Normative Ethics

Normative powers are often assumed or defined to be abilities to change requirements by one's say so. Promise and command generate duties (and so requirement), consent waives them. I argue that alongside such deontic powers, we enjoy a suite of non-deontic powers: abilities to shape non-requiring interpersonal norms by our say so. I call consent's non-deontic analogue “allowance.” Suppose that we are meeting and we explicitly agreed to talk for an hour; but I see that the day is really getting (...) away from you; it would be helpful to you to end early. That situation can be such that carrying on the meeting is permissible but still interpersonally defective—it's rude, imposing, graceless, etc. You can change that by your say so; you could, for instance, tell me “don't worry about it! we have the full hour.” Your say so is not deontic consent as it did not change what was permissible; but it did make a normative difference, rendering my carrying on no longer graceless or rude. I defend a set of four atomic non-deontic powers that I call “allowance,” “assurance” (like promise), “pressure” (like command), and “withdrawal” (like revocation). I also defend the existence of more complex molecular powers, most importantly the power exercised in telling another “I love you.” In addition to an argument from cases, I make a bigger picture, theoretical argument: we can shape non-deontic norms by (re)shaping our relationships with others; if we can shape non-deontic norms indirectly in that way, then we can do so directly by our say so. The upshot is a theory of ubiquitous, understudied normative phenomena and a picture on which the deontic and non-deontic dimensions of interpersonal life are continuous. (shrink)

I have had extraordinary teachers who gave me far more than I was owed. Those gifts put a distinctive normative pressure upon me; I cannot ever repay the the gifts that were given me, but I can, and should, pay them forward. Not to do so would be a normative failing. Thinkers as varied as Jesus, Benjamin Franklin, Emerson, and Paul Erdős ​(of Erdős number fame) all seem to agree that we face some kind of injunction to pay it forward. (...) This paper asks why: why would receipt of an undeserved benefit from one party generate any normative pressure to do likewise for a third party? I show that attempts to explain the phenomenon of paying it forward via an appeal to beneficence, gratitude, or fairness all fail, and so we must look elsewhere. In bipolar relationships, like friendships, we are subject to norm of balance or harmony; when the other relates to me an especially generous way, I should in turn live up to that example and so relate back. Balance in bipolar relationships is a diachronic norm—healthy relationships sustain and thrive on local imbalances—but a relationship which remains one-sided is thereby flawed. I argue that so, too, are we subject to a norm of balance across generations. When we cannot or should not pay a gift back and achieve balance within a bipolar relationship, we can instead pay that gift forward and achieve balance across a larger time horizon. For me not to go above and beyond for my students would leave that broader multi-generational relationship—stretching from my teacher to me to my students—imbalanced with me at its normative focal point. In this paper I articulate and defend an intergenerational balance norm, showing that paying it forward arises within multi-generational relationships like that connecting me, my teachers, and my students—even though it does not always seem like that on the surface. Having defended an account of inter-generational balance, I ask to whom one can pay it forward, arguing that one can successfully achieve inter-generational balance with recipients quite different from one's initial giver(s). The upshot: among the tasks of responding to deep asymmetries and dependencies in our lives is the maintenance and forging of multi-generational relationships within which we can achieve an ideal of balance.​. (shrink)

Yogācāra is a tradition of Buddhist philosophy that made important contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. While contemporary philosophers have engaged with these aspects of Yogācāra, few authors have explored the implications of Yogācāra for moral theory. In this paper, I aim to fill this gap by constructing an argument for impartial benevolence or compassion that draws on the resources of the Yogācāra tradition. According to an influential interpretation of Yogācāra, ultimate reality consists in the flow of perceptions and experience, (...) empty of the subject-object duality. I argue that, if this understanding of ultimate reality is correct, then we are unable to individuate streams of consciousness from one another. Yet I contend that there is an intrinsic normative distinction between my suffering and the suffering of others only if we can individuate streams of consciousness. Thus, there is not an intrinsic normative distinction between my suffering and the suffering of others. It follows from this conclusion that the suffering of all beings should be impartially prevented without distinction. I suggest that this argument can help explain how the impartial compassion of bodhisattvas flows from their insight into the nature of reality. (shrink)

