Richard Brandt is one of the most eminent and influential of contemporary moral philosophers. His work has been concerned with how to justify what is good or right not by reliance on intuitions or theories about what moral words mean but by the explanation of moral psychology and the description of what it is to value something, or to think it immoral. His approach thus stands in marked contrast to the influential theories of John Rawls. The essays reprinted in (...) this collection span a period of almost 30 years and include many classic pieces in metaethical and normative ethical theory. The collection is aimed at both those moral philosophers familiar with Brandt's work and at those philosophers who may be largely unfamiliar with his work. The latter group will be struck by the lucid unpretentious style and the cumulative weight of Brandt's contributions to topics that remain at the forefront of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Some bioethicists have argued that moral bioenhancement, complementing traditional means of enhancing individuals’ moral dispositions, is essential if we are to survive as a species. Traditional means of moral enhancement have historically included civil legislation, socially recognized moral exemplars, religious teachings and disciplines, and familial upbringing. I explore the necessity and feasibility of pursuing methods of moral bioenhancement as a complement to such traditional means, grounding my analysis within a virtue-theoretic framework. Specifically, I focus on the essential intellectual virtue for (...) proper moral reasoning, prudence, and whether proposed methods of moral bioenhancement could facilitate the cultivation of this virtue within the psyches of moral agents. I conclude that certain means of bioenhancement may serve to augment the ability to reason prudentially and assist moral agents to align their wills with their higher-order rational desires, though such means require those higher-order desires to already have been formulated independently. (shrink)

Arguments for slavery reparations have fallen out of favor even as reparations for other forms of racial injustice are taken more seriously. This retreat is unsurprising, as arguments for slavery reparations often rely on two normatively irregular claims: that reparations are owed to the dead (as opposed to, say, their living heirs), and that the present generation inherits an as yet unrequited guilt from past generations. Outside of some strands of Black thought and activism on slavery reparations, these claims are (...) widely rejected. I develop an argument for slavery reparations around those foundational claims by adopting the normative framework of Immanuel Kant. On what I call the Basic Argument for slavery reparations, the application of Kant’s retributivist theory of punishment to slavery justifies reparations as a kind of proportional punishment for slavery. I also show that Kant’s philosophy offers reparations theorists resources to overcome several contemporary objections to slavery reparations. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben emerged in the twenty-first century as one of the most important theorists in the continental tradition. Until recently, 'continental' philosophy has been tied either to the German tradition of phenomenology or to French post-structuralist concerns with the conditions of language and textuality. Agamben draws upon and departs from both these lines of thought by directing his entire corpus to the problem of life political life, human life, animal life and the life of art. Influenced by the work of (...) Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and the broader tradition of critical Marxism, Agamben's work poses the profound question for our time just how exceptional are human beings. This beautifully written book provides a systematic, engaging overview of Agamben's writings on theology, aesthetics, political theory and sovereignty. Covering the full range of Agamben's work to date Claire Colebrook and Jason Maxwell explain Agamben's theology and philosophy by referring the concepts to some of today's most urgent political and ethical problems. They focus on the audacious way in which Agamben re-conceptualizes life itself. Assessing the significance of the concepts key to his work such as bio-politics, sovereignty, the ‘state of exception’ and ‘bare life’, they demonstrate his wide-ranging influence across the humanities. They also explore the critical reactions to Agamben's thinking and his reception in philosophical and theoretical circles. This book will be essential reading for students in anthropology, politics, philosophy and related disciplines and anyone interested in finding out more about one of the influential thinkers writing today. (shrink)

"The Politics of Transindividuality" proposes a new understanding of not just the relation of the individual to the collective, but of politics and economics, one that can not only keep pace with existing transformations of capital but ultimately contest them.

