Though the psychoanalytic method of interpretation is seen by psychoanalysts as a reliable scientific tool for investigating the unconscious mind, its reputation has long been marred by what’s known as the consensus problem: where different analysts fail to reach agreement when they interpret the same phenomena. This has long been thought, by both practitioners and observers of psychoanalysis, to undermine its claim to scientific status. The causes of this problem, however, are dimly understood. In this paper I (...) attempt to illuminate one important cause of the consensus problem by investigating the role which reliance on ‘associative evidence’ has in generating consensus failures. Various options for overcoming the difficulties with this form of clinical evidence are then examined. It is argued that these problems can be mitigated by the notion of overall associative fit, though they are exacerbated by certain loose standards used for what counts as acceptable associative evidence. The possibility of using more rigorous standards is discussed. (shrink)

L’argument de base de cet article est que le débat consensuel n’a pas été une notion très significative jusqu’à présent parce que le consensus n’a pas été étudié de manière approfondie en tant que concept et que la délibération n’a pas été étudiée précisément en termes de sa propension à parvenir à un accord commun. En particulier, la délibération et les problèmes qui en découlent n’ont pas été classées en plusieurs niveaux afin d’exposer les différents défis qui se posent (...) lorsque l’on tente de parvenir à un accord et les types d’approches délibératives impliquées dans chaque catégorie. La présente recherche propose une telle catégorisation dans le but de clarifier davantage le débat. (shrink)

In a previous article, I attempted to assess the likely impact of the most prominent versions of the therapeutic misconception (TM) on research subjects’ informed consent. I concluded that the TM is not nearly as significant a concern as is commonly thought, and that focusing on it is more likely to undermine than promote research subjects’ informed consent.A recent commentary rejects these conclusions, as least as they pertain to the “consensus” definition of the TM. The authors of the commentary (...) argue that work on the TM remains central to ensuring the appropriateness of research subjects’ consent and, by implication, the ethical acceptability of clinical research.The present work evaluates the arguments offered in support of these claims. This analysis reveals that the authors offer few substantive responses to my arguments, and the responses they do offer fail to undermine my prior conclusions. Furthermore, consideration of an additional issue—the emergence of learning healthcare systems—suggests that the TM is likely to be even less significant in the future, hence, focusing on it may be even more problematic than I argued previously. (shrink)

In book 3 of On Abstinence from Animal Food, Porphyry is traditionally taken to argue that animals are rational and that it is, therefore, unjust to kill them for food. Since the vast majority of scholars endorse this interpretation, I call it ‘the consensus interpretation’. Yet, strangely enough, elsewhere in his corpus Porphyry claims that the non-human animals are irrational. Jonathan Barnes notices this discrepancy and suggests that an appeal to the distinction between specific and non-specific predication can resolve (...) the problem. This paper explains Barnes’ solution, but argues that it must ultimately be rejected. It concludes with a brief survey of other approaches to the problem, and with an outline of the proposed solution, in which the consensus interpretation of On Abstinence is rejected in favour of a dialectical reading of Book 3. Porphyry, this piece suggests, may not have believed that animals were rational after all. (shrink)

The concept of information has been extensively studied and written about, yet no consensus on a unified definition of information has to date been reached. This paper seeks to establish the basis for a unified definition of information. We claim a biosemiotics perspective, based on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information, provides a footing on which to build because the frame this provides has applicability to both the sciences and humanities. A key issue in reaching a unified definition of information (...) is the fundamental problem of identifying how a human organism, in a self-referential process, develops from a state in which its knowledge of the human-organism-in-its-environment is almost non-existent to a state in which the human organism not only recognizes the existence of the environment but also sees itself as part of the human-organism-in-its-environment system. This allows a human organism not only to self-referentially engage with the environment and navigate through it, but also to transform it in its own image and likeness. In other words, the Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information concerns the phylogenetic development process, as well as the ontogenetic development process of Homo sapiens sapiens from a single cell to our current multicellular selves, all in a changing long-term and short-term environment, respectively. (shrink)

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential (...) unfairness, (3) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault. (shrink)