The legalization of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in several states in the U.S. and the growing social approval of euthanasia have created confusion, pastoral challenges, and conflicts between Catholic and non-Catholic healthcare institutions. For many of its supporters, the legal and moral legitimacy of PAS is grounded on the right to autonomy. I concur with Callahan that the right to autonomy, while may be pertinent when it comes to moral debate on suicide, does not justify PAS. Unlike suicide, PAS is not (...) a private matter. It involves the medical institution represented by the physician who is given authority to legitimize the termination of human life, and the society that will give it an imprimatur. If autonomy per se is the basis of this so-called dignity of PAS from the viewpoint of its proponents, they will not hesitate to declare suicide as more dignified than any other way of dying. But current laws in the U.S. on PAS are silent with regard to legal rights to suicide or assisted suicide in general. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the legislature is the venue for the legalization of PAS, not the court, for PAS is about social approval of assisted suicide. Therefore, the debate concerning the legalization of PAS should shift from individual rights to common good, from autonomy to collective harms and benefits, and from justifying individual cases of PAS to legitimizing it as a social policy. (shrink)

In this article, we present a neo-Aristotelian formulation of the doctrine of the mean. We begin by describing the classical formulation of the doctrine by Aristotle, as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics. We also introduce the fundamental elements that govern the matrices of concepts (Franceschi 2002). We then propose a new formulation of the doctrine of the mean, directly derived from the very structure of the matrices of concepts. We also compare the present formulation of the doctrine of the mean (...) with that of Aristotle, highlighting the similarities and differences. We further offer an interpretation of the Aristotelian formulation of the doctrine of the mean. Finally, we demonstrate how the neo-Aristotelian version of the doctrine of the mean addresses several objections, particularly those traditionally raised against its Aristotelian version. (shrink)

Moral condemnation of hypocrisy is both ubiquitous and peculiar. Its incessant focus on word–action consistency gives rise to two properties that distinguish it from other types of moral judgment: non-additivity and content independence. Non-additivity refers to the fact that, in judgments of hypocrisy, good words do not offset bad actions, nor do good actions offset bad words. Content independence refers to the fact that we condemn hypocrisy regardless of whether we would condemn the words or actions in isolation from one (...) another. To make sense of these peculiar properties, we present a costly signaling model of social cooperation, in which hypocrisy norms allow a separating equilibrium to emerge, thus facilitating reliable communication and higher levels of social trust. We compare our functionalist account of hypocrisy to other philosophical accounts, arguing that a functionalist analysis better illuminates our moral practices and public discourse. (shrink)

Buck-passing analyses of normative concepts in terms of normative reasons face the so-called ‘wrong kind of reason’ (WKR) problem. Most work on this topic has focused either (i) on the WKR problem for the buck-passing account of value or (ii) more generally as an issue for ‘reasons fundamentalists’ (those that hold that all normative concepts can be analysed into normative reasons). This paper concerns the buck-passing analysis of deontic concepts, in particular the concept of wrongness, understood as an analysis into (...) normative reasons for action. I first address the question of whether wrong kind reasons for action are possible in the first place, before examining and rejecting some accounts of the WKR/RKR for action. I end with a suggestion which points to a positive account of the distinction, and I explain one way in which appealing to this distinction can help to resolve the WKR problem. (shrink)

Short piece in Curmudgeon Corner: full article in AI & Society.