Subject relative clauses (SRCs) are typically processed more easily than object relative clauses (ORCs), but this difference is diminished by an inanimate head‐noun in semantically non‐reversible ORCs (“The book that the boy is reading”). In two eye‐tracking experiments, we investigated the influence of animacy on online processing of semantically reversible SRCs and ORCs using lexically inanimate items that were perceptually animate due to motion (e.g., “Where is the tractor that the cow is chasing”). In Experiment 1, 48 children (aged 4;5–6;4) (...) and 32 adults listened to sentences that varied in the lexical animacy of the NP1 head‐noun (Animate/Inanimate) and relative clause (RC) type (SRC/ORC) with an animate NP2 while viewing two images depicting opposite actions. As expected, inanimate head‐nouns facilitated the correct interpretation of ORCs in children; however, online data revealed children were more likely to anticipate an SRC as the RC unfolded when an inanimate head‐noun was used, suggesting processing was sensitive to perceptual animacy. In Experiment 2, we repeated our design with inanimate (rather than animate) NP2s (e.g., “where is the tractor that the car is following”) to investigate whether our online findings were due to increased visual surprisal at an inanimate as agent, or to similarity‐based interference. We again found greater anticipation for an SRC in the inanimate condition, supporting our surprisal hypothesis. Across the experiments, offline measures show that lexical animacy influenced children's interpretation of ORCs, whereas online measures reveal that as RCs unfolded, children were sensitive to the perceptual animacy of lexically inanimate NPs, which was not reflected in the offline data. Overall measures of syntactic comprehension, inhibitory control, and verbal short‐term memory and working memory were not predictive of children's accuracy in RC interpretation, with the exception of a positive correlation with a standardized measure of syntactic comprehension in Experiment 1. (shrink)

Contemporary arguments concerning the permissibility of physician-assisted suicide [PAS], or suicide in general, often rehearse classical arguments over whether individual persons have a fundamental right based on autonomy to determine their own death, or whether the community has a legitimate interest in individual members’ welfare that would prohibit suicide. I explicate historical arguments pertaining to PAS aligned with these poles. I contend that an ethical indictment of PAS entails moral duties on the part of one’s community to provide effective means (...) of ameliorating physical and existential suffering. I further elucidate how such duties have been affirmed by the Roman Catholic Church. My aim is to provide reasons why the expanding legalization of PAS should not preclude social investment in effective palliative care and providing a communal presence to the dying as they confront their subjectively experienced suffering. (shrink)

How do people survive under extreme conditions? Will selfish, non-cooperating free-rider types – the solo players – have the best chances of surviving? Or would cooperating, hard-working types – the team players – have higher chances? All morale put aside, it is interesting to know whether non-cooperation or cooperation pays off in a game characterized by scarcity and hard competition for survival. A study of people in such a Hobbesian state of nature can also teach us important lessons about social (...) dynamics in contemporary, prosperous societies. An interesting case of ‘The survival game’ can be found in Solzhenitsyn’s (1963 [1962]) self-biographical book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, depicting life in a Soviet Gulag prison camp in Siberia January 1951. We use Solzhenitsyn’s work as evidence of the interplay between five player types among prisoners: Cooperative blind-riders (BRs), hard-riders (HRs) and tough-riders (TRs), i.e. the so-called ‘toilers’; non-cooperative easy-riders (ERs), looked upon by the toilers as ‘bastards’, ‘screws’ and ‘errand boys’; and finally Low-riders (LRs), comprising ‘goners’ and ‘jackals’. The main research question addresses the successfulness of the survival strategies of the five player types. Apart from a Multiple Player Approach (MPA) that may be seen as a further development of second-generation theory of collective action (Ostrom & Ahn, 2009), we apply Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical theory on our case. Hence, we argue that impression management at two different ‘stages’ – the Brigade stage and the Camp stage – is crucial for survival for hard-riding as well as for easy-riding players, in particular strategic masking. Seeking to unite Goffman and game-theoretic MPA, our overall purpose is to make a theoretical contribution to “game-related sociology” (Swedberg, 2001). (shrink)

