In his study Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman contrasts the hopes and expectations of the modernising world of the nineteenth century with the real outcomes of the twentieth century, where the very conditions of modernity have led to the mass destruction of humanity and of those early hopes for the betterment of humankind. This volume explores the possibilities left to those once modernising societies, not only in terms of the worlds they have constructed but also in discerning the novel (...) conditions which the closure of modernity entails. That closure, in part the completion of industrialisation and the social order that went with it, and in part the dislocation of the kinds of social knowledge used to understand it, has raised profound and disturbing questions about the character of this brave new world and the ways in which its governance and the goal of the good society can be understood. This volume explores some of the current vicissitudes of modernity, especially in relation to the crises of the political, and the political consequences of new technologies. (shrink)

The work of scientists and doctors in advancing genetic research and its applications has been accompanied by plenty of discussion in the popular press—from Good Housekeeping and Forbes to Ms. and the Congressional Record—about such ...

BackgroundHuman infection studies (HIS) are valuable in vaccine development. Deliberate infection, however, creates challenging questions, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) where HIS are new and ethical challenges may be heightened. Consultation with stakeholders is needed to support contextually appropriate and acceptable study design. We examined stakeholder perceptions about the acceptability and ethics of HIS in Malawi, to inform decisions about planned pneumococcal challenge research and wider understanding of HIS ethics in LMICs.MethodsWe conducted 6 deliberative focus groups and 15 (...) follow-up interviews with research staff, medical students, and community representatives from rural and urban Blantyre. We also conducted 5 key informant interviews with clinicians, ethics committee members, and district health government officials.ResultsStakeholders perceived HIS research to have potential population health benefits, but they also had concerns, particularly related to the safety of volunteers and negative community reactions. Acceptability depended on a range of conditions related to procedures for voluntary and informed consent, inclusion criteria, medical care or support, compensation, regulation, and robust community engagement. These conditions largely mirror those in existing guidelines for HIS and biomedical research in LMICs. Stakeholder perceptions pointed to potential tensions, for example, balancing equity, safety, and relevance in inclusion criteria.ConclusionsOur findings suggest HIS research could be acceptable in Malawi, provided certain conditions are in place. Ongoing assessment of participant experiences and stakeholder perceptions will be required to strengthen HIS research during development and roll-out. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"To make a difference...":Narrative Desire in Global MedicineByron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio GoodIf, as Arthur Frank (2002) writes, "moral life, for better and worse, takes place in storytelling," this collection of narratives written by physicians working in field settings in global medicine gives us a glimpse of some aspects of moral experience, practice, and dilemmas in settings of poverty and low health care resources. These essays are written (...) from the midst of practice, in diverse settings in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The majority of the writers are practitioners of contemporary 'global medicine'—physicians from North America or Europe who spend part of their lives flying into settings of poverty or special need to practice medicine and work with on-going collaborative clinical and public health systems—while a smaller number are working in the societies in which they were born. Although a few work for classic humanitarian organizations or have developed their own local NGO's, the great majority are engaged in the 'hybrid life' described by Robert Riviello and noted by Renée Fox, moving between academic medical centers and distant health care systems that are supported by local governments, major international organizations and funding agencies, and international NGO's like Partners in Health. These diverse forms of practice have become a common model for contemporary clinicians engaged in what has emerged as a new discipline of global health or global medicine, and these narratives give us a glimpse of some of the enduring, as well as newly emerging, forms of moral practice and ethical dilemmas characteristic of today's global medicine.Many of these stories are filled with the tension and pathos that makes clinical narratives powerful to read. Physicians are forced to make unfathomable decisions about whether to resuscitate and keep a baby alive, using all means available, or to let the infant die, whether to carry out a procedure that will save an infant in birth but would put the mother at risk, about how to deal with a cancer found in a very advanced state. However, virtually all of the stories transcend these classical stories of the decisions physicians are forced to make by being placed in settings of great scarcity of resources, which stand in particular contrast to the academic medical settings in North America or Europe where many of these global medicine specialists have trained and many continue to practice. The unspeakable inequality of resources emerges throughout these narratives as a kind of master theme, as the underlying moral, as opposed to plot, which gives meaning and sense to the stories. For those who practice medicine in such settings, global inequalities and scarcity of medical resources are deeply felt. They produce the rage that Jeffrey Deal describes. ("I learned to despise American churches during that time, a time when my world encompassed a dying newborn in Sudan, as well as the air conditioned padded seats [End Page 121] of our affluent suburban church.") They produce the distinctive experiences of helplessness and pain felt by clinicians who cannot separate how they would be able to treat such a patient at home from how they have to practice in these settings. For those clinicians working in their own societies, scarcity of resources often produces deep anger at the corrupt governments that fail to support basic human services for the great majority of their population. ("We were temporary actors performing in the cynical play of scarcity on permanent display in Port-au-Prince," writes Haitian physician Paul Pierre about his experience prior to joining Partners in Health.)But for those who regularly travel back and forth across the divide between rich and poor, whether across national boundaries or within their own society, the challenge to live a moral life is unendingly complicated. While becoming a part of a struggle for global justice with colleagues and advocates from both sides of the divide, few of the narrators can avoid personal feelings of ambivalence and guilt at being able to easily move from one side of that divide to the other back home. Many fantasize about giving up their lives in the north to devote themselves... (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility positively impacts relationships between firms and customers. Previous research construes this as an outcome of customers’ warm glow that results from supporting firms’ benevolence. The current research demonstrates that beyond warm glow, CSR positively impacts firms’ sales through mitigating their customers’ perceptions of purchase risk. We demonstrate this effect across three conditions in which customers’ perceived risk of purchase is heightened, using both secondary data and two lab experiments. Under conditions of greater purchase risk, CSR positively impacts (...) both sales and customer purchase intentions to a greater extent than in conditions of lower purchase risk. In addition to measuring purchase risk as the mediating process behind these effects, we demonstrate that the effect of CSR on sales is stronger for those CSR activities that signal a stakeholder orientation. (shrink)

