Recently, there has been a debate focusing on the question of whether groups can literally have beliefs. For the purposes of epistemology, however, the key question is whether groups can have knowledge. More specifi cally, the question is whether “group views” can have the key epistemic features of belief, viz., aiming at truth and being epistemically rational. I argue that, while groups may not have beliefs in the full sense of the word, group views can have these key epistemic features (...) of belief. However, I argue that on Margaret Gilbert's infl uential “plural subject” account of group belief, group views are unlikely to be epistemically rational. (shrink)

Human rights are those legal and/or moral rights that all persons have simply as persons. In the current digital age, human rights are increasingly being either fulfilled or violated in the online environment. In this article, I provide a way of conceptualizing the relationships between human rights and information technology. I do so by pointing out a number of misunderstandings of human rights evident in Vinton Cerf's recent argument that there is no human right to the Internet. I claim that (...) Cerf fails to recognize the existence of derived human rights. I argue further that we need to consider what other human rights are necessitated by the digital age. I suggest we need a Declaration of Digital Rights. As a step toward the development of such a declaration, I suggest a framework for thinking through how to ensure the human rights are satisfied in digital contexts. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a particularly important kind of social group, what I call a “collective.” Collectives are distinguished from other social groups by the fact that the members of collectives can think and act “in the name of ” the group; they can collectively plan for its future, work for its success, and grieve at its failure. As a result, collectives have certain person-like properties that other social groups lack. I argue that persons form collectives by taking a (...) shared first person plural perspective based on a shared collective self-concept. This collective self-concept defines the collective, and, along with the causal history of the collective, uniquely identifies it. Over time, collectives persist through changes in membership by maintaining this collective self-concept. Changes in the collective self-concept may be identity preserving, however, if they result from processes that naturally flow from the identity of the collective and which are appropriately caused by (or accepted by) the collective and are connected to previous stages of the collective via collective memories. (shrink)

It has been recommended that parents should monitor their children’s Internet use, including what sites their children visit, what messages they receive, and what they post. In this paper, I claim that parents ought not to follow this advice, because to do so would violate children’s right to privacy over their on-line information exchanges. In defense of this claim, I argue that children have a right to privacy from their parents, because such a right respects their current capacities and fosters (...) their future capacities for autonomy and relationships. (shrink)

Solomon’s article and Binmore’s response exemplify a standard exchange between the game theorist and those critical of applying game theory to ethics. The critic of game theory lists a number of problems with game theory and the game theorist responds by arguing that the critic’s objections are based on a misrepresentation of the theory. Binmore claims that the game theorist is in the position of the innocent man who, when asked why he beats his wife, must explain that he doesn’t (...) beat his wife at all (Binmore, 2). However, even if we agree that the denial is true, we might still like to know why, if you are not beating your wife, do others consistently accuse you of doing so? Or, to get away from this rather sexist metaphor, why are critics of game theory like Solomon (according to game theorists) consistently getting game theory wrong?While, as I argue in the first section, critics of game theory such as Solomon may misrepresent game theory, this misrepresentation is not entirely their own fault. The way in which game theory is traditionally presented is misleading. For example, students are usually first introduced to game theory through the prisoner’s dilemma. It is compelling drama, but lousy PR for the use of ethics in game theory. (You want to know what to do? Let’s see how two thieves reason.) However, while Binmore is right to argue that game theory neither assumes nor entails the theory of human nature that Solomon finds objectionable, Solomon is also right to argue that game theory is promulgated and applied with what appear to be a robust set of assumptions about human motivation. I argue in the second section, however, that in fact neither these applications of game theory, nor game theory itself, is committed to a particular theory of human motivation. Thus, while game theory is not able to provide a complete ethical theory (assuming that a theory of human motivation is essential to such a theory), it is not contrary to ethics. In the final section I note that Aristotle, rather than being the alternative to using game theory in business ethics, as Solomon suggests, actually points the way to an ethical theory that can combine a discussion of both game theory and “those nagging and controversial questions about what it is that people do and ought to care about” (Solomon, 7). (shrink)

We consider the mission of the librarian as an information provider and the core value that gives this mission its social importance. Our focus here is on those issues that arise in relation to the role of the librarian as an information provider. In particular, we focus on questions of the selection and organization of information, which bring up issues of bias, neutrality, advocacy, and children's rights to access information.

(2013). Veritistic Epistemology and the Epistemic Goals of Groups: A Reply to Vähämaa. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 21-25. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760666.

In his paper “The Social Diffusion of Warrant and Rationality,” Sanford Goldberg argues that relying on testimony makes the warrant for our beliefs “socially diffuse” and that this diminishes our capacity to rationally police our beliefs. Thus, according to Goldberg, rationality itself is socially diffuse. I argue that while testimonial warrant may be socially diffuse (because it depends on the warrants of other epistemic agents) this feature has no special link to our capacity to rationally police our beliefs. Nevertheless, I (...) endorse Goldberg’s claim about rationality and I propose that a Foley-style account of rationality might help to better articulate Goldberg’s proposal. (shrink)