Praise and blame are both forms of moral assessment. Yet, the literature on standing has focussed on blame – to blame appropriately one needs standing to do so. Praise has been mostly ignored. This paper argues that the asymmetrical treatment of praise and blame is unwarranted: there’s no good reason to think that we need standing to blame, but don’t need standing to praise. This conclusion is important because it provides a new line of argument for scepticism about standing to (...) blame. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, people's commitments to laws are dependent on the existence in their community of a conventional practice of complying with certain fundamental laws. This conventionalism has significantly hampered our attempts to explain the normative practice of law. Ronald Dworkin has argued against conventionalism by bringing up the phenomenon of persistent fundamental legal controversies, but neither Dworkin nor his legal positivist respondents have correctly understood the real significance of such controversies. This article argues that such controversies (...) pose a deep challenge to any conception of our legal practice as a genuinely normative, rule-mediated, practice. The article also argues that what is needed to deflect this challenge is a new understanding – different from the widely held conventionalist understanding – of how people's commitments to laws are predicated on their fellows’ like commitments. (shrink)

Eggleston claims that my account of harm suffers from more problems than his preferred account. I clarify my account, and explain how his account suffers from some of the supposed problems he charges my account with. Sinnott-Armstrong suggests that his contrastivist approach is preferable to my contextualism. I clarify the role of linguistic context, and suggest that our positions are quite close to each other. Mason worries that my scalar approach does not properly accommodate the notions of blame and moral (...) responsibility. I maintain that such notions have only a derivative status, but are nonetheless important, and I suggest fruitful avenues for the scalar consequentialist to pursue. Kagan claims that the addition of a contextualist account of “right” renders my view not importantly different from maximizing or satisficing views. I explain why this is mistaken, and why neither maximizing nor satisficing versions of rightness can explain its supposed moral significance. (shrink)

In Morality by Degrees, Alastair Norcross defends a view he calls “scalar consequentialism.” I argue, first, that Norcross does not use the term consistently, since in most passages this seems to refer to a version of consequentialism that rejects all claims about rightness altogether, yet in other passages Norcross claims that scalar consequentialists should nonetheless embrace his favored “contextualist” account of rightness. I also argue, second, that the particular arguments offered by Norcross as to why consequentialists should forgo more traditional (...) consequentialist accounts of rightness (such as maximizing or satisficing) are unpersuasive. (shrink)

An important strand of argument in Alastair Norcross's Morality by Degrees: Reasons without Demands is the rejection of the standard account of harm, which underwrites non-comparative statements of the form “act A harms person X.” According to Norcross, the correct account of harm is a contextualist one that only underwrites comparative statements of the form “act A results in a worse world for X than alternative act B, and a better world than alternative act C.” This article criticizes Norcross's contextualist (...) account and his rejection of the standard account. It follows that moral theorists of all kinds should not be deterred by Norcross's arguments from continuing to rely on the standard account and using it to non-comparatively categorize some acts as harmings. (shrink)

Norcross's recent book has a two-part title: Morality by Degrees: Reasons without Demands. In this essay I focus on the second part of the title – the idea that there are moral reasons without demands. I do not think that it is at all obvious what this means, and whether it is distinct from Norcross's central (and compelling) idea, that moral reasons come in degrees. I explore several possible ways of cashing out a distinctive claim that morality does not make (...) demands, and argue that we should not accept that morality does not make demands. It does make demands, but it sometimes makes them in degrees. (shrink)

In Morality by Degrees, Alastair Norcross presents contextualist accounts of good and right acts as well as harm and free will. All of his analyses compare what is assessed with “the appropriate alternative,” which is supposed to vary with context. This paper clarifies Norcross's approach, distinguishes it from previous versions of moral contextualism and contrastivism, and reveals difficulties in adequately specifying the context and the appropriate alternative. It also shows how these difficulties can be avoided by moving from contextualism to (...) a kind of contrastivism that does not claim that any alternative is or is not appropriate or relevant. (shrink)