This essay argues that literature is neither an intrinsic good (like oxygen) nor a constructed good (like a teddy-bear) but instead a conditional good, like a blueprint. It has immense potential value, but that potential can be actualized only if readers do a certain kind of work; and readers are likely to do that work only if, as a culture, we retain an understanding of what novels and poems both need from us and can give us. This means we (...) need to be wary of theories that are excessively deflationary (all literature is mere entertainment), cynical (all literature is a vehicle for state ideology), or over-optimistic (all literature makes us more altruistic) and instead embrace a pluralism of effect. Some fictions, like The Wire, invite us to reflect on our own beliefs; some, like Plato’s dialogues, help us fine-tune our mental capacities; some, like Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, offer us a choice of genres; some help us feel our feelings; some offer formal models for the shape of a life. Literature can continue to matter in all of these ways—but only as long as we allow it to. (shrink)

It has been proposed that the ways in which the criminal justice system treats offenders with Autism spectrum condition should duly account for how the condition influences the offenders’ behavior. While the recommendation appears plausible, what adhering to it means in practice remains unclear. A central feature of ASC is seen to be that people with the condition have difficulties with understanding and reacting to the mental states of others in what are commonly considered as adequate ways. This article aims (...) to clarify how the difficulties affect the moral weight to be given to the good and bad motives of offending in sentencing offenders with ASC. I start by explicating the main points of departure of the endeavor. After that I assess the moral significance of the good and bad motives of offenders with ASC in view of four cases and a comparison with how we commonly treat people who are not as able to understand and react to the mental states of others as neurotypical adults. I suggest that considerations pertaining to what has been called the primary orientation of morality provide grounds for deeming the good motives of offenders with ASC as morally significant as those of otherwise similar neurotypical offenders and the bad motives of offenders with ASC as less morally significant than those of otherwise similar neurotypical offenders. After considering three possible objections to the suggestion, I conclude by briefly elucidating its purported import. (shrink)