The fundamental problem of philosophy is whether doing it has any point, since if it does not have any point, there is no reason to do it. It is suggested that the intrinsic point of doing philosophy is to establish a rational consensus about what the answers to its main questions are. But it seems that this cannot be accomplished because philosophical arguments are bound to be inconclusive. Still, philosophical research generates an increasing number of finer grained distinctions (...) in terms of which we try to conceptualize reality, and this is a sort of progress. But if, as is likely, our arguments do not suffice to decide between these alternatives, our personalities might slip in to do so. Our philosophy will then express our personality. This could provide philosophy with a point for us. If some of our conclusions have practical import, philosophy could have the further point of giving us something by which we can live. (shrink)

The problem of the morality of abortion is one of the most complex and controversial in the entire field of applied ethics. It may therefore appear rather surprising that the most popular proposed “solutions” to it are extremely simple and straightforward, based on clear-cut universal rules which typically either condemn abortion severely in virtually every case or else deem it to be morally quite unproblematic, and hence permissible whenever the mother wishes. This polarised situation in the theoretical debate, however, (...) is in clear contrast with the abortion law in many countries (including Britain), where abortions are treated very differently according to the stage of pregnancy at which they are carried out, so that early abortions are permitted relatively easily, whereas very late abortions are sanctioned only in exceptional cases. It seems likely, moreover, that in thus taking account of the time of an abortion, the law genuinely reflects the weight of public opinion - there may be no overall consensus on the underlying moral issues, but it does appear to be part of “commonsense” morality to accept that, whatever the ultimate rights and wrongs of abortion in general may be, at any rate abortion early in pregnancy is morally greatly preferable to late abortion. Let us call this “the developmental view”, since it holds that the moral gravity of abortion increases with the degree of development of the fetus. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of the strategies and theories of democratic participation in Nigeria that breed institutional marginality and bad governance due to shortfalls in pursuing the values of justice and empowerment as core democratic characteristics. The same democratic principles such as voting, parliament, constitution, judiciary, that are suggestive of gains such as responsible use, and peaceful transfer of power may not have translated fully into sociopolitical empowerment for responsibility and representation in evolving democratic practice in Nigeria due (...) to problems of agency and political ideology. Democratic theorizing and participation in Nigeria has defied orthodox presuppositions seen in the disrespect for basic rights and the disregard for the rule of law in democracy that allow for fair play within and among the elites and political grassroots. Thus this study investigates the Nigerian predicament as a model or case study, raising questions about the reasons for the systematic disempowerment of groups. (shrink)

Food poverty and food waste are two major contemporary food system problems, which have gained prominence amongst both scholars and policy-makers, due to recent economic and environmental concerns. In this context, the culturally dominant perspective portrays charitable food redistribution as a “win–win solution” to confront food poverty and food waste in affluent societies, although this view is contested by many scholars. This paper applies the notions of framings and flat/sharp keyings to unpack the different narratives entailed by public discourses on (...) food waste and food poverty in Italy. The aim is to problematize the representation of the recent anti-waste/pro-donations law as the optimal policy measure to effectively rectify both food poverty and food waste. The paper argues that the widespread public support for the law reflects the interpretation of charitable food redistribution as a consensus frame, standing for the convergence between flat positions and is reinforced by confusion on terms and responsibilities. Indeed, the strength of the law lies in the capacity to reconcile different positions and bring actors together around a short-term objective, whose foundations have deep roots in the common ethics. However, if the debate is to be moved forward, trade-offs between different framings of problems at stake should be explicitly navigated when designing policy instruments. (shrink)

Although far from unanimous, there seems to be a general consensus that neither mind nor brain can be reduced without remainder to the other. This essay argues that indeed both mind and brain need to be included in a nonreductionistic way in any genuinely integral theory of consciousness. In order to facilitate such integration, this essay presents the results of an extensive cross-cultural literature search on the "mind" side of the equation, suggesting that the mental phenomena that need to (...) be considered in any integral theory include developmental levels or waves of consciousness, developmental lines or streams of consciousness, states of consciousness, and the self . A "master template" of these various phenomena, culled from over one-hundred psychological systems East and West, is presented. It is suggested that this master template represents a general summary of the "mind" side of the brain-mind integration. The essay concludes with reflections on the "hard problem," or how the mind-side can be integrated with the brain-side to generate a more integral theory of consciousness. (shrink)

Wicked problems—that is, problems that can be framed in a number of different ways, depending on who is looking at them—pose ethical challenges for professionals that have scarcely been recognized as such. Even though wicked problems are all around us, they are rarely addressed in education. A reason for this failure might be that wicked problems pose almost insurmountable challenges in educational settings. This contribution shows how students can learn to cope with wicked problems in problem-based learning projects that (...) are structured by the Reflect! platform. (shrink)

The ‘Demarcation Problem’ is to mark the boundary between things that are scientific and things that are not. Philosophers have worked on this problem for a long time, and yet there is still no consensus solution. Should we continue to hope, or must we draw a more sceptical conclusion? In his paper, ‘The Demise of the Demarcation Problem’, Larry Laudan (1983) does the latter. In this thesis, I address the three arguments he gives for this conclusion.