In this “global information age” accessing, disseminating, and controlling information is an increasingly important aspect of human life. Often these interests are expressed in the language of human rights—e.g., rights to expression, privacy, and intellectual property. As the discipline concerned with, “Facilitating the effective communication of desired information between human generator and human user” (Belkin, 1975, 22), Library and Information Science (LIS) has a central role in facilitating communication about human rights and ensuring the respect for human rights in information (...) services and systems. This paper surveys the literature at the intersection of LIS and human rights. To begin, an overview of human rights conventions and an introduction to human rights theory is provided. Then the intersections between LIS and human rights are considered. Three central areas of informational human rights—communication, privacy, and intellectual property—are discussed in detail. It is argued that communication rights in particular serve as a central linchpin in the system of human rights. (shrink)

According to Ron Mallon (2004), any adequate account of race must meet three constraints: passing, no-traveling, and reality. "Passing" describes the fact that persons who are treated by others as belonging to one race, may "actually" belong to a different race. "No traveling" refers to the fact that racial concepts such as "white" may pick out different sets of persons in different cultures. "Reality" refers to the fact that racial designations enter into explanations of how people's lives go. However, Mallon (...) argues that no account can simultaneously satisfy all three constraints. I argue that an account of race as an institutional fact, based on Searle's theory of constitutive rules, can satisfy all three constraints. Furthermore, the institutional account provides an enlightening explanation of these three features of race. (shrink)

As a result of the global economic turndown, many local and national governments are disinvesting in public libraries. This paper proposes that governments have an obligation to create and fund public libraries, because access to them is a human right. Starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and appealing to recent work in Human Rights Theory, I argue that there is a right to information, which states are obligated to fulfill. Given that libraries are highly effective institutions for ensuring (...) that this right is fulfilled, there is a derived human right to a public library. (shrink)

We considered supererogatory behavior as illustrated by people who rescued Jews in Nazi Europe. When we did so, we encountered a puzzling empirical finding: rescuers insisted they had no choice in their life-or-death actions. Rescuers' perspectives -- how they saw themselves in relation to others -- served as a powerful constraint on choice as traditionally conceived. Traditional moral theories failed to provide satisfactory explanations for this phenomenon, and we turned to virtue ethics to determine whether this approach, with its emphasis (...) on character, would provide a useful philosophical tool for explicating rescue behavior.Our conclusion on virtue ethics is mixed. We find the focus on character found in virtue ethics is superior to the traditional rule-based theories of moral choice, with virtue ethics able to account both for the supererogatory nature of rescue behavior and for rescuers' reports that they had no choice. Yet even as virtue ethics provides insight into the way character forms the preconditions for moral action and affects what people define as moral situations, it fails to capture the critical role of perspective in moral choice. Nor does it provide an answer to the conundrum that troubles us when we consider the implications of rescue behavior: can we assign moral responsibility if character determines actions? The reports of the rescuers present a concrete description of what has been called a perception of a common humanity. It is this perspective that constitutes the particular moral imperative that moved the rescuers to risk their lives for others, and whose full explication eludes us. Supererogatorisches Verhalten zeigt sich bei Menschen, die im Europa der Nazizeit Juden gerettet haben. Dazu sind wir auf einen verwirrenden empirischen Befund gestoßen: Retter bestehen darauf, daß sie mit Bezug auf ihre Handlungen, bei denen es um Leben und Tod ging, gar keine Wahl gehabt haben. Die Retterperspektive - wie sich die Retter selbst in ihrer Beziehung zu anderen sehen - wirkte sich als eine machtvolle Beschränkung der Wahlmöglichkeiten aus, wie sie traditionell angenommen werden. Traditionelle Moraltheorien haben es nicht geschafft, befriedigende Erklärungen für dieses Phänomen zu liefern, und wir haben uns der Tugendethik zugewendet, um herauszufinden, ob sie, die den Charakter betont, ein nützliches philosophisches Hilfsmittel für die Erklärung derartigen Rettungsverhalten bereitstellt.Unsere Schlußfolgerungen bezüglich der Tugendethik sind gemischt. Wir sind der Ansicht, daß die Betonung des Charakters durch die Tugendethik den traditionellen, auf Regeln basierenden Theorien über moralische Wahlmöglichkeiten überlegen ist, wobei die Tugendethik sowohl der supererogatorischen Natur des Rettungsverhaltens als auch den Aussagen der Retter, sie hätten gar keine Wahl gehabt, Rechnung trägt. Obwohl die Tugendethik sogar Einsichten in die Art und Weise liefert, wie der Charakter die entscheidende Vorbedingung für moralisches Handeln bildet und wie Menschen moralische Situationen bestimmen, versagt sie doch dabei, die maßgebliche Rolle zu definieren, die die moralische Perspektive bei der moralischen Wahl spielt. Ebensowenig gibt sie eine Antwort auf das Rätsel, das uns beschäftigt, wenn wir die Implikationen des Rettungsverhaltens bedenken: Können wir moralische Verantwortlichkeit zuschreiben, wenn der Charakter die Handlungen bestimmt? Die Aussagen der Retter geben eine konkrete Beschreibung von etwas, was als Perzeption einer gemeinsamen Menschheit bezeichnet worden ist. Es ist diese Perspektive, die das besondere moralische Gebot in Kraft setzt, das die Retter dazu bewogen hat, ihr Leben für andere zu riskieren. Diese Perspektive läßt sich nicht vollständig erklären. (shrink)