What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a genuine human right? This chapter offers a new answer: human beings have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life are certain goods, capacities, and options that human beings qua human beings need whatever else they qua individuals might need in order to pursue a characteristically good human life. This chapter explains how this Fundamental Conditions Approach (...) is better than James Griffin’s Agency Approach as well as Martha Nussbaum’s Central Capabilities Approach. It also shows how it can be compatible with the increasingly popular Political Conceptions of human rights defended by John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. (shrink)

The moral justification of Will Kymlicka's theory of minority rights is unconvincing. According to Kymlicka, cultural embeddedness is a necessary condition for personal autonomy (which is, in turn, the precondition for the good life) and for that reason liberals should be concerned about culture. I will criticize this instrumentalism of social attachments and the moral monism behind it. On the basis of a modification of Axel Honneth's theory of recognition, I will reject the false opposition between the instrumental value and (...) the intrinsic value of culture. Honneth makes a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love; (2) respect; and (3) social esteem. Recognition of cultural difference is situated in the third sphere. But the logic of a recognition of cultural difference also demands a non-evaluative recognition, a respect for difference. Difference-respect cannot be reduced to the recognition of personal autonomy or to the recognition of a culture ‘as such’. Difference-respect is concerned with a formal recognition of difference, namely the recognition of a culture's intrinsic value for the other. By recognizing the moral importance both of personal autonomy and of social attachments, we do not have to surrender to the reductive bent in modern moral philosophy. 1 Key Words: Axel Honneth • identity • instrumentalism • intrinsic value of culture • moral justification • multiculturalism • recognition • value pluralism • Will Kymlicka. (shrink)

In Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason Kant speaks of an ethical state of nature and of an ethico-civil condition, with explicit reference to the juridical state of nature and the juridico-civil condition he discusses at length in his legal-political writings. Given that the Religion is the only work where Kant introduces a parallel between these concepts, one might think that this is only a loose analogy, serving a merely illustrative function. The paper provides a first outline of the (...) similarities and the differences between the state of nature and the civil condition in Right and in ethics. The comparison points to a deeper, structural relation between the two pairs of concepts. By doing so, it makes room for developing a unitary conception of the state of nature and of the civil condition, which would underlie both the ethical and the juridical version. (shrink)

Neo‐Aristotelian ethical naturalism purports to show that moral evaluation of human action and character is an evaluation of natural goodness—a kind of evaluation that applies to living things in virtue of their nature and based on their form of life. The standard neo‐Aristotelian view defines natural goodness by way of generic statements describing the natural history, or the ‘characteristic’ life, of a species. In this paper, I argue that this conception of natural goodness commits the neo‐Aristotelian view to a problematic (...) anti‐individualism that results in the wrong assessment of individuals with uniquely adaptive adjustments. I then offer an alternative account of natural goodness that avoids this problem. Instead of relying on generic statements about a species, my account defines natural goodness based on counterfactual conditionals describing the modal properties of a single individual. I argue that this modal‐explanatory account gives a conception of natural goodness that is more intuitively plausible and better suited to capture the diversity and plasticity distinctive of life. (shrink)

This paper offers a philosophical `history' of the nature of`public discourse' – a basic element of human rights. It beginswith Enlightenment views from Condorcet and Jefferson, turns to Dewey,and then to Habermas. Over a couple of centuries not only does thecentral character of discourse change but so too does the definition ofa public person.

Talk at the Philosophy [in:of:for:and] Digital Knowledge Infrastructures online workshop (08/09/2022).

