The paper discusses the notion of reasoning with comparative moral judgements (i.e judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) from the point of view of several meta-ethical positions. Using a simple formal result, it is argued that only a version of moral cognitivism that is committed to the claim that moral beliefs come in degrees can give a normatively plausible account of such reasoning. Some implications of accepting such a version of moral cognitivism are discussed.

Hearing loss has been identified as a major modifiable risk factors for dementia. Adult candidates for cochlear implantation represent a population at risk of hearing loss-associated cognitive decline. This study investigated the effect of demographics, habits, and medical and psychological risk factors on cognition within such a cohort. Data from 34 consecutive adults with post-lingual deafness scheduled for CI were analyzed. Pure tone audiometry and Speech Discrimination Score were recorded. The Repeatable Battery for Assessment of Neuropsychological Status for Hearing impaired (...) individuals was used to measure cognition. Demographics, habits, and medical factors were evaluated. Depression was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and social inhibition with the Type D questionnaire. All participants suffered from severe to profound hearing loss. The mean RBANS-H total score was 83 ± 16. Participants reported a mean of years of formal education of 12 ± 5 years. The prevalence of habits and medical risk factors was: physical inactivity, body mass index >30, traumatic brain injury, hypertension, heavy alcohol consumption, smoking, and diabetes. Regarding psychological factors, the mean scores of social inhibition and depression were 10 ± 6 and 6 ± 5, respectively. The number of years of education was significantly correlated with the RBANS-H total score, and with the domains “Immediate memory”, “Visuospatial/constructional”, and “Attention”. The mean RBANS-H total score in participants who had university studies or higher level was 97 ± 9, with the remaining participants reporting a mean score of 75 ± 15. Men performed better in the “Visuospatial/constructional”. Physical inactivity was associated with lower scores in the “Delayed memory” ; hypertension correlated with lower RBANS-H total scores and “Attention”. Depression and social inhibition were negatively correlated with RBANS-H total score and with the “Immediate memory,” “Visuospatial/constructional,” and “Attention”. In adults with late-onset deafness scheduled to CI, educational level has a significant effect. Additionally, sex, physical inactivity, hypertension, and psychological traits of social inhibition and depression may also influence cognitive status. Long-term studies with more participants would enable us better understand the effects different risk factors on cognitive status. (shrink)

‘Wrongdoing does not remain isolated in time’. In February 2013 the McAleese Report confirmed that more than 11,000 women and girls were incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalen laundries between 1922 and 1996. These women were arguably the scapegoats of Ireland’s national shame as it struggled to develop its identity as a morally pure state following independence, of familial shame as communities fought to hide abuse and illegitimacy, and of male shame, as men sought to have their cake and eat it. What (...) does ‘atonement’ – a concept that embodies connection and integration mean in the context of shame – a state that signifies rupture, separation and isolation? This paper will explore the role of shame in the dis-integration of relationships and lives and ask whether the Christian concept of atonement can be utilized to put this right. In a moral climate where past abuses in church-run institutions are increasingly coming to light, what value does atonement have in the way we respond to the on-going reverberations of shaming and shameful wrongdoing? (shrink)

We present a new justification for methodological triangulation (MT), the practice of using different methods to support the same scientific claim. Unlike existing accounts, our account captures cases in which the different methods in question are associated with, and rely on, incommensurable theories. Using a nonstandard Bayesian model, we show that even in such cases, a commitment to the minimal form of epistemic conservatism, captured by the rigidity condition that stands at the basis of Jeffrey’s conditionalization, supports the practice of (...) MT. (shrink)

It has been argued by several philosophers that a morally motivated rational agent who has to make decisions under conditions of moral uncertainty ought to maximize expected moral value in his choices, where the expectation is calculated relative to the agent's moral uncertainty. I present a counter-example to this thesis and to a larger family of decision rules for choice under conditions of moral uncertainty. Based on this counter-example, I argue against the thesis and suggest a reason for its failure (...) – that it is based on the false assumption that inter-theoretical comparisons of moral value are meaningful. (shrink)

I discuss the trilemma that consists of the following three principles being inconsistent: 1. The Common Principle: if one distribution, A, necessarily brings a higher total sum of personal value that is distributed in a more egalitarian way than another distribution, B, A is more valuable than B. 2. (Weak) ex-ante Pareto: if one uncertain distribution, A, is more valuable than another uncertain distribution, B, for each patient, A is more valuable than B. 3. Pluralism about attitudes to risk (Pluralism): (...) the personal value of a prospect is a weighted sum of the values of the prospect’s outcomes, but the weight each outcome gets might be different from the probability the prospect assigns to the outcome. (shrink)

Interview of David Rozen with Jakub Mácha.