The author comments on the Consensus Statement from the point of view of an ethics consultant in Germany. Since many hospitals in Germany are under considerable competitive pressure, mission statements are becoming more and more important in order to draw a distinction between the different hospital types and to convey the meaning of the corporate identity both internally and externally. The Consensus Statement, which provides basic orientation without going into too much detail, can be a helpful initial document. (...) However, it does not deal with two specific problem areas which are examined more closely in the commentary: the application of risk-of-death algorithms in ICUs and the question of church membership of the caregivers to enable a proper preparation for death. The commentary also reveals certain differences in the discussions taking place in Anglo-Saxon countries and Continental Europe. (shrink)

This essay concerns what people should do in conflict situations when a doubt of fact bears on settling whether an alternative under consideration is legitimate or not. Its principal audience are those who believe that abortion can be legitimate when not having an abortion gives rise to serious harms that can be avoided by having one, but who are concerned that fetuses might feel pain when being aborted, and who believe that causing unnecessary pain should be avoided when doing so (...) would not pose an undue burden. The essay remains neutral on the substantive questions of the moral status of the unborn and the morality of abortion. The question of fetal pain has taken center stage in the last few years in the .. (shrink)

Successful public justification of coercive policy in liberal societies relies on a solution to what I call the aggregation problem. Without a method of weighing and balancing shared reasons that is acceptable to all, no genuine consensus on the acceptability of a political principle or policy is possible. This is a serious problem for theories of liberalism that rely on public justification or public reason that has largely been ignored. I show the seriousness of this problem (...) by using an example from contemporary politics, abortion policy. Within the context of abortion policy, I consider three approaches to the aggregation problem and argue that none of them offers a promising solution. This result, I argue, generalizes beyond abortion policy and poses a problem for the entire project of public reason liberalism. Even in an idealized society where all deliberate from a shared standpoint, it may not always be possible to find a policy all citizens regard as acceptable: not because there is a diversity of reasons, but because there is no uncontroversial method of weighing and aggregating reasons. This doesn’t mean public reason is useless, though. Instead of being a standard for justifying coercive policy, I argue public reason should be seen as a procedural tool for managing and mitigating the inescapable political conflicts that will inevitably arise in a pluralistic democratic society. (shrink)

This article is a critical analysis of the most important assumptions of Chantal Mouffe’s political philosophy, along with its original categories such as agonism, radical democracy and hegemony. The sources of her concept are indicated and certain difficulties that the author falls into are distinguished. The thread that is considered central to this philosophy, with the most profound practical consequences, is an attempt to demonstrate the futility of a liberal doctrine that values consensus and deliberation and proclaims an apology (...) for individualism and rationalism. Mouffe’s diagnosis strikes at the most important liberal values with the intention of discrediting them although she tries to creatively adopt others, such as pluralism. She proposes a new paradigm, much fairer than existing ones, because it does not negate the conflictive nature of politics. Does an agonist dispute and radical democracy really have a chance to undermine liberal axiology? Are we dealing with a breakthrough in thinking about politics? (shrink)

It is widely supposed that the scientists in any field use identical standards for evaluating theories. Without such unity of standards, consensus about scientific theories is supposedly unintelligible. However, the hypothesis of uniform standards can explain neither scientific disagreement nor scientific innovation. This paper seeks to show how the presumption of divergent standards (when linked to a hypothesis of dominance) can explain agreement, disagreement and innovation. By way of illustrating how a rational community with divergent standards can encourage innovation (...) and eventually reach consensus, recent developments in geophysics are discussed at some length. (shrink)

