This paper sets out and examines the presuppositions and presumptions of management educators. It is based on an empirical study of 25 management educators from three UK Business Schools who are responsible for management education and development. The aim of the study is not to generalise the findings but to adopt an interpretive methodology to identify and question the hidden and unexamined presuppositions and presumptions of management educators that underlie management programme development and design. The author finds the presuppositions and (...) presumptions problematic, inaccurate and uncritical, and they are responsible for producing and re-producing the practices of management for contemporary organisations and wider society. The author articulates these concerns in a philosophical manner in order to raise questions and challenge the embedded fads and wisdom. This paper concludes by inviting management educators to rethink management education and development and examine their own presuppositions and presumptions underpinning programme development and design. (shrink)

Media guidelines on safe suicide-related reporting are within the suicide prevention armamentarium. However, implementation issues beleaguer real-world practice. This study evaluated the perspectives of the Malaysian media community, persons with lived experience of suicidal behavior, and mental health professionals on suicide-related reporting in terms of the impact, strategies, challenges, and the implementation of guidelines on safe reporting. Three focus group discussions of purposively sampled Malaysian media practitioners, PLE, and MHP were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded and thematically analyzed. Inclusion criteria were: English (...) fluency, no clinical depression or suicidal ideation, no recent previous suicide attempts or suicide bereavement. Three major themes emerged: Unsafe Reporting; Impact; and Safe Reporting. Most described current reporting as unsafe by being potentially triggering to media users and may contribute to contagion effect. Positive impacts identified included raised awareness toward suicide and its prevention. Unsafe reporting was attributed to inadequate awareness, knowledge, and guidance, lack of empathy and accountability, job-related factors, popularity-seeking, lack of monitoring and governance, and information source with unsafe content. Majority agreed on how suicide stories should be framed to produce a safe report. The media community diverged on how detailed a suicide story should be. Safe reporting challenges included difficulties in balancing beneficial versus harmful details, social media ubiquity and its citizen reporters. Participants suggested these safe reporting strategies: stakeholder engagement, educational approaches, improving governance and surveillance, and guidelines revision. Most acknowledged the relevance of guidelines but were unaware of the existence of local guidelines. Implementation challenges included the dilemma in balancing media industry needs vis-à-vis safe reporting requirements, stakeholder engagement difficulties and social media regulation. There is poor awareness regarding safe suicide-related reporting across all groups. PLE and MHP were negatively impacted by current unsafe messaging which aggravated trauma and grief reactions. Postvention support gaps for mental health professionals were highlighted. Safe reporting promotion strategies should include stakeholder engagement to increase awareness on minimizing Werther and maximizing Papageno effects. Strategic re-examination and dissemination of local media guidelines to address new media issues, and effective surveillance mechanisms, are crucial in sustainable improvement of safe reporting practices. (shrink)

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) have advanced the counterpossible terrible commands objection. They argue that DCT implies the counterpossible ‘If a necessarily morally perfect God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory.’ However, this counterpossible is false. Hence, DCT is false. Philipp Kremers has proposed that the intuition that the counterpossible above is false is due to conversational implicatures. By providing a pragmatic explanation for the intuition, he thinks that DCT proponents (...) can then maintain that the counterpossible is actually true. In this article, I argue that Kremers's conversational implicature response fails because (a) there is good reason to think that no conversational implicature arises given what critics of DCT have expressed, (b) a competent reader would not understand the critics' utterance that TCC is false as implicating that TCC* is false, and (c) the counterpossible terrible commands objection can be easily modified to be immune to the conversational implicature response by cancelling any potential implicature. Thus, an appeal to conversational implicatures cannot save DCT from the counterpossible terrible commands objection. (shrink)

Religious disagreements are widespread. Some philosophers have argued that religious disagreements call for religious skepticism, or a revision of one’s religious beliefs. In order to figure out the epistemic significance of religious disagreements, two questions need to be answered. First, what kind of disagreements are religious disagreements? Second, how should one respond to such disagreements? In this paper, I argue that many religious disagreements are cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, where parties have good reason to think they are not epistemic (...) peers, yet they lack good reason to determine who is superior. Such disagreements have been left relatively unexplored. I then argue that in cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, disputants can remain relatively steadfast in holding to their beliefs. Hence, we can remain relatively steadfast in our beliefs in such cases of religious disagreements. (shrink)

