In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering means to provide a method to assess and improve our concepts working as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of this (...) programmatic paper is to overcome this knowledge gap by providing some guidelines for developing the theories of concepts and of cognition that will ground the systematic unified framework needed to effectively implement conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of our conceptual devices. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. Some have recently claimed that the implementation of such method in the form of ameliorative projects is truth-driven and should thus be epistemically constrained, ultimately at least (Simion 2018; cf. Podosky 2018). This paper challenges that claim on the assumption of a social constructionist analysis of ideologies, and provides an alternative, pragmatic and cognitive framework for determining the legitimacy of ameliorative conceptual projects overall. The upshot is that one should (...) not ameliorate for the sake of truth or knowledge, in the case of ideologies—at least, not primarily. (shrink)

Teleosemantic theories of representation are often criticized as being “too liberal”, i.e. as categorizing states as representations which are not representational at all. Recently, a powerful version of this objection has been put forth by Tyler Burge. Focusing on perception, Burge defends the claim that all teleosemantic theories apply too broadly, thereby missing what is distinctive about representation. Contra Burge, I will argue in this paper that there is a teleosemantic account of perceptual states that does not fall prey to (...) this problem, and that we can arrive at this account by combining some of Burge’s insights with a producer-oriented version of teleosemantics. The resulting theory turns out to be attractive and perfectly coherent. By contrast, the coherence of Burge’s own anti-teleosemantic approach becomes quite doubtful under closer examination—or so I will argue. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. However, little has been written about how best to conceive of concepts for the purposes of conceptual engineering. In this paper, I aim to fill this foundational gap, proceeding in three main steps: First, I propose a methodological framework for evaluating the conduciveness of a given concept of concept for conceptual engineering. Then, I develop a typology that contrasts two competing concepts of concept that can be used in conceptual (...) engineering — namely, the philosophical and psychological ones. Finally, I evaluate these two concepts of concept using the proposed methodological framework and I show that, when it comes to making conceptual engineering an actionable method, the psychological concept of concept outclasses its philosophical counterpart on all counts. This provides a baseline from which the concept of concept can be further improved for the purposes of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

According to contextualism, the extension of claims of personal taste is dependent on the context of utterance. According to truth relativism, their extension depends on the context of assessment. On this view, when the taste preferences of a speaker change, so does the truth value of a previously uttered taste claim, and the speaker might be required to retract it. Both views make strong empirical assumptions, which are here put to the test in three experiments with over 740 participants. It (...) turns out that the linguistic behaviour of ordinary English speakers is consistent with contextualist predictions and inconsistent with the predictions of the most widely discussed form of truth relativism advocated by John MacFarlane. (shrink)

The recent controversy about misinformation has moved a question into the focus of the public eye that has occupied philosophers for decades: Under what conditions is it appropriate to assert a certain claim? When asserting a claim that x, must one know that x? Must x be true? Might it be normatively acceptable to assert whatever one believes? In the largest cross-cultural study to date (total n = 1,091) on the topic, findings from the United States, Germany, and Japan suggest (...) that, in order to claim that x, x need not be known, and it can be false. However, the data show, we do expect considerable epistemic responsibility on the speaker’s behalf: In order to appropriately assert a claim, the speaker must have good reasons to believe it. (shrink)

Can we make mistakes about what rationality requires? A natural answer is that we can, since it is a platitude that rational belief does not require truth; it is possible for a belief to be rational and mistaken, and this holds for any subject matter at all. However, the platitude causes trouble when applied to rationality itself. The possibility of rational mistakes about what rationality requires generates a puzzle. When combined with two further plausible claims – the enkratic principle, and (...) the claim that rational requirements apply universally – we get the result that rationality generates inconsistent requirements. One popular and attractive solution to the puzzle denies that it is possible to make rational mistakes about what rationality requires. I show why (contra Titelbaum (2015b), and Littlejohn (2015)) this solution is doomed to fail. (shrink)