According to the Quality Account of love, only lovable properties of the beloved person, such as beauty, wisdom and kindness, can make love for that person fitting. The account has been criticized for leading to implausible conclusions. If this account is correct, it would seem fitting to replace one’s lover with someone who possesses the same or more lovable properties, or stop loving someone who has lost these properties. Moreover, it is unclear how the Quality Account can differentiate between the (...) fittingness conditions of love and other similar attitudes which seem also fitting in virtue of the same properties. I propose a new response to these objections. I argue that these challenges can be met by appealing to a distinctive lovable property that all objects of love share: their uniqueness. Uniqueness, along with other lovable properties, determines how worthy of love a person is. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophical discourse, there is a widespread assumption that meaning in life is individual: that it is a value inherent in individual human lives, that the content of this meaning varies from individual to individual, and that it differs in degree based on the individual. Despite these claims, however, objectivist theories of meaningful life have so far failed to do full justice to this assumption of individuality, leading to certain deficiencies and distortions in the understanding of meaningful life. This (...) paper aims to highlight these shortcomings and to explain how the individuality of meaning in life can be better understood within an objectivist framework. This proposed individuality account provides a necessary correction and complement to existing objectivist accounts of meaningful life. The paper demonstrates how the individuality account successfully addresses common shortcomings, withstands various objections, and differs significantly from current approaches. (shrink)

The Ḥatäta Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob and the Ḥatäta Wäldä Ḥəywät are enigmatic and controversial works. Respectively an autobiography and a companion treatise by a disciple, they are composed in the Gǝʿǝz language and set in the highlands of Ethiopia during the seventeenth century. Expressed in prose of great power and beauty, they bear witness to pivotal events in Ethiopian history and develop a philosophical system of considerable depth. However, they have also been condemned by some as a forgery, an elaborate mystification (...) successful in deceiving generations of European and Ethiopian scholars. -/- This volume breaks new ground for the study of these texts, presenting a clear account of the most up-to-date scholarship the ways they works are being investigated by contemporary philosophers, philologists, and historians. -/- While the authorship question is addressed in the volume, it is not the sole locus of discussion. The near-exclusive focus on this question over the last century has obscured scholarly interest in the texts’ philosophical and literary qualities in their own right. Accordingly, this volume begins to fill this gap, exploring the texts' implications for the global history of philosophy and transnational intellectual history of the 17th century. (shrink)

Central banks have become the go-to institution of modern economies. In the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, they injected trillions of dollars of liquidity – through a process known as quantitative easing – first to prevent financial meltdown and later to stimulate the economy. The untold story behind these measures, and behind the changing roles of central banks generally, is that they have come at a considerable cost. Central banks argue we had no choice. This book offers a powerfully (...) original examination of why this claim is false. Using examples from Europe and the US, the authors present and analyse three specific concerns about the way central banks in developed economies operate today. Firstly, they show how unconventional monetary policies have created significant unintended negative consequences in terms of inequalities in income and wealth. They go on to argue that central banks may have become independent of governments, but have instead become worryingly dependent on financial markets. They then proceed to analyse how central bankers, despite being the undisputed experts on monetary policy, can still err and suffer from multiple forms of bias. This book is a sobering and urgent wake-up call for policy-makers and anyone interested in how our monetary and financial system really works. (shrink)