In light of rapid globalization, there has been an increase in U.S. psychologists conducting international cross-cultural research. Such researchers face unique ethical dilemmas. Although the American Psychological Association has its own Code of Ethics with guidelines regarding research, these guidelines do not specifically address international and cross-cultural research. The purposes of this article are to (a) provide a review of current ethical guidelines for research on human subjects, (b) provide a review of major ethical challenges and dilemmas in conducting cross-cultural (...) research, (c) highlight several existing frameworks that maybe useful for increasing cross-cultural understanding of these ethical challenges for U.S. psychologists, and (d) issue a call to the American Psychological Association to begin to assess and evaluate the nature and extent of ethical problems in conducting cross-cultural research among its members. (shrink)

[English abstract] In his last metaethical statement, Parfit revisits his earlier arguments for non-metaphysical normative non-naturalism , and points to the possibility of convergence between his view and Railton's non-analytical normative naturalism. I examine the basis of this convergence claim and find it unpersuasive, mainly because if their views converge on the same position, Parfit's non-natural norms exist only as predicates. In order to avoid this consequence, he needs to present a reason for believing in the existence of normative properties (...) . There is an indispensability argument implicit in his text, with concepts of sui generis normative ground and necessity at its centre. I discuss their main features and present problems besetting these concepts. (shrink)

While there is a significant amount of discussion in philosophy on the ethics of wildlife conservation, there is relatively less discussion on the justice of conservation. By the “justice of conservation”, I mean the question of what we owe to fellow human beings with respect to conservation goals and practices. The goal of this paper is two-fold: first to highlight the justice-gap in the morality of wildlife conservation and, second, to frame and propose two dimensions of global conservational justice for (...) further discussion. Specifically, I suggest the need for a more equitable conservation to address the problem of distributive unfairness in global conservation practices, and the need to “decolonize” conservation to ensure more deliberative fairness in how global conservation problems and solutions are determined. (shrink)

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) argue that DCT implies the following counterpossible is true: If God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory. However, our intuitions tell us that such a counterpossible is false. Therefore, DCT fails. This is the counterpossible terrible commands objection. In this paper, I argue that the counterpossible terrible commands objection fails. I start by considering a standard response by DCT proponents that appeals to vacuism—the view that (...) all counterpossibles are vacuously true. I argue that DCT proponents should pursue a different response instead. I then go on to provide a new response to the counterpossible terrible commands objection: I argue that we lack reason to think that the counterpossible in question is false by examining the underlying intuitions. (shrink)

Some nurses are responding rebelliously to the changing healthcare landscape by challenging the status quo and deviating from suboptimal practices, professional norms, and organizational rules. While some view rebel nurse leadership as challenging traditional structures to improve patient care, others see it as disruptive and harmful. These diverging opinions create dilemmas for nurses and nurse managers in daily practice. To understand the context, dilemmas, and interactions in rebel nurse leadership, we conducted a multiple case study in two Dutch hospitals. We (...) delved into the mundane practices to expand the concept of leadership‐as‐practice. By shadowing rebel nurse practices, we identified three typical leadership practices which present the most common “lived” experiences and dilemmas of nurses and nurse managers. Overall, we noticed that deviating acts were more often quick fixes rather than sustainable changes. Our research points to what is needed to change the status quo in a sustainable manner. To change unworkable practices, nurses need to share their experienced dilemmas with their managers. In addition, nurse managers must build relationships with other nurses, value different perspectives, and support experimenting to promote collective learning. (shrink)

In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at (...) various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together. (shrink)

This article examines two arguments that a worship-worthy agent cannot command worship. The first argument is based on the idea that any agent who commands worship is egotistical, and hence not worship-worthy. The second argument is based on Campbell Brown and Yujin Nagasawa's (2005) idea that people cannot comply with the command to worship because if people are offering genuine worship, they cannot be motivated by a command to do so. One might then argue that a worship-worthy agent would have (...) no reason to issue a command to worship. I argue that both these arguments fail. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 210 Seiten: 105-127.