We study the representation of attitudes to risk in Jeffrey’s decision-theoretic framework suggested by Stefánsson and Bradley :602–625, 2015; Br J Philos Sci 70:77–102, 2017) and Bradley :231–248, 2016; Decisions theory with a human face, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017). We show that on this representation, the value of any prospect may be expressed as a sum of two components, the prospect’s instrumental value and the prospect’s intrinsic value. Both components have an expectational form. We also make a distinction between (...) a prospect’s overall intrinsic value and a prospect’s conditional intrinsic value given each one of its possible outcomes and argue that this distinction has great explanatory power. We explore the relation between these two types of intrinsic values and show that they are determined at the level of preferences. Finally, we explore the relation between the intrinsic values of different prospects and point to a strong restriction on this relation that is implicit in Jeffrey’s axioms. We suggest a natural interpretation to this restriction. (shrink)

A new explanation for the fairness of lotteries is presented. The explanation draws on elements of John Broome's and Richard Bradley's accounts, but is distinct from both of them. I start with Broome's idea that the fairness of lotteries has something to do with satisfying claims in a way which is proportional to their strength. I present an intuitive explication of.

I argue—from a Humean perspective—for the falsity of what I call the “Admissibility of Historical Information Thesis”. According to the AHIT, propositions that describe past events are always admissible with respect to propositions that describe future events. I first demonstrate that this thesis has some counter-intuitive implications and argue that a Humean can explain the intuitive attractiveness of the AHIT by arguing that it results from a wrong understanding of the concept of chance. I then demonstrate how a Humean “best (...) system” analysis of chance predicts the existence of inadmissible historical information and discuss the implications of this conclusion to the debate between Humeans and non-Humeans. (shrink)

There is an extensive ethical debate regarding the justifiability of doctors nudging towards healthy behaviour and better health-related choices. One line of argument in favour of nudging is based on empirical findings, according to which a healthy majority among the public support nudges. In this paper, we show, based on an experiment we conducted, that, in health-related choices, people’s ethical attitudes to nudging are strongly affected by the point of view from which the nudge is considered. Significant differences have been (...) found between doctors’ ethical attitude to clinical nudging and that of patients. We show how these differences weaken the argument for nudging from public support. Moreover, our findings raise concerns regarding doctors’ ability to nudge ethically according to their own standards, as they may underestimate the degree of harm medical nudges can cause to informed consent, doctor–patient trust and other important ethically relevant features of health-related choices. (shrink)

We present a minimal pragmatic restriction on the interpretation of the weights in the “Equal Weight View” regarding peer disagreement and show that the view cannot respect it. Based on this result we argue against the view. The restriction is the following one: if an agent, $$\hbox {i}$$ i, assigns an equal or higher weight to another agent, $$\hbox {j}$$ j,, he must be willing—in exchange for a positive and certain payment—to accept an offer to let a completely rational and (...) sympathetic $$\hbox {j}$$ j choose for him whether to accept a bet with positive expected utility. If $$\hbox {i}$$ i assigns a lower weight to $$\hbox {j}$$ j than to himself, he must not be willing to pay any positive price for letting $$\hbox {j}$$ j choose for him. Respecting the constraint entails, we show, that the impact of disagreement on one’s degree of belief is not independent of what the disagreement is discovered to be. (shrink)

Many philosophers in the field of meta-ethics believe that rational degrees of confidence in moral judgments should have a probabilistic structure, in the same way as do rational degrees of belief. The current paper examines this position, termed “moral Bayesianism,” from an empirical point of view. To this end, we assessed the extent to which degrees of moral judgments obey the third axiom of the probability calculus, ifP(A∩B)=0thenP(A∪B)=P(A)+P(B), known as finite additivity, as compared to degrees of beliefs on the one (...) hand and degrees of desires on the other. Results generally converged to show that degrees of moral judgment are more similar to degrees of belief than to degrees of desire in this respect. This supports the adoption of a Bayesian approach to the study of moral judgments. To further support moral Bayesianism, we also demonstrated its predictive power. Finally, we discuss the relevancy of our results to the meta-ethical debate between moral cognitivists and moral non-cognitivists. (shrink)

: In some cases in which rational and moral agents experience moral uncertainty, they are unable to assign exact degrees of moral value—in a non-arbitrary way—to some of the different acts available to them, and so are unable to choose with certainty the best act. This article presents a new justification for the use of lotteries in this kind of situation. It is argued that sometimes the only rational thing for a morally motivated agent to do here is to use (...) a lottery. (shrink)

