)

One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience (...) in mammals, birds, and cephalopods. Animal sentience has furthermore been recognized in legislation in the European Union, UK, New Zealand and parts of Australia, with discussions underway in other parts of the world to follow suit. In this paper, we analyze this shift towards recognition of sentience in the regulation and practice in the treatment of laboratory animals and its effects on animal welfare and use. (shrink)

‘Sentience’ sometimes refers to the capacity for any type of subjective experience, and sometimes to the capacity to have subjective experiences with a positive or negative valence, such as pain or pleasure. We review recent controversies regarding sentience in fish and invertebrates and consider the deep methodological challenge posed by these cases. We then present two ways of responding to the challenge. In a policy-making context, precautionary thinking can help us treat animals appropriately despite continuing uncertainty about their sentience. In (...) a scientific context, we can draw inspiration from the science of human consciousness to disentangle conscious and unconscious perception (especially vision) in animals. Developing better ways to disentangle conscious and unconscious affect is a key priority for future research. (shrink)

The present debate over the creation and potential deployment of lethal autonomous weapons, or ‘killer robots’, is garnering more and more attention. Much of the argument revolves around whether such machines would be able to uphold the principle of noncombatant immunity. However, much of the present debate fails to take into consideration the practical realties of contemporary armed conflict, particularly generating military objectives and the adherence to a targeting process. This paper argues that we must look to the targeting process (...) if we are to gain a fuller picture of the consequences of creating or fielding lethal autonomous robots. This paper argues that once we look to how militaries actually create military objectives, and thus identify potential targets, we face an additional problem: the Strategic Robot Problem. The ability to create targeting lists using military doctrine and targeting processes is inherently strategic, and handing this capability over to a machine undermines existing comman.. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, the paradox of fiction has sparked considerable debate among philosophers. Unfortunately, the most promising solution to this puzzle, thought theory, currently earns its plausibility by way of intuition rather than evidence. I aim to address this by updating thought theory in light of recent empirical findings on affect. I will draw upon a wide range of scientific research—on the cognitive mechanisms driving emotion, the role of affect in counterfactual mind wandering and prospection, and the evolutionary (...) function of affect—to substantiate the claim that fictions can give rise to both real and rational emotional states. (shrink)

Although epistemic values have become widely accepted as part of scientific reasoning, non-epistemic values have been largely relegated to the "external" parts of science (the selection of hypotheses, restrictions on methodologies, and the use of scientific technologies). I argue that because of inductive risk, or the risk of error, non-epistemic values are required in science wherever non-epistemic consequences of error should be considered. I use examples from dioxin studies to illustrate how non-epistemic consequences of error can and should be considered (...) in the internal stages of science: choice of methodology, characterization of data, and interpretation of results. (shrink)