Der moralische Kontraktualismus scheint als Konzeption einer nicht-konsequentialistischen intergenerationellen Ethik sehr vielversprechend. Eine zentrale theoretische Herausforderung stellt jedoch das Nichtidentitätsproblem dar. Spezifisch ist zu klären, ob zukünftige Personen einen Einwand gegen die Prinzipien unseres Handelns haben, wenn unser Handeln negative Folgen für die Lebensqualität zukünftiger Personen hat, die Existenz der konkreten Personen aber von diesem Handeln abhängt und ihr Leben für sie insgesamt lebenswert ist. Eine prominente Antwort besteht darin, die Einwände zukünftiger Personen “nicht-komparativ” zu verstehen. Ihr Einwand bestehe also (...) nicht darin, dass sie durch unser Handeln schlechter gestellt werden, als sie es andernfalls wären, sondern darin, dass sie dadurch in relevanter Form schlecht dastehen. Es ist bislang unklar, wie genau eine solche Position im Rahmen des moralischen Kontraktualismus aussehen könnte, ob sie eine Lösung des Nichtidentitätsproblems darstellt und ob ihre substanziellen Implikationen überzeugen. Dieser Beitrag prüft daher kritisch die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen eines nicht-komparativen kontraktualistischen Ansatzes. Es wird dafür argumentiert, dass nicht-komparative Einwände mit Bezug auf das Wohlergehen der zukünftigen Personen nicht plausibel sind, solange ihr Leben nicht überwiegend schlecht für sie ist. Der hier diskutierte Ansatz kann für den moralischen Kontraktualismus also höchstens eine Teilantwort auf das Nichtidentitätsproblem darstellen. (shrink)

Transgenerational social actions are collective actions that endure over a considerable period of time and require the cooperation of multiple generations. Yet, it remains unclear what kind of obligations and rights, if any, allow actions to persist through the ages, binding future generations to be part of them. This paper proposes a way forward by considering transgenerational actions as a particular type of long-term joint commitments. Drawing on plural subject theory, I explore the conditions for membership, normativity, and justification of (...) transgenerational joint commitments, while also amending the model to address classical issues of asymmetry, non-existence, and non-reciprocity of future generations. The proposed approach meets three desiderata: transgenerational actions do not rely on individual intentions but are collective in a strong sense, they are normative in a social sense but can encourage the development of a personal moral sensitivity to transgenerationality, and they are both stable over time and flexible enough to resist paternalism through the proxy acts of representatives of future generations. (shrink)

The present collection of essays is dedicated to the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, in particular her work collected in the Anscombe Archive at the University of Pennsylvania. The collection brings together scholars working on Anscombe and her tradition, all of whom have significant expertise in Anscombe’s philosophical thought, with many having worked directly at the Archive. While a variety of perspectives on Anscombe’s thought are represented in the collection, including some vigorous scholarly disagreements, the contributing authors nevertheless share a commitment (...) to developing and deepening our understanding of her philosophical project and its contemporary relevance. (shrink)

Melina Constantine Bell (2021) argues that J. S. Mill's harm principle permits society to coercively interfere with the use of bigoted insults, since these insults are harmful on “a more expansive, modern, conception of harm.” According to Bell, these insults are harmful in virtue of their contributing to detrimental objective states like health problems. I argue that people with illiberal dispositions might have intense and sustained negative subjective reactions to behavior that the harm principle ought to protect, reactions intense enough (...) to affect their health or other objective interests. Bell's way of thinking about harm therefore has illiberal implications. Yet I agree with her that bigoted insults should be regarded as harmful. I therefore propose an alternative way of understanding harm according to which subjective pain is a harm when it is intentionally caused. (shrink)

Recycling carbon revenues as Equal Per Capita Carbon Dividends (ECDs) is thought to neutralise the two main objections to carbon pricing, namely that it is regressive and that it hinders the poor from meeting basic needs. This article focuses on the waste objection to carbon pricing plus ECDs. If the rationale for ECDs is to protect the consumption of the worst off, why pay carbon dividends to the rich as well? I examine three different normative arguments in favour of ECDs. (...) First, the argument of common ownership of the atmosphere, which can be based on both libertarianism and isolationist egalitarianism. Second, the argument that the rich are net contributors to ECDs through their carbon taxes. Third, a consequentialist argument focusing on the pragmatic advantages of ECDs, especially in terms of social acceptability and low information costs. I conclude that none of these arguments can provide a normative justification for ECDs. (shrink)

Many people believe that it is better to extend the length of a happy life than to create a new happy life, even if the total welfare is the same in both cases. Despite the popularity of this view, one would be hard-pressed to find a fully compelling justification for it in the literature. This paper develops a novel account of why and when extension is better than replacement that applies not just to persons but also to non-human animals and (...) humanity as a whole. (shrink)

Daniel Immerman has recently put forward a novel account of harm, the Worse than Nothing Account. We argue that this account faces fatal problems in cases in which an agent performs several simultaneous actions. We also argue that our criticism is considerably more powerful than another one that has recently been advanced.