The Enkratic Principle enjoys something of a protected status as a requirement of rationality. I argue that this status is undeserved, at least in the epistemic domain. Compliance with the principle should not be thought of as a requirement of epistemic rationality, but rather as defeasible indication of epistemic blamelessness. To show this, I present the Puzzle of Inconsistent Requirements, and argue that the best way to solve it is to distinguish two kinds of epistemic evaluation – requirement evaluations and (...) appraisal evaluations. This allows us to solve the puzzle while accommodating traditional motivations for thinking of the Enkratic Principle as a requirement of rationality. (shrink)

This essay argues that nonlinguistic animals qualify not just for externalist notions of rationality (maximizing biological fitness or utility), but also for internal ones. They can act for reasons in several senses: their behaviour is subject to intentional explanations, they can act in the light of reasonsprovided that the latter are conceived as objective facts rather than subjective mental statesand they can deliberate. Finally, even if they could not, it would still be misguided to maintain that animals are capable only (...) of (mechanical) behaviour, not of (intentional) action. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. On its ‘broad-spectrum’ version, it is expected to be appropriately applicable to any of our representation-involving cognitive activities, with major consequences for our whole cognitive life. This paper is about the theoretical foundations of conceptual engineering thus characterised. With a view to ensuring the actionability of conceptual engineering as a broad-spectrum method, it addresses the issue of how best to construe the subject matter of conceptual engineering and successively (...) defends the theses that conceptual engineering should be: (i) About concepts, (ii) psychologically theorised, (iii) as multiply realised functional kinds. Thereby, I claim to theoretically secure and justify the maximum scope, flexibility, and impact for the method of conceptual engineering on our representational devices in our whole cognitive life—in other words, a broad-spectrum version of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

The potential capacity for robots to deceive has received considerable attention recently. Many papers explore the technical possibility for a robot to engage in deception for beneficial purposes (e.g., in education or health). In this short experimental paper, I focus on a more paradigmatic case: robot lying (lying being the textbook example of deception) for nonbeneficial purposes as judged from the human point of view. More precisely, I present an empirical experiment that investigates the following three questions: (a) Are ordinary (...) people willing to ascribe deceptive intentions to artificial agents? (b) Are they as willing to judge a robot lie as a lie as they would be when human agents engage in verbal deception? (c) Do people blame a lying artificial agent to the same extent as a lying human agent? The response to all three questions is a resounding yes. This, I argue, implies that robot deception and its normative consequences deserve considerably more attention than they presently receive. (shrink)

The adjective ‘is justified’ has all the hallmarks of a gradable adjective. But the relationship between gradable uses and straightforward predications of the form ‘x is justified’ has been underexplored by epistemologists. In this paper we undertake to do some ground clearing as a prelude to better understanding this relationship.

The debate about concepts has always been shaped by a contrast between subjectivism, which treats them as phenomena in the mind or head of individuals, and objectivism, which insists that they exist independently of individual minds. The most prominent contemporary version of subjectivism is Fodor's RTM. The Fregean charge against subjectivism is that it cannot do justice to the fact that different individuals can share the same concepts. Proponents of RTM have accepted shareability as a ‘non-negotiable constraint’. At the same (...) time they insist that by distinguishing between sign-types and – tokens the Fregean objection cannot just be circumvented but revealed to be fallacious. My paper rehabilitates the Fregean argument against subjectivism. The RTM response rests either on an equivocation of ‘concept’—between types which satisfy the non-negotiable constraint and tokens which are mental particulars in line with RTM doctrine—or on the untenable idea that one and the same entity can be both a shareable type and hence abstract and a concrete particular in the head. Furthermore, subjectivism cannot be rescued by adopting unorthodox metaphysical theories about the type/token and universal/particular contrasts. The final section argues that concepts are not representations or signs, but something represented by signs. Even if RTM is right to explain conceptual thinking by reference to the occurrence of mental representations, concepts themselves cannot be identical with such representations. (shrink)