This essay discusses the challenges that the problem of environmental destruction represents for both ethics and political philosophy. It defends universalism as the only ethical theory capable of dealing adequately with the issue, but recognizes three limitations of it: First, its strong anthropocentrism (as in Kant); second, the meta-ethics of rational egoism (Spinoza and Hobbes); and, third, the reduction of ethics to symmetric relations in the mores of modernity. With regard to political philosophy, universalism rejects the idea that (...) class='Hi'>consensus is a necessary and sufficient condition for morality; it points out that democratic rule is rule by majority, only rarely by unanimous consensus, and insists on the fact that even a unanimous consensus does not guarantee justice if the people affected by a decision are not identical with those entitled to make it. The latter is the case in issues of intergenerational justice. The essay ends by opposing a formalist and proceduralist concept of democracy with one that understands democracy as one reasonable tool for achieving a substantive concept of justice. (shrink)

I argue that when conceiving or assessing normative ideas about how we should organize society into the kind of ecosystem we desire, it is unwise to completely ignore empirical conditions. I also demonstrate that when evaluating empirical difficulties attending a social system, it is also unwise to do so in total oblivion to the normative idea or objective informing the establishment of such a system. Each of these assessments I call an under informed single-level analysis. By contrast I advocate a (...) multi-level analysis (by which we evaluate both the normative and empirical dimensions of an idea or a social system) or, at the least, an informed single-level analysis (by which we evaluate either a normative idea or an empirical system with an implicit awareness of the content of the other level). I demonstrate that these models of analysis would never yield the same conclusions as an under informed single-level analysis. For my case studies I focus on the various models of analyses used in the debate about liberal majoritarian and consensus/communal democracies. (shrink)

During the last decade there has been burgeoning research concerning the ways in which we should think of and apply the concept of responsibility for Artificial Intelligence. Despite this conceptual richness, there is still a lack of consensus regarding what Responsible AI entails on both conceptual and practical levels. The aim of this paper is to connect the ethical dimension of responsibility in Responsible AI with Aristotelian virtue ethics, where notions of context and dianoetic virtues play a grounding role (...) for the concept of moral responsibility. The paper starts by highlighting the important difficulties in assigning responsibility to either technologies themselves or to their developers. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to moral responsibility are then contrasted, as we explore how they could inform debates about Responsible AI. We highlight the limits of the former ethical approaches and build the case for classical Aristotelian virtue ethics. We show that two building blocks of Aristotle’s ethics, dianoetic virtues and the context of actions, although largely ignored in the literature, can shed light on how we could think of moral responsibility for both AI and humans. We end by exploring the practical implications of this particular understanding of moral responsibility along the triadic dimensions of ethics by design, ethics in design and ethics for designers. (shrink)

An experimental consensus conference on the topic of gene therapy was held in order to discover whether the method, a means for participatory technology assessment born in Denmark in 1986, could be feasible in Japan. This article summarises the overall experience of this experiment and concludes that the method is indeed feasible in Japan. Enumerating some issues and problems we faced in this project, I will discuss their meaning and significance from the viewpoint of practitioner or initiator of participatory (...) technology assessment in Japan. (shrink)

This paper lays out the background and main features of Rawls’s new theory of justice. This is a theory that he began adumbrating about 1980 and that is given its fullest statement in his recent book Political Liberalism. I identify the main patterns of justification Rawls attempts to provide for his new theory and suggest a problem with one of these patterns in particular. The main lines of my analysis engage Rawls’s idea of constitutional consensus and his account (...) of political stability. (shrink)

The consensus is that repeatable artworks cannot be identified with particular material individuals. A perennial temptation is to identify them with types, broadly construed. Such identification, however, faces the so-called “Creation Problem.” This problem stems from the fact that, on the one hand, it seems reasonable to accept the claims that (1) repeatable artworks are types, (2) types cannot be created, and (3) repeatable artworks are created, but, on the other hand, these claims are mutually inconsistent. A (...) possible solution to the Creation Problem is to argue that claim (2) can be rejected because (a) the only motivation for it is that a type, being abstract, cannot stand in causal relations, but (b) this motivation is ungrounded, since types can, in fact, stand in such relations. Clearly, in order for this solution to be successful, it is necessary to substantiate the possibility of types to be causally efficacious. In this essay, I examine an attempt to do this with the help of Yablo’s principle of proportionality, which has been undertaken by Walters (2013) and, more recently, Juvshik (2018). Although the argument they advance may seem to provide strong support for the causal efficacy of types, I think it actually fails to do this. To explain why this is so, I first show that this argument commits us to the existence of widespread causal overdetermination involving types and then argue that this commitment is both epistemically and ontologically problematic. (shrink)