This paper has already been published in Policy Futures in Education, 0 1–14, 2017. It is freely available on Academia. We thank Jason Thomas Wozniak for the permission to republish it here.: Debt shapes subjectivity by rhythmically training indebted subjects. Stated slightly differently, there exists a debt dressage that produces indebted subjectivity. One of the principle aims of this article is to introduce rhythm into the debt analysis debates. Building on Henri - Sciences de l'éducation et de la formation (...) – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Response to human head transplant proposal and pertinent personal identity questions.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this paper, I confront Engelhardt’s views—conceptualized as a cohesive moral perspective grounded in a combination of secular and Christian moral requirements—on two fronts. First, I critique his view of the moral demands of justice within a secular pluralistic society by showing how Thomistic natural law theory provides a content-full theory of human flourishing that is rationally articulable and defensible as a canonical vision of the good, even if it is not universally recognized as such. Second, I defend the principles (...) of Roman Catholic social teaching (RCST) against Engelhardt’s objection that it constitutes a watered-down version of the Christian moral vision which opens the door to intolerable moral compromises. While I acknowledge that Engelhardt’s criticism of RCST is well-grounded in certain abusive compromises that have been made by some Catholic healthcare institutions, I contend that such abuses are not endemic to RCST and avoidance of them is practically feasible in contemporary secular pluralistic societies. My primary aim is to show how continued dialogue between Engelhardtian libertarians and more communitarian-inclined RCST proponents may constructively yield a vision of healthcare allocation that ensures succor for the least advantaged within an authentically Christian social ethic. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 319-342, Spring 2022.

By most accounts Deleuze's engagement with Marx begins with the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia he co-authored with Félix Guattari. However, Deleuze's Difference and Repetition alludes to a connection between Deleuze's critique of common sense and Marx's theory of fetishism, suggesting a connection between the critique of the image of thought and the critique of capital. By tracing this connection from its emergence in the early texts on noology, or the image of thought, to the development in the critique (...) of state thought in A Thousand Plateaus, it can be argued that what initially appears as an entirely infra-philosophical problem, concerned with the presuppositions of philosophy, is not only a political problem as well, but ultimately bears on the very nature of the conjunction between thought and politics, making possible a re-examination of what is meant by revolutionary thought. It is a transition from noology to noopolitics. In the end it can be argued that revolutionary thought is no longer an eschatology, attempting to discern the signs of the future revolution in the present, but a thought oriented towards everything that exceeds the fetish of society, towards the virtual relations and micropolitical transformations that constitute society but exceed its representation. (shrink)

Gigerenzer and his collaborators have shown that the Take the Best heuristic (TTB) approximates optimal decision behavior for many inference problems. We studied the effect of incomplete cue knowledge on the quality of this approximation. Bayesian algorithms clearly outperformed TTB in case of partial cue knowledge, especially when the validity of the recognition cue is assumed to be low.

Carol Gould argues that democratic institutions can serve as mechanisms of informed consent or could at least facilitate creating regulations and other structures which facilitate informed consent in bioethics, medicine, and elsewhere. I am sceptical. I argue that democracies cannot serve as vehicles of consent, let alone informed consent. Further, the problems of democratic ignorance and irrationality created significant barriers to democratic deliberation helping to produce better regulations or conditions for informed consent. Democracy is not a good surrogate for consent.

Women often embody the central values and practices of their religious tradition. When they leave their community, women find a part of the “religious tapestry” remaining with them long after their disengagement. In this article, we draw from research in the UK and Finland to explore women’s efforts to unlearn parts of their former religious belonging. We draw on in total thirty-five interviews with women who disengaged from the Mormon Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Conservative Laestadianism. We conceptualize un/learning as a (...) multi-layered process consisting of both un-learning and re-learning. We explore women’s narratives about negotiating bodily limits, conduct and belonging, and understand these as suggesting experiences of a threefold un/learning: gendered, spatial-social and epistemic. We argue that examining gendered and embodied un/learning helps to understand women’s disengagement processes from minority Christian traditions in Western and Northern European secularized contexts such as the UK and Finland. (shrink)

Jacob Sparks critiques our recent work on commodification by arguing that purchasing love indicates one has defective preferences. We argue A) it is possible to purchase these things without having defective preferences, B) Sparks has not shown that acting such defective preferences is morally wrong, C) that Sparks’ misunderstands the Brennan–Jaworski Thesis, and so has not produced a counterexample to it, and finally D) that when we examine the processes by which love is gifted, it is unclear whether these processes (...) should be preferred. (shrink)