It is well known that there is a conflict between three intuitive principles for the evaluation of risky prospects in distributional contexts, Ex-Post Egalitarianism, Ex-Ante Pareto and Dominance. In this paper, I return to Peter Diamond’s suggestion that we reject Dominance as a principle of rationality in distributional contexts and present a new argument in support of this position. The argument is based on an observation regarding the right way for a distributor to weigh reasons for actions. In some cases, (...) I argue, reasons for action that are grounded in the interests of one of the patients ought to be disregarded by the distributor. These cases share the following property: it is in the patient’s overall interest that the distributor disregards them. I show that Dominance does not permit distributors to disregard such reasons and use this observation to argue against the claim that Dominance is a principle of rationality in distributional contexts. (shrink)

I present a puzzle about the epistemic role beliefs about experts' beliefs play in a rational agent's system of beliefs. It is shown that accepting the claim that an expert's degree of belief in a proposition, A, screens off the evidential support another proposition, B, gives to A in case the expert knows and is certain about whether B is true, leads in some cases to highly unintuitive conclusions. I suggest a solution to the puzzle according to which evidential screening (...) off is rejected, but show that the price of this solution is either giving up on the mere idea of deferring to expert's opinion or giving up on Bayesian conditionalization. (shrink)

A triviality result for what Lewis called “the Desire by Necessity Thesis” and Broome : 265–267, 1991) called “the Desire as Expectation Thesis” is presented. The result shows that this thesis and three other reasonable conditions can be jointly satisfied only in trivial cases. Some meta-ethical implications of the result are discussed. The discussion also highlights several issues regarding Lewis ’ original triviality result for “the Desire as Belief Thesis” that have not been properly understood in the literature.

I show that accepting Moss’s claim that features of a rational agent’s credence function can constitute knowledge, together with the claim that a rational agent should only act on the basis of reasons that he knows, predicts and explains evidential decision theory’s failure to recommend the right choice for the Newcomb problem. The Newcomb problem can be seen, in light of Moss’s suggestion, as a manifestation of a Gettier case in the domain of choice. This serves as strong evidence for (...) both Moss’s claim and the knowledge-based action approach. (shrink)

I show that David Lewis’s principal principle is not preserved under Jeffrey conditionalization. Using this observation, I argue that Lewis’s reason for rejecting the desire as belief thesis and Adams’s thesis applies also to his own principal principle. 1 Introduction2 Adams’s Thesis, the Desire as Belief Thesis, and the Principal Principle3 Jeffrey Conditionalization4 The Principal Principles Not Preserved under Jeffrey Conditionalization5 Inadmissible Experiences.

I show that David Lewis’s principal principle is not preserved under Jeffrey conditionalization. Using this observation, I argue that Lewis’s reason for rejecting the desire as belief thesis and Adams’s thesis applies also to his own principal principle. 1 Introduction2 Adams’s Thesis, the Desire as Belief Thesis, and the Principal Principle3 Jeffrey Conditionalization4 The Principal Principles Not Preserved under Jeffrey Conditionalization5 Inadmissible Experiences.

The thesis explores the question of how should a rational moral agent reason and make choices when he finds himself accepting inconsistent moral judgments. It is argued that it is both conceptually and psychologically justified to describe such an agent as suffering from uncertainty. Such uncertainty, however, is not uncertainty regarding the truth of some descriptive claim, but rather uncertainty regarding the truth of a normative claim. Specifically it is uncertainty regarding the truth of a moral judgement. In the literature (...) this is sometimes called “moral uncertainty”. Two different lines of philosophical literatures that explore the idea of moral uncertainty are discussed. The first line – the one that originated from David Lewis‟ argument against the “Desire as Belief Thesis” – explores the mere possibility of moral uncertainty, while the second line explores the question how ought a rational moral agent choose in face of moral uncertainty. The discussion of these two lines of research leads to the conclusion that a consistent account of moral decision making under conditions of moral uncertainty that will be applicable to the kind of cases that the thesis explores, must make use of degrees of beliefs in comparative moral judgements and of them alone. Specifically, no references to degrees of moral value should be made. An attempt to present such an account in the framework of an extension of Leonard Savage‟s model for decision making is carried out. This attempt leads to a problematic result. Several implications of the result to ethic and meta-ethics are discussed as well as possible ways to avoid it. The conclusion is partly positive and partly negative: While a plausible account of moral decision making under conditions of moral uncertainty is presented, an account of moral reasoning that aims at finding a complete moral theory is shown to be a very difficult – if not impossible - aim to achieve. (shrink)