Although the abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome has become commonplace, infanticide is still widely rejected. Generally, there are three ways of justifying the differentiation between abortion and infanticide: by referring to the differences between the moral status of the fetus versus the infant, by referring to the differences of the moral status of the act of abortion versus the act of infanticide, or by separating the way the permissibility of abortion is justified from the way the impermissibility of infanticide (...) is justified. My argument is that none of these ways justifies the abortion of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome while simultaneously rejecting infanticide. Either the justification for abortion is consistent with infanticide, or it is implausible to justify abortion while rejecting infanticide. I conclude the article by making some preliminary remarks about how one might manage the situation posed by my argument. (shrink)

As it is known, there is no rule satisfying Additivity in the complete domain of bankruptcy problems. This paper proposes a notion of partial Additivity in this context, to be called µ-additivity. We find that µ-additivity, together with two quite compelling axioms, anonymity and continuity, identify the Minimal Overlap rule, introduced by Neill (1982).

John Rawls's transition from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism was driven by his rejection of Theory's account of stability. The key to his later account of stability is the idea of public reason. We see Rawls's account of stability as an attempt to solve a mutual assurance problem. We maintain that Rawls's solution fails because his primary assurance mechanism, in the form of public reason, is fragile. His conception of public reason relies on a condition of (...) class='Hi'>consensus that we argue is unrealistic in modern, pluralistic democracies. After rejecting Rawls's conception of public reason, we offer an ‘indirect alternative’ that we believe is much more robust. We cite experimental evidence to back up this claim. (shrink)

I explore the possible meanings that the notion of the common morality can have in a contemporary communitarian approach to ethics and public policy. The common morality can be defined as the conditions for shared pursuit of the good or as the values, deliberations, traditions, and common construction of the narrative of a people. The former sense sees the common morality as the universal and invariant structures of morality while the second sense is much more contingent in nature. Nevertheless, the (...) communitarian sees both aspects as integral in devising solutions to public policy problems. I outline how both meanings follow from communitarian philosophical anthropology and illustrate how they work together when addressing a question such as that of providing universal health insurance in the United States. The common morality forms the basis of building an implicit consensus that is available to and reaffirmed by the shared reflections of the citizenry. (shrink)

Theories of well-being that give an important role to satisfied pro-attitudes need to account for the fact that, intuitively, the scope of possible objects of pro-attitudes seems much wider than the scope of things, states, or events that affect our well-being. Parfit famously illustrated this with his wish that a stranger may recover from an illness: it seems implausible that the stranger’s recovery would constitute a benefit for Parfit. There is no consensus in the literature about how to rule (...) out such well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes. I argue, first, that there is no distinction in kind between well-being-relevant and irrelevant pro-attitudes. Instead, well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes are the limiting cases on the scale measuring how much of a difference pro-attitudes make to the subject’s well-being. Second, I propose a particular scalar model according to which the well-being-relevance of pro-attitudes is measured by either their hedonic tone, or by the subject’s conative commitment. (shrink)

The goal of the left has been predominantly libertarian: the realization of equal individual freedom. But now, with the demise of leftist hope for radical change that has followed the collapse of ?really existing?; socialism, the world is converging on a compromise between capitalism and the leftist impulse. This compromise is the democratic, interventionist welfare state, which has gained new legitimacy by virtue of combining a ?realistic?; acceptance of the unfortunate need for the market with an attempt to libertarianize capitalism (...) as much as possible, by intervening in its operation and redistributing the wealth it produces. Since the neoliberal economic critique of socialism seems to have been borne out by the events of 1989, neoliberal economists might now be expected to provide a similar critique of the new interventionist consensus. Yet there are few signs of their interest in doing so. This might be due to their acceptance of an erroneous interpretation of liberty which equates it with capitalist property relations, and which, they believe, provides an overarching moral justification for their opposition to state intervention in the market. Acceptance of this moralistic, ?libertarian?; version of neoliberalism may obscure the need for a synthetic critique of the new consensus which would integrate the many extant consequentialist arguments against it. Before reviewing the libertarian motives behind both socialism and intervention?ism, criticisms of moralistic neoliberal ?libertarianism?; are offered. These are intended to clear the way for a consequentialist critique of the interventionist welfare state. Finally, it is suggested that the problems with such a critique point toward a different project: a critique of the culture that gives rise to interventionism. (shrink)