Are good and evil a “point of view”? Do Jedi and Sith alike merely crave greater power? What does a “space opera” have to teach us about how to live virtuously? George Lucas created Star Wars as a modern-day morality tale, modeled on classical epics, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, tragic dramas written by the likes of Sophocles, Seneca, and Shakespeare, and the scriptures that inspire religions in the East and West. This chapter canvasses the metaphysical and moral themes (...) across the three trilogies that make up the “Skywalker saga” to construct a genealogy of how “the Force” evolved throughout these films. At the heart of this conceptual development is the question of how the light and dark sides of the Force are related to each other and what that relationship can help us understand about the nature of good and evil in our own experience. (shrink)

Alon Harel wants to show that punishment is a kind of symbolic expression that, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, can only be performed by governmental agents. Contrary to Harel, I argue private agents can in fact realize those features he argues only public agents can realize. I also argue that, even if he were right that only public guards and wardens can punish, it’s unclear why we would have an all-things-considered rather than merely a pro tanto/prima facie duty to (...) punish. An instrumentalist can grant Harel that only state employees can punish, but still decide, on instrumental grounds, to reject public punishment in favor of private “schpunishment.”. (shrink)

How are the teachings of a thirteenth-century master relevant today? Twenty contemporary writers unpack Dogen's words and show how we can still find meaning in his teachings. Engaging Dogen's Zen is a practice oriented study of Shushogi (a canonical distillation of Dogen's thought used as a primer in the Soto School of Zen) and Fukanzazengi (Dogen's essential text on the practice of "just sitting," a text recited daily in the Soto School of Zen). It is also a study of the (...) entire self. Here, the principles of Soto Zen practice are unpacked and explained by leading contemporary Buddhists from the living tradition--monks, priests, academics, and community teachers. Tackling Dogen's approach to key issues, such as the preeminence of shikantaza, universal buddha nature, and what it means to be a Mahayana Buddhist, the contributors to the volume help Zen practitioners and any who are trying to deepen their lives to appreciate better the teachings of Soto Zen and make these teachings part of their lives. By revisiting what remains precious in Shushogi and Fukanzazengi, we let them breathe just as we learn to breathe in zazen. We find that Soto practice not only engages Dogen and Sakyamuni, but all of our sisters and brothers, and indeed the great earth itself. Includes essays from Kosho Itagaki, Taigen Dan Leighton, Tenshin Charles Fletcher, Shudo Brian Schroeder, Glen A. Mazis, David Loy, Drew Leder, Steven DeCaroli, Steve Bein, John Maraldo, Michael Schwartz, Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, Leah Kalmanson, Erin Jien McCarthy, Dainen David Putney, Steven Heine, Graham Parkes, Mark Unno, Shudo Brian Schroeder, and Kanpu Bret W. Davis. (shrink)

The reimagined Battlestar Galactica series (2003–2009) and its prequel series Caprica (2009–2010) provoked viewers to consider anew perennial philosophical questions regarding, among others, the nature of personhood and the role of religion in culture and politics. While no single philosophical viewpoint encapsulates the creators’ vision as a whole, the theory of biopolitics, as formulated by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and others, is a fruitful lens through which various points of story and character development may be analyzed. Two noteworthy areas of (...) attention are, first, whether a race of intelligent, self-aware beings, who have been artificially created, should be considered “persons” with attendant moral and legal status, and second, whether the purported ontological division between the “biological” and the “artificial” has moral import concerning the degree of control one class of beings may legitimately exercise over another. (shrink)

The Greek philosopher Aristotle argues that human beings are not born with inclinations toward either virtue or vice; rather, each person's moral character traits are cultivated through a combination of social influence and individual rational choice. Sons of Anarchy relies on our fascination with “anti‐heroes,” morally ambiguous protagonists for whom we often cheer. Aristotle stresses the importance of the right environment for becoming virtuous, especially when it comes to children. Far from being pure, the SAMCROpolis tends to nurture both virtues (...) and vices in its “citizens.”. Part of the show's appeal stems from recognizing the members of SAMCRO as kindred spirits who exemplify‐albeit to dramatic extremes‐the mixture of virtue and vice found in every human being's moral character. The particular mix of virtue and vice that comprises Jax's moral character may, in the end, be exactly what SAMCRO needs at this moment in its history. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that informational semantics, the most well-known and worked-out naturalistic account of intentional content, conflicts with a fundamental psychological principle about the conditions of belief-formation. Since this principle is an important premise in the argument for informational semantics, the upshot is that the view is self-contradictory??indeed, it turns out to be guilty of a sophisticated version of the fallacy famously committed by Euthyphro in the eponymous Platonic dialogue. Criticisms of naturalistic accounts of content typically proceed piecemeal (...) by narrowly constructed counterexamples, but I argue that the current result is more robust. It affects a broad family of accounts, and provokes a wider doubt about the possibility of successful execution of the naturalistic project. (shrink)