We are all immersed in a sea of social norms, but they are sometimes tricky to observe with any clarity. They are often invisible to us and emerge only when they are not observed. Social norms are important to understand because they are both limiting of our freedom, such as gendered and racialized norms, and at the same time the very conditions of our agency. Social Goodness presents an original, externalist answer to the question of the source or origin of (...) social role normativity. Rather than grounding social normativity in the attitudes of persons, the book argues for an externalism that roots social role normativity in the social world itself: in its positions, institutions, and larger architecture. The core insight of externalism is that the function or structural feature of an enterprise or activity can bring with it normative demands quite independently of the attitudes of those who engage with it. According to the artisanal model, just as a carpenter, ceramicist, or chef is responsive to and evaluable under a set of artisanal norms or techniques, so too is a mother and or an academic or a President. The source of normativity is this technique or expertise, independent of the preferences, endorsements, or recognitive attitudes of individuals. The artisanal model for social role normativity has resources to explain both the "stickiness" or persistence of social norms and our ability to criticize existing norms and to engage in normative self-creation--to create new normative selves. The artisanal model also has resources to capture and express the social situatedness, locality, and materiality of social roles. The relational ontology of social roles, implicit in the artisanal model, provides a useful frame to consider both hierarchical and oppressive social relations. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that austerity creates working conditions that can undermine professionalism in healthcare. We characterise austerity in terms of overlapping economic, social and ethical dimensions and explain how these can pose significant challenges for healthcare professionals. Amongst other things, austerity is detrimental to healthcare practice because it creates shortages of material and staff resources, negatively affects relationships and institutional cultures, and creates increased burdens and pressures for staff, not least as a result of deteriorating public health conditions. (...) After discussing the multiple dimensions of austerity, we consider the challenges it creates for professional ethics in healthcare. We highlight three mechanisms—intensification of work, practitioner isolation, and organisational alienation—which pose acute problems for healthcare professionals working under conditions of austerity. These mechanisms can turn ‘routine moral stress’ into moral distress and, at the same time, make poor care much more likely. While professionalism clearly depends on individual capabilities and behaviours, it also depends upon a complex sets of social conditions being established and maintained. The problems caused by austerity reveal a need to broaden the scope of professional ethics so that it includes the responsibilities of ‘role constructors’ and not just ‘role occupiers’. Austerity therefore presents opportunities for health professionals and associated ‘role constructors’ to contribute to a reimagining of future models of healthcare professionalism. (shrink)

Bioethics as a branch of professional ethics has rapidly expanded in recent years. The growth of interest in bioethics is the result of its focus on life, its value, as well as the questions about health, medicine and problems which are involved. Bioethics is included within the lessons of ethical education in primary and secondary schools in Slovakia. As an independent subject it creates part of the compulsory curriculum in the study programme of ethics at university. It is noteworthy that (...) bioethics also keeps an important place in the education of future doctors at Medical Faculties. It gives rise to an interesting question; what about doctors’ long-term performance in their profession? Do they need knowledge of medical ethics when performing their job? This article tries to answer these questions. It points out that teaching medical ethics is relevant/necessary at primary schools, secondary schools, for students of ethics, medical students and other health care professionals as well as for practising physicians. (shrink)

Philosophers are now wary of conflating the “fittingness” or accuracy of an emotion with any form of moral assessment of that emotion. Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson, who originally cautioned against this “conflation”, also warned philosophers not to infer that an emotion is inaccurate from the fact that feeling it would be morally inappropriate, or that it is accurate from the fact that feeling it would be morally appropriate. Such inferences, they argue, risk committing “the moralistic fallacy”, a mistake they (...) claim is widespread throughout the work of contemporary and historical moral philosophers. I argue that many basic and familiar forms of moral assessment of the emotions are not subject to these arguments. I illustrate this by reconsidering the idea that to assess an emotion as “fitting” is to assess it as what a virtuous person would feel. After showing how assessments akin to this “virtue-theoretical” notion of fit may be prevalent even outside of the Aristotelian tradition, I suggest some more charitable and philosophically productive interpretations of the philosophical views of the emotions that D’Arms and Jacobson criticize, and argue that we cannot coherently theorize about the fittingness conditions of the emotions in a morally neutral way. (shrink)