Climate change is to a large extent a collective action problem, but many believe that individual action is also required. But what if no individual contribution to climate change is necessary nor sufficient to cause climate change-induced harms? This issue is known as the problem of inconsequentialism. It is particularly problematic for act consequentialism because the theory does not seem to judge such inconsequential contributions negatively. In this paper, we apply Henry Sidgwick's idea of esoteric morality to climate change and (...) assess whether what we call a climate esoteric morality could help to deal with the problem of inconsequentialism from an act consequentialist perspective. Consequentialists ought then to promote what we call nonconsequentialist faux principles; exaggerate existing consequentialist principles that pro tanto forbid contributing to climate change whenever strictly consequentialist principles fail to do so; and refrain from criticising nonconsequentialist principles that forbid contributing to climate change. (shrink)

Quite early in the Covid-19 pandemic, a recommendation was issued in Germany to address potential scarcity scenarios in hospital intensive care units. At its core, the recommendation from Germany’s medical professional societies stated that, in the event of overcrowded ICUs, physicians should base the selection of patients who could still be admitted on the likelihood of success for each individual in need (DIVI 2021). The purpose of focusing on the likelihood of success is to use the available resources to help (...) the greatest possible number of people in need effectively. However, legal scholars have repeatedly argued that a lottery-based solution would be far more suitable for such tragic rescue conflicts. This perspective was also adopted by some disability advocates, who fear the risk of discrimination against people with disabilities in scarcity scenarios, as their chances of success are often presumed to be systematically lower than those of people without disabilities. From an ethical standpoint, this raises the legitimate question of the conditions under which a decision-making criterion implies indirect discrimination against a particular group of people. ----- Schon recht früh in der Covid-19-Pandemie wurde in Deutschland eine Empfehlung für mögliche Knappheitsszenarien auf den Intensivstationen der Krankenkenhäuser herausgegeben. Im Kern besagt die Empfehlung der deutschen medizinischen Fachgesellschaften, die Ärzteschaft solle im Falle überfüllter Intensivstationen die Auswahl derjenigen, die in einem solchen Fall nochmal aufgenommen werden können, an der Erfolgsaussicht der einzelnen Bedürftigen festmachen. Der Zweck einer Orientierung an der Erfolgsaussicht besteht darin, mit den vorhandenen Ressourcen einer möglichst großen Anzahl an Bedürftigen erfolgreich helfen zu können. Insbesondere von Juristen wurde jedoch auch immer wieder argumentiert, eine Lotterie-Lösung sei sehr viel geeigneter für derartige tragische Rettungskonflikte. Eine solche Auffassung wurde auch von einigen Behindertenvertreter:innen übernommen, die eine Gefahr der Benachteiligung von Menschen mit Behinderung in Knappheitsszenarien befürchten, denn bei ihnen dürften die Erfolgsaussichten regelhaft schlechter sein als bei Menschen ohne Behinderung. In ethischer Hinsicht wurde hier also die berechtigte Frage aufgeworfen, unter welchen Bedingungen ein Entscheidungskriterium eine indirekte Diskriminierung einer bestimmten Personengruppe impliziert. (shrink)