Intense or industrial animal husbandry is morally bad. This consensus in animal ethics led to the emergence of veganism which is recently in decline in favour of ‘conscientious carnivorism’ which advocates eating animal products from animal-friendly animal husbandry in response to the moral problems of industrial farming. Advocates of animal-friendly husbandry justify rearing and killing ‘happy animals’ by highlighting that the animals live pleasant lives and would not have existed if not reared for human consumption. In this paper, I (...) tackle this ‘logic of the larder’ by showing that it serves as a purification strategy to conceal the harm that animals experience in this alleged animal-friendly type of farming. Defenders of ‘happy meat’ claim that animal-friendly animal husbandry is in the animals’ best interests and that it is in effect a ‘win-win situation’ for humans and farm animals alike. Departing from two critics of animal-friendly animal husbandry, I will show that the problem of this logic is that it evades the fact that moral residuals, which is the experienced harm by the animals, remain by engaging in this practice. Even if there may be strong reasons for the consumption of meat and derivatives of ‘happy animals’, the experienced harm for the animals will not be extinguished. I will denote the detachment that derives from the strategy of rendering the animals’ experienced harm in animal-friendly animal husbandry invisible as guilt. I will conclude that instead of purifying eating animals the ‘good way’, we should face the responsibility we have when killing ‘happy animals’ for ‘happy meat’. (shrink)

What are the ethics of child genital cutting? In a recent issue of the journal, Duivenbode and Padela (2019) called for a renewed discussion of this question. Noting that modern health care systems...

The question of when to stop an unsuccessful experiment can be difficult to answer from an individual perspective. To help to guide these decisions, we turn to the social epistemology of science and investigate knowledge inquisition within a group. We focused on the expensive and lengthy experiments in high energy physics, which were suitable for citation-based analysis because of the relatively quick and reliable consensus about the importance of results in the field. In particular, we tested whether the time (...) spent on a scientific project correlates with the project output. Our results are based on data from the high energy physics laboratory Fermilab. They point out that there is an epistemic saturation point in experimenting, after which the likelihood of obtaining major results drops. With time the number of less significant publications does increase, but highly cited ones do not get published. Since many projects continue to run after the epistemic saturation point, it becomes clearer that decisions made about continuing them are not always rational. (shrink)

The consensus problem is presented for the switched multiagent system, where the MAS is switched between continuous- and discrete-time systems with relative state constraints. With some standard assumptions, we obtain the fact that the switched MAS with relative state constraints can achieve consensus under both fixed undirected graphs and switching undirected graphs. Furthermore, based on the absolute average value of initial states, we propose sufficient conditions for consensus of the switched MAS. The challenge of this study (...) is that relative state constraints are considered, which will make the consensus problem much more complex. One of the main contributions is that, for the switched MAS with relative state constraints, we explore the solvability of the consensus problem. Finally, we present two simulation examples to show the effectiveness of the results. (shrink)

The arguments presented in this discussion point to some problems in the theory of communicative action considered as a starting point for a sociological theory with both normative and explanatory aspirations. It is argued that Habermas's notion of consensus is not sufficiently developed to constitute a foundation of the ethics of public debates; that both social action and communicative action are grounded in social actors' references to the same three worlds, which makes the coordination of actions by means of (...) understanding achieved in speech possible; that the criteria of rationality underlying use of language in the communicative action are ultimately those that are made explicit and consciously worked out in science; and that, finally, it is Parsons' solution to the Hobbesian problem and his concept of social action that provide a possible foundation for universalistic ethics. (shrink)

In a democracy, when a group of deliberators have a set of differing (and contrary) views and beliefs about a particular policy or action, p, a recommended course of action is for them to pursue, and ultimately reach, a consensus on p. The pursuit of consensus allows deliberators to ‘reach over the aisle’ in accommodating dissenting views through rational dialogue until a consensual agreement is reached by all the deliberators. What fuels this pursuit of consensus is the (...) ‘will to consensus’—a ‘frame of mind’ or a ‘disposition’ to resolve disagreements into a consensus. In this paper, I will raise some conceptual problems with positing a ‘will to consensus’ that is prior to, and supervenes on, the rational discussion of deliberators. Instead of a ‘will to consensus’, democratic theorists should be content with the minimal claim of a ‘will to dialogue’. (shrink)