If Spinoza is a thinker very present in the Faculties of Philosophy, on the other hand, he is presented as one of the great forgotten of the humanist programs of secondary education. Contrary to what happened with other philosophers, who had more chance of spreading in non-specialized contexts (we can cite Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato or Schopenhauer as obvious examples), Spinoza is generally considered a excessively systematic author, and complex, whose works would have been written for a small group of scholars. (...) Nothing could be further from the truth. Spinoza’s life was full of completely surprising events, from his estrangement from the Jewish community (which repudiated him in a strict and disagreeable way), through his dalliances with heterodox currents which gradually grew in power, until his meeting with Leibniz and his intrepid travels. from one part of his native Holland to another. In this article, we examine the concept of desire in Spinoza's philosophy and its connection to the philosopher's decision to find the greater good. Since the greatest good, in turn, is nothing but its own enjoyment, we conclude that ignoring its existence, seeking it, and living it are, respectively, the conditions of the vulgar, the philosopher, and the wise, as what happened in the Garden of Epicurus. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.8, Aristotle seems to argue that certain external goods are needed for happiness because, in the first place, they are needed for virtuous activity. This has puzzled scholars. After all, it seems possible for a virtuous agent to exercise her virtuous character even under conditions of extreme hardship or deprivation. Indeed, it is natural to think these are precisely the conditions under which one's virtue shines through most clearly. Why then does Aristotle think that a wide (...) range of external goods is required for virtuous activity, and therefore, for happiness? -/- I argue that there is good sense to be made of Aristotle's stance on external goods. Specifically, I explain how, on this view, a range of external goods is required for the full exercise of virtue, and I show that it is only this full exercise that is constitutive of eudaimonia. Drawing on passages in Politics 7.13 and Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, I develop and defend a distinction between the "mere" exercise of virtue, and the full or complete exercise of virtue. I argue that, for Aristotle, the distinguishing feature of this distinction is the value of the virtuous action's ends. An action that fully expresses virtue aims at an end that is unqualifiedly good, while an action that merely exercises virtue does not. I argue that the external goods Aristotle mentions in NE 1.8 are necessary for performing actions with unqualifiedly good ends, and so necessary for the complete exercise of virtue. In addition to providing a more satisfactory account than existing proposals of the role of external goods in Aristotelian happiness, my interpretation has two additional upshots. First, it brings to light an under-appreciated and independently compelling feature of Aristotle's ethical thought: the value of virtuous actions depends in part on the value of the ends they aim to realize. Second, it finds in Aristotle a distinct and powerful way of thinking about the badness of certain kinds of misfortune and deprivation: they are bad in part because they prevent us from fully realizing our capacity for moral agency, from fully engaging with value in the world. (shrink)

In this book, Roberto Di Ceglie offers an historical, theological, and epistemological investigation exploring how commitments to God and/or the good generate the optimum condition to achieve knowledge. Di Ceglie criticizes the common belief that to attain knowledge, one must always be ready to replace one's convictions with beliefs that appear to be proven. He defends a more comprehensive view, historically exemplified by outstanding Christian thinkers, whereby believers are expected to commit themselves to God and to related beliefs no matter (...) how convincing the evidence contradicting such beliefs appear to be. He also argues that both believers and unbelievers can commit themselves to God and the good, respectively, thereby creating a spiritual turn in epistemology that enables them to generate the best possible condition for conducting rational enquiries and discussion. (shrink)