In a society which traditionally valued the moral and expressive forces of art, landscape painting became one of the most esteemed art forms. In China, "landscape" has always meant what its Chinese name—shan shui —implies: paintings dominated by peaks and streams supplemented by trees, rocks, mists, and plunging waterfalls. Despite major changes in style, landscape painting in China between the eighth and eighteenth centuries was remarkably stable in subject matter. Chinese artists painted the natural settings which surrounded them in their (...) home provinces or those which they discovered in their travels; and such settings were dominated by mountains and rivers. Moreover mountains and water were imbued with symbolic value. Traditionally the mountain has been considered the symbol of the emperor—the son of Heaven—and of virtue and masculine energy. The ridges and folds of the mountains display the veins of energy that course through the earth and the continuous process of change which characterizes the Universe. Water represents the origin of life, the female principle, vitality itself. Trees, stones, bamboo, and many flowers were similarly endowed with cosmogonic and moral significance. Given the symbolic value with which elements of nature were traditionally endowed, Chinese landscape painting is properly considered the normative form through which artists reasserted correct social relationships, moral order among men, and moral order in nature. Esther Jacobson-Leong, associate professor of art history at the University of Oregon, is currently working on problems in the significance in Steppe art and related traditions. (shrink)

Can it ever be morally justifiable to tell others to do what we ourselves believe is morally wrong to do? The common sense answer is no. It seems that we should never tell others to do something if we think it is morally wrong to do that act. My first goal is to argue that in Analects 17.21, Confucius tells his disciple not to observe a ritual even though Confucius himself believes that it is morally wrong that one does not (...) observe the ritual. My second goal is to argue against the common sense answer and explain how Confucius can be justified in telling his disciple to do what Confucius thought was wrong. The first justification has to do with telling someone to do what is second best when the person cannot do what is morally best. The second justification has to do with the role of a moral advisor. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has famously responded to the logical problem of evil by appealing to the intrinsic value of significant free will. A problem, however, arises because traditional theists believe that both God and the redeemed who go to heaven cannot do wrong acts. This entails that both God and the redeemed in heaven lack significant freedom. If significant freedom is indeed valuable, then God and the redeemed in heaven would lack something intrinsically valuable. However, if significant freedom is not intrinsically (...) valuable, then Plantinga’s reply to the logical problem of evil fails. In this paper, we assess three contemporary solutions to the dilemma above. The first is the love solution, which proposes that significant freedom is necessary for agents to love, and loving others is intrinsically good. The second is the soul-making solution, which argues that significant freedom is necessary for self-developing one’s moral character, and having a self-developed moral character is intrinsically good. The third is the derivative free will solution, which argues that significant freedom is necessary for derivative free will in heaven, and derivative free will is intrinsically good. We raise problems against all three solutions and instead defend a fourth solution – the ultimate responsibility solution. That is, significant freedom is instrumentally valuable as it gives agents ultimate responsibility with regards to morally significant acts. Finally, we defend the ultimate responsibility solution against two major objections. (shrink)

Analysts have generally offered two explanations for China's no-devaluation policy during the Asian financial crisis. The first is China's good economic fundamentals and the renminbi is not fully convertible. The second is China's foreign relations' imperative. China was endeavouring to seek favourable entry conditions into the WTO and improve relations with its Asian neighbours. At the same time it sought to exploit the undercurrent of resentment in Asia towards the role played by the US during the crisis. Policy making in (...) China has become more institutionalized in the post-Deng era, but these explanations ignore the role of China's domestic bureaucratic actors in exchange rate policy making. This paper examines the exchange rate regime preferences of China's key economic ministries and their influences in exchange rate policy making and argues that Party leaders were able to adopt a no-devaluation policy throughout the crisis because China's key economic ministries actively supported or acquiesced to that policy. (shrink)

It is widely thought that knowledge is factive – only truths can be known. However, this view has been recently challenged. One challenge appeals to approximate truths. Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri argue that false-but-approximately-true propositions can be known. They provide experimental findings to show that their view enjoys intuitive support. In addition, they argue that we should reject the factive account of knowledge to avoid widespread skepticism. A second challenge, advanced by Nenad Popovic, appeals to multidimensional geometry to build (...) a case where it seems intuitive that a person knows p even though p is false. In addition, Popovic argues that we should reject the factive account of knowledge because most of us would not become widespread skeptics if we discovered that ordinary objects in our world are actually four-dimensional. In this paper, we defend the factive account of knowledge against these arguments by challenging the intuitive appeal of the cases and arguing that there is no real threat of widespread skepticism for the factive account of knowledge. (shrink)