Wearing black make-up to impersonate black individuals has become highly controversial in many countries, even when it is part of long-standing cultural traditions. Prominent examples of such traditions include Saint Nicolas celebrations in the Netherlands (which feature a black character known as “Black Pete” who hands out candy to children), Epiphany parades in Spain (which feature impersonations of the biblical king Balthasar who is traditionally portrayed as black) and the annual Zulu parade in New Orleans (which features impersonations of South (...) African Zulu warriors). In this article, I challenge the widely held view that black make-up traditions are categorically wrong. Specifically, I argue that these traditions can be morally vindicated if (i) the large majority of individuals who help to maintain them do not believe that they denigrate black people; (ii) the relevant traditions do not depict black people in denigrating ways; and (iii) the relevant traditions are not gratuitously offensive. While the Dutch Saint Nicholas tradition fails to satisfy these conditions, the New Orleans Zulu tradition is found to satisfy them, as is the Spanish Epiphany tradition in certain cases. I end by identifying another set of conditions under which black make-up traditions might be morally justified. (shrink)

In this comment a challenge Kerr’s claim that a coherent expression of a ‘liberalism of freedom’ needs an extended first Rawlsian principle of justice incorporating the principle of fair equality of opportunity for two reasons. First, such an extended first principle leads to illiberal consequences by narrowing down the scope of individual responsibility for choice and effort way too much. Second, such an extended first principle misses a main Rawlsian insight, namely that in a theory of justice the principle securing (...) basic liberties and the principle of fair equality of opportunity serve different purposes. (shrink)

A coherent practice of mens rea (‘guilty mind’) ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action’s outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas (...) a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law. (shrink)

Recent research on thick terms like “rude” and “friendly” has revealed a polarity effect, according to which the evaluative content of positive thick terms like “friendly” and “courageous” can be more easily canceled than the evaluative content of negative terms like “rude” and “selfish”. In this paper, we study the polarity effect in greater detail. We first demonstrate that the polarity effect is insensitive to manipulations of embeddings (Study 1). Second, we show that the effect occurs not only for thick (...) terms but also for thin terms such as “good” or “bad” (Study 2). We conclude that the polarity effect indicates a pervasive asymmetry between positive and negative evaluative terms. (shrink)

The potential of memory modification techniques (MMTs) has raised concerns and sparked a debate in neuroethics, particularly in the context of identity and authenticity. This paper addresses the question whether and how MMTs influence authenticity. I proceed by drawing two distinctions within the received views on authenticity. From this, I conclude that an analysis of MMTs based on a dual-basis, process view of authenticity is warranted, which implies that the influence of MMTs on authenticity crucially depends on the specifics of (...) how memory modification would eventually work. Therefore, I continue with a systematic analysis of possible properties of MMTs in which I distinguish between the dimensions of memories and the kinds of experiences that can be modified as well as the properties of the process of memory modification. The impact of MMTs on authenticity is analyzed regarding the possible properties of MMTs and based on a narrative approach to authenticity which fulfills the requirements of a dual-basis, process view of authenticity. Lastly, I explore the potential of MMTs to shift the balance between self-discovery and self-creation within authenticity and thereby alter the concept itself as well as the value of authenticity. (shrink)

Contextualism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims (involving e.g. predicates of personal taste or epistemic modals) depends on the context of utterance. Relativism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of assessment. Both views make concrete, empirically testable predictions about how such claims are used by ordinary English language speakers. This chapter surveys some of the recent empirical literature on the topic and presents four new experiments (total N=724). Consistent with contextualism (...) and inconsistent with relativism, the results suggest that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of utterance, not the context of assessment. (shrink)

Eva Schmidt argues that facts about incoherent beliefs can be non-evidential epistemic reasons to suspend judgment. In this commentary, I argue that incoherence-based reasons to suspend are epistemically superfluous: if the subjects in Schmidt’s cases ought to suspend judgment, then they should do so merely on the basis of their evidential reasons. This suggests a more general strategy to reduce the apparent normativity of coherence to the normativity of evidence. I conclude with some remarks on the independent interest that reasons-first (...) epistemology might have within an evidentialist framework. (shrink)