Mandatory vaccination, including for COVID-19, can be ethically justified if the threat to public health is grave, the confidence in safety and effectiveness is high, the expected utility of mandatory vaccination is greater than the alternatives, and the penalties or costs for non-compliance are proportionate. I describe an algorithm for justified mandatory vaccination. Penalties or costs could include withholding of benefits, imposition of fines, provision of community service or loss of freedoms. I argue that under conditions of risk or perceived (...) risk of a novel vaccination, a system of payment for risk in vaccination may be superior. I defend a payment model against various objections, including that it constitutes coercion and undermines solidarity. I argue that payment can be in cash or in kind, and opportunity for altruistic vaccinations can be preserved by offering people who have been vaccinated the opportunity to donate any cash payment back to the health service. (shrink)

Historically the terms “final,” “unconditional,” and “intrinsic” have played a foundational role in ethical theory. I argue that final/instrumental distinction is best understood in terms of the for-sake-of relation and involves a tri-part division of goods. I show that this first way of categorizing goods is more closely aligned with a second way of categorizing goods in terms of intrinsic/extrinsic goods than has thus far been acknowledged. Lastly, I distinguish yet a third way of categorizing (...) class='Hi'>goods: unconditional/conditional goods. While the final/instrumental and intrinsic/extrinsic distinctions have received the lion’s share of philosophical attention, the unconditional/conditional distinction is no less important. (shrink)

In this paper I ponder the moral status of conditional threats, in particular the extent to which a threatened party would be permitted to use (lethal) defensive force. I first investigate a mugger case before turning briefly to the more complicated issue of national defence in the face of an invading army. One should not exaggerate the level of protection people under threat owe their conditioned killers simply because what is extorted is of little value. After all, either the (...) conditional threat is willing to kill for something she has no claim on at all, or, if she has a just claim on it - or good reason to believe that she has - she is willing to kill to (re)acquire something of not much worth. In both cases the moral culpability of the conditional threat could be seen as reducing her claim on protection from harm. (shrink)

According to McHugh and Way reasoning is a person-level attitude revision that is regulated by its constitutive aim of getting fitting attitudes. They claim that this account offers an explanation of what is wrong with reasoning in ways one believes to be bad and that this explanation is an alternative to an explanation that appeals to the so-called Taking Condition. I argue that their explanation is unsatisfying.

_10 Good Questions about Life and Death_ makes us think again about some of the most important issues we ever have to face. Addresses the fundamental questions that many of us ask about life and death. Written in an engaging and straightforward style, ideal for those with no formal background in philosophy. Focuses on commonly pondered issues, such as: Is life sacred? Is it bad to die? Is there life after death? Does life have meaning? And which life is best? (...) Encourages readers to think about and respond to the human condition. Features case studies, thought-experiments, and references to literature, film, music, religion and myth. (shrink)

In Morality, the distinguished religious leader and philosopher Rabbi Jonathan Sacks diagnoses our troubled times as a period of "cultural climate change." Delivering an insightful critique of our modern condition, and assessing its roots and causes from the ancient Greeks through the Reformation and Enlightenment to the present day, Sacks argues that there is no liberty without morality, and no freedom without responsibility.

The Lockean theory of property licenses unilateral appropriation on the condition that there be ‘enough, and as good left in common for others’. However, the meaning of this proviso is all but clear. This article argues that the proviso is centered around the Lockean theory of freedom. To be free, I argue, we must be ‘non-subjected’ in the exercise of our rights, including our rights to appropriate. We enjoy such freedom only when the ability to exercise our rights does not (...) depend on others. That can obtain if literally enough and as good is left in common. But it can also obtain in other ways, for example through competitive labour markets. The latter offer something as good as ‘enough and as good’. (shrink)