Theological stateist theories, the most well-known of which is Divine Command Theory (DCT), ground our moral obligations directly in some state of God. The prior obligations objection poses a challenge to theological stateism. Is there a moral obligation to obey God’s commands? If no, it is hard to see how God’s commands can generate any moral obligations for us. If yes, then what grounds this prior obligation? To avoid circularity, the moral obligation must be grounded independent of God’s commands; and (...) therefore DCT fails to ground all moral obligations in God’s commands. I argue that DCT proponents should embrace “metaethical DCT.” On this view, there is no moral obligation to obey God. God creates our moral obligations out of normative nothingness. I argue that this helps DCT proponents to escape the prior obligations objection. Other theological stateist theories can modify their theory similarly to meet this objection. (shrink)

Research on organizational epistemic vice alleges that some organizations are epistemically malevolent, i.e. they habitually harm others by deceiving them. Yet, there is a lack of empirical research on epistemic malevolence. We connect the discussion of epistemic malevolence to the empirical literature on organizational deception. The existing empirical literature does not pay sufficient attention to the impact of an organization’s ability to control compromising information on its deception strategy. We address this gap by studying eighty high-penalty corporate misconduct cases between (...) 2000 and 2020 in the United States. We find that organizations use two different strategies to deceive: Organizations ‘sow doubt’ when they contest information about them or their impacts that others have access to. By contrast, organizations ‘exploit trust’ when they deceive others by obfuscating, concealing, or falsifying information that they themselves control. While previous research has focused on cases of ‘sowing doubt’, we find that organizations ‘exploit trust’ in the majority of cases that we studied. This has important policy implications because the strategy of ‘exploiting trust’ calls for a different response from regulators and organizations than the strategy of ‘sowing doubt’. (shrink)

According to the no-miracle argument, scientific realism is the only view that does not render the predictive success of scientific theories miraculous. Against the no-miracle argument, selectionists argue that the predictive success of scientific theories is a product of them being subject to a selection process that weeds out predictively unsuccessful theories. Against selectionism, I argue that the selectionist explanation is not an alternative to the realist one. More precisely, I draw on a standard framework in behavioral biology, known as (...) “Tinbergen’s four questions,” and argue that selectionism and realism are aimed at answering different questions and that they are complementary to each other, instead. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently proposed several alleged cases of “knowledge from falsehood,” i.e., cases of inferential knowledge epistemised by an inference with a false crucial premise. This paper examines such cases and argues against interpreting them as cases of knowledge from falsehood. Specifically, I argue that the inferences in play in such cases are in no position to epistemise their conclusions.

This article explores the gendered construction of South Korean citizenship through the lens of North Korean settlers' experiences in South Korea. Drawing on ethnographic research, the author delves into the citizen-making process, critically examining the impact of gendered modernizing projects on North Korean settlers' daily lives. North Korean settlers are expected to get rid of their ethnic markers and transform themselves into modern citizen-subjects of South Korea. The author demonstrates that the overall frame of perception of North Korean settlers is (...) deeply gendered, with modernity as a powerful ethnic marker. The notion of ethnicized citizenship in the context of two Koreas offers a concrete account of how ethnicities are created and employed in stratified structure of citizenship. (shrink)

Qoheleth's theology concerns the practical realities of life and how one can cope in a topsy-turvy world. He espouses an ethic of liberality and enjoyment in the face of uncertainty.

Several authors have recently argued against intellectualism, the view that one’s epistemic position with respect to p depends exclusively on one’s truth-relevant factors with respect to p. In this paper, I first examine two prominent arguments for the anti-intellectualist position and find both of them wanting. More precisely, I argue that these arguments, by themselves, are underdetermined between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. I then manifest the intuitive plausibility of intellectualism by examining the ordinary conversational pattern of challenging a claim.