In the context of two recent yet distinct philosophical debates—over choice under conditions of moral uncertainty and over transformative choices—several philosophers have implicitly adopted a thesis about how to evaluate alternatives of uncertain value. The thesis says that the value a rational agent ought to attach to an alternative under the hypothesis that the value of this alternative is x, ought to be x. I argue that while in some contexts this thesis trivially holds, in the context of the two (...) debates in which the thesis has been adopted, it does not. I also discuss several implications of this failure. (shrink)

As the use of nudges by governmental agencies becomes more common, the need for normative guidelines regarding the processes by which decisions about the implementation of specific nudges are taken becomes more acute. In order to find a justified set of such guidelines one must meet several theoretical challenges to Libertarian Paternalism that arise at the foundational level. In this paper, I identify three central challenges to Libertarian Paternalism, and suggest that Susan Hurley's political philosophy as presented in her Natural (...) Reasons (1989) can be viewed as offering powerful responses to them. (shrink)

The trend towards postponement of childbearing has seen increasing numbers of women turning towards oocyte banking for anticipated gamete exhaustion (AGE banking), which offers a realistic chance of achieving genetically connected offspring. However, there are concerns around the use of this technology, including social/ethical implications, low rate of utilisation and its cost-effectiveness. The same societal trends have also resulted in an increased demand and unmet need for donor oocytes, with many women choosing to travel overseas for treatment. This has its (...) own inherent social, medical, financial and psychological sequelae. We propose a possible pathway to address these dual realities. The donation of oocytes originally stored in the context of AGE banking, with appropriate compensatory mechanisms, would ameliorate AGE banking concerns, while simultaneously improving the supply of donor oocytes. This proposed arrangement will result in tangible benefits for prospective donors, recipients and society at large. (shrink)

When an agent that accepts transitivity of preferences as a principle of rationality finds himself expressing intransitive preferences, he has to change some of his expressed preferences so that transitivity will be restored. When such an agent also believes in the existence of some independent betterness relation among the alternatives over which he forms his preferences, it is reasonable to demand that the way he changes his intransitive expressed preferences will be sensitive to his beliefs regarding this betterness relation. It (...) is shown that under two natural conditions for such sensitivity, in case there are infinitely many alternatives, the agent must end up being indifferent between all alternatives except two. Some implications of this result for ethics are discussed. (shrink)

I argue for the falsity of what I call the "Admissibility of Historical Information Thesis". According to the AHIT propositions that describe past events are always admissible with respect to propositions that describe future events. I first demonstrate that this demand has some counter-intuitive implications and then argue that the source of the counter-intuitiveness is a wrong understanding of the concept of chance. I also discuss the relation between the failure of the AHIT and the existence of contrastive explanations for (...) chancy events. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to analyse a passage of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione which relates to insipientes, interpreted as those who do not accept that the rational observation of nature proves the existence of a unique creator God. Such a refusal is believed to make them worthy of eternal damnation. The resulting concept of sapientia involves both ratio and voluntas; it is also connected with gnoseology and soteriology. A similar concept can be found in the Aquitanian poetry (...) of the fifth century and in the theology of the so-called Semipelagians. This similarity calls into question the traditional dating and the supposed area of origin of the Carmen. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to determine the historical and cultural context of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione. The Carmen treats poetically many subjects of Christian eschatology: the second coming of Christ, the final judgement, heaven and hell, the universal conflagration. The author believes that the end time is imminent. This perception is common to all the Christians who experienced tribulations: persecutions, natural calamities, barbarian invasions. These painful events urged the Christians to undertake a path of true conversion, in (...) the religious and moral sense. Unlike other poets, the Anonymous author emphasises the virtuous value of the hope of divine reward rather than the fear of divine punishment. The same perspective can be found in the poets and in the monks of early fifth-century Gaul, who suffered the barbarian invasion of 406. (shrink)

InCarm.4.1 Horace asks Venus to stop waging war against him, who is now over fifty (1–7), and suggests that she should set her aim instead on Paulus Maximus, a young and passionate nobleman who will be happy to obey Venus' orders (9–20).