Accounts of moral responsibility can be divided into those that claim that attributability of an act, omission, or attitude to an agent is sufficient for responsibility for it, and those which hold that responsibility depends crucially on choice. I argue that accounts of the first, attributionist, kind fail to make room for the relatively stringent epistemic conditions upon moral responsibility, and that therefore an account of the second, volitionist, kind ought to be preferred. I examine the various arguments advanced on (...) behalf of attributionist accounts, and argue that for each of them volitionism has a reply that is in every case at least as, and often more, persuasive. Most significantly, only volitionism can accommodate the intuitively important distinction between the bad and the blameworthy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What kind of basic minimum do we owe to others? This paper defends a new procedure for answering this question. It argues that its minimally good life account has some advantages over the main alternatives and that neither the first-, nor third-, person perspective can help us to arrive at an adequate account. Rather, it employs the second-person perspective of free, reasonable, care. There might be other conditions for distributive justice, and morality certainly requires more than helping everyone to (...) secure a basic minimum. Still, if the minimally good life account is correct, and we owe everyone a basic minimum, we must ensure that everyone lives well enough. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant offers definitions of “sexual desire” and “sexual use” in the Metaphysics of Morals that occasion an inconsistency within his moral system, for they entail that sexual desire, as a natural inclination that is conditionally good, is also categorically objectifying, and thus per se immoral according to the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative. Following Alan Soble, various attempts to resolve the inconsistency are here criticized before more suitable, and suitably Kantian, definitions of these terms are offered. It is (...) argued that these new definitions resolve the inconsistency. (shrink)

This book by distinguished philosopher Nicholas Rescher seeks to clarify the idea of what a conditional says by elucidating the information that is normally transmitted by its utterance. The result is a unified treatment of conditionals based on epistemological principles rather than the semantical principles in vogue over recent decades. This approach, argues Rescher, makes it easier to understand how conditionals actually function in our thought and discourse. In its concern with what language theorists call pragmatics--the study of the (...) norms and principles governing our use of language in conveying information--Conditionals steps beyond the limits of logic as traditionally understood and moves into the realm claimed by theorists of artificial intelligence as they try to simulate our actual information-processing practices.The book's treatment of counterfactuals essentially revives an epistemological approach proposed by F. P. Ramsey in the 1920s and developed by Rescher himself in the 1960s but since overshadowed by the now-dominant possible-worlds approach. Rescher argues that the increasingly evident liabilities of the possible-worlds strategy make a reappraisal of the older style of analysis both timely and desirable. As the book makes clear, an epistemological approach demonstrates that counterfactual reasoning, unlike inductive inference, is not a matter of abstract reasoning alone but one of good judgment and common sense. (shrink)

This paper examines the basic question of how we can come to form accurate beliefs about the world when we do not fully know how good or bad our evidence is. Here, we show, using simulations with otherwise optimal agents, the cost of misjudging the quality of our evidence. We compare different strategies for correctly estimating that quality, such as outcome‐ and expectation‐based updating. We also identify conditions under which misjudgment of evidence quality can nevertheless lead to accurate beliefs, as (...) well as those conditions where no strategy will help. These results indicate both where people will nevertheless succeed and where they will fail when information quality is degraded. (shrink)

Taking the good (generosity), the true (enquiry), and the beautiful (creativity) as exemplars of what can make a life noticeably meaningful, elsewhere I have advanced a principle that entails and plausibly explains all three. Specifically, I have proffered the view that great meaning in life, at least insofar as it comes from this triad, is a matter of positively orienting one’s rational nature towards fundamental conditions of human existence, conditions of human life responsible for much else about it. Iddo Landau (...) has raised important objections to this principle, arguing in particular that contouring one’s rationality towards fundamentality is neither necessary nor sufficient for great meaning in life. In this article, I reply to Landau’s objections to the fundamentality account of what makes life very meaningful. I thereby aim to enrich reflection about what it is about the lives of Neslon Mandela, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Picasso that made them so significant as well as to indicate how fundamentality implicitly plays a key role in theistic conceptions of meaning in life. (shrink)