Reuven Brandt on anonymity and mitochondrial donation.

The distinction between work and play is a defining feature of the modern world. But the border between them has been a site of major political contestation, giving rise to new forms of authority. I turn to the work of Michael Oakeshott to examine the distinction between work and play and how it relates to the idea of authority. I argue that reading Oakeshott on work, play, conduct, and authority can give us important insights into key questions of democratic theory (...) at a time when socio-economic and technological changes are once again transforming the border of work and play. (shrink)

One of the largest contemporary debates in political theory revolves around the question of how pluralists can justify their political commitments. Isaiah Berlin, one of the first to face this problem, was a self-proclaimed liberal, whose political writings have led to controversy. In this essay, I take up the issue of how Berlin's use of the essay genre contributes to his defense of liberalism given his pluralist beliefs. I argue that while his reliance upon the essay generates particular interpretive problems, (...) it need not undermine his commitment to liberalism. Rather, Berlin's defense of liberalism involves a rhetorical attempt to discredit alternatives to liberalism while drawing attention to suggestive ties between history, political judgment, and liberalism. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen and David Estlund have recently defended utopophilia against utopophobia. They argue we should not dumb down the requirements of ethics or justice to accommodate people’s motivational failings. The fact that certain people predictably will not do the right thing does not imply they are unable to do so, or that they are not obligated to do so. Utopophiles often defend left-wing ideas; for instance, Cohen argues that people’s unwillingness to do what socialism requires does not imply that (...) socialism is bad, but instead that people are bad. This essay shows that utopophiles must also endorse certain “conservative” conclusions, such as that most poor adults in the developed West are obligated to act more prudently, get jobs, become net taxpayers, avoid having children they cannot afford, and act to avoid needing welfare or assistance. (shrink)

Electroencephalographic monitoring provides critical diagnostic and management information about patients with epilepsy and seizure mimics. Admission to an epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) is the gold standard for such monitoring in major medical facilities worldwide. In many countries, access can be challenged by limited resources compared to need. Today, triaging admission to such units is generally approached by unwritten protocols that vary by institution. In the absence of explicit guidance, decisions can be ethically taxing and are easy to challenge. In an (...) effort to address this gap, we propose a two-component approach to EMU triage that takes into account the unique landscape of epilepsy monitoring informed by triage literature from other areas of medicine. Through the strategic component, we focus on the EMU wait list management infrastructure at the institutional level. Through the principled component, we apply a combination of the ethical principles of prioritarianism, utilitarianism and justice to triage; and we use individual case examples to illustrate how they apply. The effective implementation of this approach to specific epilepsy centres will need to be customised to the nuances of different settings, including diverse practice patterns, patient populations and constraints on resource distribution, but the conceptual consolidation of its components can alleviate some of the pressures imposed by the complex decisions involved in EMU triage. (shrink)

Fred Dretske’s teleofunctional theory of content aims to simultaneously solve two ground-floor philosophical puzzles about mental content: the problem of naturalism and the problem of epiphenomenalism. It is argued here that his theory fails on the latter score. Indeed, the theory insures that content can have no place in the causal explanation of action at all. The argument for this conclusion depends upon only very weak premises about the nature of causal explanation. The difficulties Dretske’s theory encounters indicate the severe (...) challenges involved in arriving at a robust naturalistic understanding of content. (shrink)

Aspects of cognitive immaturity may serve both to adapt children to their immediate environment and to prepare them for future ones. Language may have evolved in children's groups in the context of play. Developmental plasticity provides variability upon which natural selection operates, and such plasticity, that likely played an important role in the evolution of language, characterizes human children today.