The paper by Savulescu et al is timely and the concepts illuminated deserve further reflection.1 Reproductive tissue which includes sperm, oocytes and embryos are commonly treated differently to other human tissue, even when the reproductive potential of these has no possibility of being realised. This unnecessary exceptionalism hampers research in human reproduction, disadvantaging patients and delaying life-changing treatments from being incorporated into clinical practice. In jurisdictions where embryo creation is permitted for clinical purposes, such as in vitro fertilisation, supernumerary embryos (...) are routinely discarded once they are no longer required to attempt pregnancy. We contend that research on such embryos, which will never realise their reproductive potential, is not substantially different to any other human tissue research and should not require any additional ethical or regulatory oversight. The only individuals who can possibly be harmed by such research are the tissue providers and their interests, including confidentiality and informed consent provision, should be protected. This protection once again is no different in its scope to any other type of research involving human cells and tissues. Most Western societies have moved away from the concept that ‘every sperm is sacred’ and it is time that the regulators and scientific community aligned with the prevailing communal norms and stop treating gametes and embryos as somehow holding higher moral value, compared with other human cell/tissue lines, provided that there is no intention to attempt a pregnancy …. (shrink)

We present experimental evidence that supports the thesis :602–625, 2015, Br J Philos Sci 70:77–102, 2019; Bradley in Decisions theory with a human face, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017; Goldschmidt and Nissan-Rozen in Synthese 198:7553–7575, 2021) that people might positively or negatively desire risky prospects conditional on only some of the prospects’ outcomes obtaining. We argue that this evidence has important normative implications for the central debate in normative decision theory between two general approaches on how to rationalize several (...) common patterns of preference, which are ruled out as irrational by orthodox decision theory, namely the re-individuation approach and the non-expected utility approach. (shrink)

Geleneksel bir bakış açısıyla İsrailoğullarının Tevrat’taki ilk kadın peygamberi olan Miryam, Harun ve Musa’nın kız kardeşi olup Mısır’dan çıkışın önemli figürlerinden biridir. Ancak eleştirel ve farklı bakış açısından Miryam ile ilgili kutsal kitap ve midraşlardaki anlatılara bakıldığında onun üç farklı portreye sahip olduğu görülmektedir. İlk portre, sepet içinde suya bırakılan Musa’yı uzaktan seyreden ve ismi belirtilmeyen abladır. İkinci tasvirde o, Mısır’dan çıkış esnasında Harun’un kız kardeşi peygamber Miryam olarak betimlenmektedir. Bu tasvir daha yakından incelendiğinde Mısır’dan çıkışta dilinde (...) ezgisi, elinde tefi ile dans ederek İsrailoğullarına liderlik eden Miryam’ın, peygamber olmaktan ziyade Mısır’dan izler taşıyan rahibe olmaya daha yakın durduğu görülmektedir. Nitekim Miryam’ı bir rahibe olarak görmek Cüzzamlı Miryam kıssasını daha anlaşılır kıldığı gibi onun fiziki kusurla cezalandırılması Mısır’daki bir rahibenin görevden uzaklaştırılmasıyla uyumluluk arz etmektedir. Rabbani literatür başta olmak üzere Yahudi geleneğinin Miryam algısı ise ona üçüncü bir portre kazandırmaktadır. Midraş literatürün Miryam portresi, ölümünden hemen önce Tevrat’ın ondan aldığı saygınlığı iade çerçevesinde olup, onu diğer önemli anneler arasında görmek üzerine kuruludur. (shrink)

Im Zentrum des vorliegenden Sammelbandes steht die Frage nach dem Bösen in Religionen, die als monotheistisch verstanden werden oder für die zumindest die Herrschaft des Hauptgottes über alle anderen Götter und Mächte ein entscheidendes Anliegen ist. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf dem sich formierenden Judentum und Christentum sowie dem Alten Testament. Besonderes Interesse gilt den Texten aus Qumran, und darüber hinaus erfolgt ein Blick auf mittelalterliche Heiligenlegenden. Die Beiträge des Bandes zeigen, dass es in den antiken jüdischen und christlichen Texte eine (...) große Vielfalt von Verkörperungen des Bösen gibt, sei es extern als Dämon oder Teufel, sei es intern als die menschliche Fähigkeit, Böses zu tun. Außerdem stellt sich heraus, dass in der jüdisch-christlichen Literatur Dualismus nicht grundsätzlich abgelehnt wird, aber nur Formen von Dualismus vorkommen, in denen das Böse Gott und dem Guten letztlich untergeordnet ist. Mit Beiträgen von: Jörn Bockmann, Miryam T. Brand, Jan Dochhorn, Matthew Goff, Erkki Koskenniemi, Michael Morris, Hector M. Patmore, Susanne Rudnig-Zelt, Markus Saur, Ryan E. Stokes, Oda Wischmeyer, Benjamin Wold. (shrink)

We introduce a ``rarity of defeat'' principle, valid in cases of deference to an expert, to address intuitions involved in a puzzle of Nissan-Rozen concerning epistemic deference and evidential screening-off.

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