I argue that fitting envy plays a special role in safeguarding our happiness and flourishing. After presenting my theory of envy and its fittingness conditions, I contrast Kant’s view that envy is always unfitting with D’Arms and Jacobson’s defense of fitting envy as an evolutionarily-shaped response to a deep and wide human concern, that is, relative positioning. However, D’Arms and Jacobson don’t go far enough. First, I expand on their analysis of positional goodness, distinguishing between an epistemic claim, according to (...) which we use implicit or explicit comparison to know what position we occupy in a continuum of goodness, and thus to form judgments of goodness, and a metaphysical one, according to which much human goodness depends on implicit or explicit rankings and positionality. Second, I argue that fitting envy is not only intrinsically valuable qua fitting response to authentic goodness, but can be epistemically, morally and prudentially valuable. (shrink)

The paper argues for a version of the Guise of the Good thesis, namely the claim that if someone acts as the result of practical reasoning, then she takes her premises to jointly provide a sufficient and undefeated reason for her action. I argue for this by showing, first, that it is an application of Boghossian's Taking Condition on inference to practical reasoning and, second, that the motivations for the Taking Condition for theoretical reasoning carry over to practical reasoning. I (...) end by arguing that this version of the Guise of the Good withstands standard objections. (shrink)

How our everyday interactions as neighbors shape—and sometimes undermine—democracy "Love thy neighbor" is an impossible exhortation. Good neighbors greet us on the street and do small favors, but neighbors also startle us with sounds at night and unleash their demons on us, they monitor and reproach us, and betray us to authorities. The moral principles prescribed for friendship, civil society, and democratic public life apply imperfectly to life around home, where we interact day to day without the formal institutions, rules (...) of conduct, and means of enforcement that guide us in other settings. In Good Neighbors, Nancy Rosenblum explores how encounters among neighbors create a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture. During disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, the democracy of everyday life is a resource for neighbors who improvise rescue and care. Degraded, this framework can give way to betrayal by neighbors, as faced by the Japanese Americans interned during World War II, or to terrible violence such as the lynching of African Americans. Under extreme conditions the barest act of neighborliness is a bulwark against total ethical breakdown. The elements of the democracy of everyday life—reciprocity, speaking out, and "live and let live"—comprise a democratic ideal not reducible to public principles of justice or civic virtue, but it is no less important. The democracy of everyday life, Rosenblum argues, is the deep substrate of democracy in America and can be its saving remnant. (shrink)

Robert Hannas The Rational Human Condition is a five-volume book series, including: Volume 1. Preface and General Introduction, Supplementary Essays, and General Bibliography Volume 2. Deep Freedom and Real Persons: A Study in Metaphysics Volume 3. Kantian Ethics and Human Existence: A Study in Moral Philosophy Volume 4. Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism: A Theological-Political Treatise Volume 5. Cognition, Content, and the A Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and Knowledge The fifth volume in the series, Cognition, Content, and (...) the A Priori, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. So, with the present publication of the first four volumes in the series by Nova Science in 2019, all five volumes of The Rational Human Condition are now available in hard-copy and as e-books. All five books share a common aim, which is to work out a true general theory of human rationality in a thoroughly nonideal natural and social world. This philosophical enterprise is what Hanna calls rational anthropology. In the eleventh and most famous of his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx wrote that philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it. Hanna completely agrees with Marx that the ultimate aim of philosophy is to change the world, not merely interpret it. So, Marx and Hanna are both philosophical liberationists: that is, they both believe that philosophy should have radical political implications. But, beyond Marx, Hanna also thinks that the primary aim of philosophy (understood as rational anthropology) and its practices of synoptic reflection, writing, teaching, and public conversation is to change lives for the betterand ultimately, for the sake of the highest good. Then, and only then, can the human race act upon the world in the right way. The four volumes of The Rational Human Condition will therefore appeal not only to philosophers, but also to any other philosophically-minded person interested in the intellectual and practical adventure of synoptic, reflective thinking about the nature of our rational, but still ineluctably human, all-too-human lives. (shrink)