Theories of citizenship have largely focused on the provision of rights by law and policy measures, as if rights are universally beneficial and cost-free and the invitations of rights will be accepted once offered. I challenge this assumption and highlight the need to empirically address how people negotiate with the benefit and cost of claiming rights. Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article delves into the everyday lives of migrant women in two feminized sectors of migration—cross-border marriage and (...) sexual commerce—to situate the act of claiming rights in relation to the gendered pursuit of moral respect. I show that feminist groups in South Korea relied on the discourse of victimization and trafficking in pressuring the South Korean state to account for the human rights of migrant wives and migrant hostesses, while reinforcing the moral hierarchy that renders problematic migrant women’s work and intimate relationships. I argue that the distinctive material and moral costs that accompanied human rights–based provisions compelled migrant wives and hostesses to pursue divergent paths in seeking alternate bases to citizenship that would support their inclusion as moral equals. (shrink)

Counterfactuals are inherently ambiguous in the sense that the same counterfactual may be true under one mode of counterfactualization but false under the other. Many have regarded the ambiguity of counterfactuals as consisting in the distinction between forward-tracking and backtracking counterfactuals. This is incorrect since the ambiguity persists even in cases not involving backtracking counterfactualization. In this paper, I argue that causal modeling semantics has the resources enough for accounting for the ambiguity of counterfactuals. Specifically, we need to distinguish two (...) types of causal manipulation, which I call “intervention” and “extrapolation” respectively. To intervene in a causal model M is to change M’s structural equations in some specific ways, while to extrapolate M is to change the value assignment of M’s variables in some specific ways. I argue that intervention and extrapolation offer a natural explanation for the ambiguity of counterfactuals. (shrink)

This study aims to examine key attributes affecting Airbnb users' satisfaction and dissatisfaction through the analysis of online reviews. A corpus that comprises 59,766 Airbnb reviews form 27,980 listings located in 12 different cities is analyzed by using both Latent Dirichlet Allocation and supervised LDA approach. Unlike previous LDA based Airbnb studies, this study examines positive and negative Airbnb reviews separately, and results reveal the heterogeneity of satisfaction and dissatisfaction attributes in Airbnb accommodation. In particular, the emergence of the topic (...) “guest conflicts” in this study leads to a new direction in future sharing economy accommodation research, which is to study the interactions of different guests in a highly shared environment. The results of topic distribution analysis show that in different types of Airbnb properties, Airbnb users attach different importance to the same service attributes. The topic correlation analysis reveals that home like experience and help from the host are associated with Airbnb users' revisit intention. We determine attributes that have the strongest predictive power to Airbnb users' satisfaction and dissatisfaction through the sLDA analysis, which provides valuable managerial insights into priority setting when developing strategies to increase Airbnb users' satisfaction. Methodologically, this study contributes by illustrating how to employ novel approaches to transform social media data into useful knowledge about customer satisfaction, and the findings can provide valuable managerial implications for Airbnb practitioners. (shrink)

To resolve the lottery paradox, the “no-justification account” proposes that one is not justified in believing that one's lottery ticket is a loser. The no-justification account commits to what I call “the Harman-style skepticism”. In reply, proponents of the no-justification account typically downplay the Harman-style skepticism. In this paper, I argue that the no-justification reply to the Harman-style skepticism is untenable. Moreover, I argue that the no-justification account is epistemically ad hoc. My arguments are based on a rather surprising finding (...) that the no-justification account implies that people living in Taiwan typically suffer from the Harman-style skepticism. (shrink)

This article examines the relevance and value of Confucian Ethics to contemporary Business Ethics by comparing their respective perspectives and approaches towards business activities within the modern capitalist framework, the principle of reciprocity and the concept of human virtues. Confucian Ethics provides interesting parallels with contemporary Western-oriented Business Ethics. At the same, it diverges from contemporary Business Ethics in some significant ways. Upon an examination of philosophical texts as well as empirical studies, it is argued that Confucian Ethics is able (...) to provide some unique philosophical and intellectual perspectives in order to forge a richer understanding and analysis of the field of contemporary Business Ethics. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary exploration discusses the intricate conceptual linkages among Buddhism’s Eighth State of Consciousness, Quantum Holography, and the Jungian Collective Unconscious. Central to this study is examining the Eighth Consciousness in Buddhist thought—a realm that transcends the conventional sensory and mental states to connect with a more universal and profound awareness. Drawing parallels, Quantum Holography posits that every part of the universe retains information about the whole, much like a hologram. This notion seemingly mirrors the Jungian concept of the Collective (...) Unconscious, which postulates a shared reservoir of memories and ideas across humanity. The paper contends that the intricate dance of photons, oscillating between particle and wave states, mediates perception through resonance and hints at a multi-layered consciousness stratum that mirrors the vast, enigmatic quantum reality expanse. The study illuminates the intersections and divergences among these frameworks through meticulous comparative analysis, positing that an integrative understanding of quantum theories and Buddhist wisdom can unravel the human psyche’s profound depths. By weaving Eastern philosophies with Western psychological and quantum theoretical tapestry, the discourse unveils a multifaceted consciousness comprehension, championing integrative approaches as invaluable tools for decoding the mind and universe's enigmatic interplay from a quantum viewpoint. (shrink)