In this contribution, I investigate the way in which our understanding of a dementia patient’s self holds relevance to issues of punishment and respon- sibility. This topic is motivated by the fact that some countries with particularly large prison populations—such as the United States—are starting to build special- ized prison tracts for inmates with dementia. In other countries that do not have such specialized facilities, authorities are trying to find the least badly-equipped facility for such patients, and they are turning (...) to ordinary retirement homes, forensic hospitals as well as ordinary psychiatric and geriatric hospital wards. The problem is expected to become increasingly urgent as the population ages and the number of dementia patients increases. I analyse the way in which justifications of legal (or private) punishment for offenders with dementia can depend on an account of relevant psychological features of the self. I argue that especially retributivist and expressivist justifications of punishment require the offender’s ability to comprehend that he or she is being punished for a particular action in the past and that it was him or herself who committed this action. In the second part of my paper, I distinguish between different accounts of responsibility and argue that accounts of relevant features of the self are also needed here to answer the question of whether offenders with dementia are still responsible for past or current inappropriate behavior. In the final part of the paper, I argue that potentially existing private punishment intuitions among care- takers as well as certain puzzles of responsibility interpretation can make it plausible to relieve certain caretakers from primary responsibility for offenders with dementia, especially caretakers who belong to a relevant former victim group of the offender. (shrink)

According to the Asymmetry, creating a miserable person is wrong but failing to create a happy person is permissible, other things being equal. Some attempt to underwrite the Asymmetry by appealing to a choice-dependent moral theory according to which the deontic status of an act depends on whether it is chosen by the agent. We show that all choice-dependent moral theories in the literature are vulnerable to what we call the Parent Trap. These theories imply that the presence of impermissible (...) options can generate a moral requirement to create happy people, even at the cost of the procreator’s well-being. We consider two new choice-dependent theories that avoid this result, but show that they generate implausible moral permissions to create miserable people. Either way, choice-dependent theories fail to do justice to the intuitions that motivate the Asymmetry. (shrink)

The fact that I am a committed gardener has some practical upshot or other. But what, exactly, is the upshot of the fact that I am committed to some project, person, or principle? According to a standard view, my commitment to gardening provides me with or constitutes a further reason to garden, beyond whatever reasons arise from the commitment-independent merits of gardening. I will argue that we should reject this conception of commitment’s practical upshot and its attendant psychological story involving (...) the will. According to the view I develop here, a commitment to X is a decision to take seriously the reasons to which X gives rise, and where necessary, to give those reasons an elevated place in one’s practical thinking. (shrink)

Contextual Integrity (CI) is built to assess potential privacy violations of new sociotechnical systems and practices. It does so by evaluating their respect for the context-relative informational norms at play in a given context. But can CI evaluate new sociotechnical systems that severely disrupt established social practices? In this paper, I argue that, while CI claims to be able to assess privacy violations of all sociotechnical systems and practices, it cannot assess the ones that cause severe changes and disruptions in (...) the norms and values of a given context. These types of technology are known as socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) and this paper argues that they are beyond CI’s scope. It follows that at best, a privacy assessment of those technologies by CI would be useless and, at worst, lead to potential harm, including failure to identify privacy violations and unwarranted legitimisation of privacy-threatening technology. Government actors, policymakers, and academics should refrain from relying on CI to assess this type of technology. (shrink)

Austrian engineer, philosopher, and political economist Josef Popper-Lynkeus (1838–1921) was a renowned public intellectual of Viennese Late Enlightenment. In this article, we unearth and explore Popper-Lynkeus’s social program. It sought to implement social conscription to unconditionally guarantee a basic level of goods and services for every human individual. We appraise the economic and ethical justifications provided by Popper-Lynkeus for his allegedly “rational” proposals and the intended consequences for the discipline of economics. Finally, and based on our disambiguation of different notions (...) of “unconditionality”, we clarify similarities and differences between Popper-Lynkeus’s social program and contemporary proposals for a universal basic income, characterising both as alternatives to traditional welfare states. (shrink)

This volume brings together contributions in the history of logic, philosophy of mind, and ethics, three areas dear to its dedicatee. Covering the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the papers highlight both long-term developments and systematic connections between the three domains.