Consensus is commonly identified as the goal of ethics committee deliberation, but it is not clear what is morally authoritative about consensus. Various problems with the concept of an ethics committee in a health care institution are identified. The problem of consensus is placed in the context of the debate about realism in moral epistemology, and this is shown to be of interest for ethics committees. But further difficulties, such as the fact that consensus at (...) one level of discourse need not imply consensus at another, oblige us to look more closely at the deliberative process itself. That yields two complementary methods of deliberation that have proven their worth. Finally, placing ethics committees in the context of Dewey's philosophy of social intelligence suggests that consensus should be regarded primarily as a condition rather than as the goal of inquiry. Keywords: ethics committee, consensus, moral authority CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The problem of evil has been around for centuries but as yet no consensus exists as to its significance for atheism or theism. After a brief historical review, I focus on the debate between two leading contemporary philosophers, Rowe and Plantinga, and argue that neither has succeeded in resolving the evidential version of the problem of evil. It is time to turn from the theological issue to practical issues about pointless suffering. Using a common sense approach, I (...) argue that there are countless cases of pointless suffering and that they deserve our undivided attention. (shrink)

There is now a general consensus amongst philosophers in the values in science literature that values necessarily play a role in core areas of scientific inquiry. We argue that attention should now be turned from debating the value-free ideal to delineating legitimate from illegitimate influences of values in science, a project we dub “The New Demarcation Problem.” First, we review past attempts to demarcate the uses of values and propose a categorization of the strategies by where they seek (...) to draw legitimacy from. Next, we propose a set of desiderata for what we take to be a satisfactory solution and present a case study where conflicting sets of values clearly impinge on science, but where the legitimacy of their influence is ambiguous. We use these desiderata and the case study to illustrate what we take to be the strengths and weaknesses of current strategies. To be clear, our goal is not to answer the question we pose, but to articulate a framework within which a solution can be judged. (shrink)

Focusing on the plurality of irreconcilable conceptions of social and political justice, this book presents an array of new perspectives on the topic of distributive justice. Bringing together 30 original essays of well-established and young international scholars, the volume is essential reading for anyone interested in social and political justice.

In real life, multiple network public opinion emergencies may break out in a certain place at the same time. So, it is necessary to invite emergency decision experts in multiple fields for timely evaluating the comprehensive crisis of the online public opinion, and then limited emergency resources can be utilized to give priority to respond to the one with the highest crisis. Due to the complexity of network public opinion emergencies and the limited cognition of experts, most of the decision (...) problems for evaluating the network public opinion emergencies are highly uncertain. Also, prior to the selection of the highest crisis, it is preferable that experts reach a high degree of consensus among their assessments or opinions. To address such problems, this paper presents a novel adaptive consensus reaching model for multiattribute group decision making with probabilistic linguistic decision matrices. First, to quantify the difference between any two probabilistic linguistic term sets accurately and efficiently, we define a novel distance measure between PLTSs based on the Wasserstein metric. Then, by integrating the defined PLTSs-based Wasserstein distance measure into the classical CCSD method, we construct an optimization model for objectively determining attribute weights. Subsequently, we develop the individual cumulative consensus contribution measure and the group consensus measure, respectively, following which is to present an integrated consensus improving strategy that considers both weight-updating and assessment-adjusting. Finally, the feasibility and the applicability of the proposed approach are illustrated via a real evaluation of network public opinion emergencies. Through comparing with existing probabilistic linguistic MAGDM approaches, the proposed approach offers the advantages in terms of the accurate measurement of information difference and the integrated improvement of consensus efficiency. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that emotions contribute positively to human practical rationality. While arguments that defend this position often appeal to the modularity of emotion-generation mechanisms, these arguments are also susceptible to the criticism, e.g. by Jones (2006), that emotional modularity supports pessimism about the prospects of emotions contributing positively to practical rationality here and now. This paper aims to respond to this criticism by demonstrating how models of emotion processing can accommodate the sorts of cognitive influence required (...) to make the pro-emotion position plausible whilst exhibiting key elements of modularity. (shrink)