The cosmopolitan idea of justice is commonly accused of not taking seriously the special ties and commitments of nationality and patriotism. This is because the ideal of impartial egalitarianism, which is central to the cosmopolitan view, seems to be directly opposed to the moral partiality inherent to nationalism and patriotism. In this book, Kok-Chor Tan argues that cosmopolitan justice, properly understood, can accommodate and appreciate nationalist and patriotic commitments, setting limits for these commitments without denying their moral significance. This book (...) offers a defense of cosmopolitan justice against the charge that it denies the values that ordinarily matter to people, and a defence of nationalism and patriotism against the charge that these morally partial ideals are fundamentally inconsistent with the obligations of global justice. Accessible and persuasive, this book will have broad appeal to political theorists and moral philosophers. (shrink)

This article examines the relevance and value of Confucian Ethics to contemporary Business Ethics by comparing their respective perspectives and approaches towards business activities within the modern capitalist framework, the principle of reciprocity and the concept of human virtues. Confucian Ethics provides interesting parallels with contemporary Western-oriented Business Ethics. At the same, it diverges from contemporary Business Ethics in some significant ways. Upon an examination of philosophical texts as well as empirical studies, it is argued that Confucian Ethics is able (...) to provide some unique philosophical and intellectual perspectives in order to forge a richer understanding and analysis of the field of contemporary Business Ethics. (shrink)

Over the last century, and especially since the publication of the Belmont Report in 1978, respect for persons, as exemplified by respect for autonomous decision-making, has become a central tenet in the practice of medicine. The authority of cognitively competent adults to make their own healthcare decisions is enshrined in both law and practice in most advanced industrialized nations. The right to consent to or to refuse medical interventions is virtually absolute, but is contingent on the provision of materially relevant (...) information about the benefits and burdens or risks of the proposed treatment as well as the freedom from coercion by others, especially healthcare personnel. This power also extends to the kinds, amounts and details of the proposed intervention, including the option to decline to hear anything, if one so chooses, assuming that this is a rational choice. This respect transfers to other competent individuals who are authorized as surrogates to decide for those who have temporarily or permanently lost the capacity to make their own healthcare decisions. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that our initial intuitions regarding knowledge attributions in stakes-shifting cases (e.g., Cohen’s Airport) are best explained by standards variantism, the view that the standards for knowledge may vary with contexts in an epistemically interesting way. Against standards variantism, I argue that no prominent account of the standards for knowledge can explain our intuitions regarding stakes-shifting cases. I argue that the only way to preserve our initial intuitions regarding such cases is to endorse position variantism, the view (...) that one’s epistemic position may vary with contexts in an epistemically interesting way. Some had argued that epistemic position is incompatible with intellectualism. In reply, I point out that position variantism and intellectualism are compatible, if one’s truth-relevant factors with respect to p can vary with contexts in an epistemically interesting way. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians equalize the outcome enjoyed by people who exemplify the same degree of distributive desert by removing the influence of luck. They also try to calibrate differential rewards according to the pattern of distributive desert. This entails that they have to decide upon, among other things, the rate of reward, i.e., a principled way of distributing rewards to groups exercising different degrees of the relevant desert. However, the problem of the choice of reward principle is a relatively and undeservedly (...) neglected issue among luck egalitarians. The main goal of this paper is to highlight the importance and difficulty of this problem, and to elaborate upon G. A. Cohen's community-oriented response to it. In the last section, I provide a taxonomy of distributive pluralism, contrasting Cohen’s view with other (not so genuine) pluralisms - especially with all-things-considered varieties - while trying to motivate readers to adopt the more robust form of pluralism. (shrink)