This chapter examines a variety of discussions in the Shenzi Fragments that might lead one to think that there is some sort of morality undergirding its political philosophy including: 1) positive references to conventional virtues, 2) an advocacy of according with the overarching Way, and 3) the development of a form of state consequentialism. While it would be possible to construct moral reasons in support of each of these three positions, the Shenzi Fragments does not do so. Rather, as this (...) chapter argues, the justification of each of these positions arises from practical considerations of political order. The normativity at work, then is political in nature, rather than moral. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the _Shenzi Fragments_, _Shangjunshu_, and _Han Feizi_ all contend that, from the perspective of creating and maintaining political order, the most effective method is for the state to employ the already existing motivations of those over whom it rules. Once human motivations are understood, it becomes a relatively simple task to channel those motivations to get people to act in ways that the state wishes. Implicit in this claim are at least two other commitments: 1) whatever (...) the content of human motivations, this content is sufficiently similar across all human beings that the methods employed to channel it need not vary person by person and 2) human motivations are fairly stable, and their content does not shift in any appreciable way over time. Whether these texts think it is possible to change such motivations, is less clear, though they all argue that attempts to do so at the political level will lead to disaster. While important differences arise amongst these three texts, they are most often differences in focus and detail. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how a pragmatist stance may address the problem of the resolvability of moral conflicts. Pragmatism challenges skeptical and relativist views by arguing that moral conflict resolution is possible via inquiry and exchange of reasons. From a normative standpoint, pragmatism also differs from utilitarian and deontological views, according to which a specific moral theory is correct in every context. From a pragmatist point of view, both utilitarian and deontological responses can be justified, depending on contextual conditions (...) and reasons, on the people to whom reasons are offered, and on constraints of inclusivity, publicity, empirical accuracy, and coherence. Pragmatism’s empiricist method for solving conflicts and making normative adjustments can be seen as a form of reflective equilibrium, where moral beliefs and commitments are adjusted in light of new non-moral knowledge, such as evidence about the reliability of decision processes. Recent empirical research also supports pragmatism’s pluralist and flexible approach more than monistic and generalist normative views like deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)

In normative ethics, a small number of moral theories, such as Kantianism or consequentialism, take centre stage. Conventional wisdom has it that these individual theories posit very different ways of looking at the world. In this book Marius Baumann develops the idea that just as scientific theories can be underdetermined by data, so can moral theories be underdetermined by our considered judgments about particular cases. Baumann goes on to ask whether moral theories from different traditions might arrive at the same (...) verdicts while remaining explanatorily incompatible. He applies this idea to recent projects in normative ethics, such as Derek Parfit's On What Matters and so-called consequentializing and deontologizing, and outlines its important implications for our understanding of the relationship between the main moral traditions as well as the moral realism debate. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends a novel type of precautionary argument for situations of severe uncertainty in science and policy, which I term precautionary slippery slope argument. The paper explicates the structure of precautionary slippery slope arguments, identifies the main factors that bear on the strength of these arguments, and illustrates how the proponents of such arguments can address several influential objections put forward against standard slippery slope arguments and other prominent forms of precautionary reasoning.

The orange hand is waving frantically broh. Ought we to jump into the river or not? Stay tuned for a collection of thoughts riddled with noetic contradictions and repurposed political anxiety. Resist in whatever way presents itself to you broh. Then abide.

Recently and in this journal, I published a paper titled “Instrumental Rationality in the Social Sciences,” which offered a new argument against the equation of practical rationality with sound means-end reasoning. My paper attracted a critical commentary by Michael Moehler to which I reply here, without presupposing familiarity with my paper or Moehler’s comments. The critique is shown to rest on misunderstandings. Neither does my argument require that means-end reasoning always be egoistic nor can opponents, such as rational choice theorists, (...) avoid it by re-categorizing sound means-end inferences as only one rational kind of practical inference among many. (shrink)