The profound changes in personality, mood, and other features of the self that neural interventions can induce can be disconcerting to patients, their families, and caregivers. In the neuroethical debate, these concerns are often addressed in the context of possible threats to the narrative self. In this paper, I argue that it is necessary to consider a dimension of impacts on the narrative self which has so far been neglected: neural interventions can lead to a loss of meaning of actions, (...) feelings, beliefs, and other intentional elements of our self-narratives. To uphold the coherence of the self-narrative, the changes induced by neural interventions need to be accounted for through explanations in intentional or biochemical terms. However, only an explanation including intentional states delivers the content to directly ascribe personal meaning, i.e., subjective value to events. Neural interventions can deprive events of meaning because they may favor a predominantly biochemical account. A loss of meaning is not inherently negative but it can be problematic, particularly if events are affected one was not prepared or willing to have stripped of meaning. The paper further examines what it is about neural interventions that impacts meaning by analyzing different methods. To which degree the pull towards a biochemical view occurs depends on the characteristics of the neural intervention. By comparing Deep Brain Stimulation, Prozac, Ritalin, psychedelics, and psychotherapy, the paper identifies some main factors: the rate of change, the transparency of the causal chain, the involvement of the patient, and the presence of an acute phenomenological experience. (shrink)

Values have always tended to play a central role in discourse on the environment, a tendency which is currently particularly evident in the biodiversity context. Traditionally, arguments about the environment have invoked instrumental value to highlight the necessity or utility of a healthy environment for people and intrinsic value to emphasize the importance of protecting nature for its own sake. More recently, this value dichotomy has been challenged, and the notion of a third value category – relational value – has (...) been introduced into the political and social conservation discussion. In the field of environmental philosophy, the idea of a third category of environmental value already has a longer tradition. This article describes and compares several philosophical accounts of third-category environmental value to contribute to a better characterization of relational value and thus to a better understanding of the role this type of value can play in environmental discourse and policy. (shrink)

Deceptive implicatures are a subtle communicative device for leading someone into a false belief. However, it is widely accepted that deceiving by means of deceptive implicature does not amount to lying. In this paper, we put this claim to the empirical test and present evidence that the traditional definition of lying might be too narrow to capture the folk concept of lying. Four hundred participants were presented with fourteen vignettes containing utterances that communicate conversational implicatures which the speaker believes to (...) be false. We further collected several potential proxy measures of lying, to get a better understanding of when a deceptive implicature is considered a case of lying. The results indicate that most implicatures (ten out of fourteen) were evaluated as lies and that lie ratings were closely tracked by the degree to which speakers were considered to have committed themselves to the truth of the content conveyed by their deceptive implicatures. (shrink)

This article discusses the problems which concepts pose for the attribution of thoughts to animals. It locates these problems within a range of other issues concerning animal minds (section 1), and presents a ‘lingualist master argument’ according to which one cannot entertain a thought without possessing its constituent concepts and cannot possess concepts without possessing language (section 2). The first premise is compelling if one accepts the building-block model of concepts as parts of wholes – propositions – and the idea (...) that intentional verbs signify relations between subjects and such propositions. But I shall find fault with both (section 3). This opens the way for recognizing a form of ‘holodoxastic’ thought-ascription which does not presuppose concept-possession on the part of the subject (section 4). Section 5 defends this idea against objections. Section 6 turns to the second premise of the lingualist master argument. I press the idea of judgement into service as a label for conceptual thought that need not be linguistic and argue that the possession of concepts is an ability. Section 7 accepts that concept-possession requires the ability to classify rather than merely to discriminate, but suggests that this need not disqualify animals. In the final section I confirm this verdict by returning to the notion of judgement: classification is the deliberate and considered response to a range of options in a sorting or discrimination task. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the capacity for such a response does not presuppose the linguistic ability to answer questions. Judgement is a feature of a type of problem-solving that we share with some non-linguistic creatures. (shrink)

Network analysis is increasingly appreciated as a methodology in the social sciences. In recent years, it is also receiving attention among historians of science. History of economics is no exception in that researchers have begun to use network analysis to study a variety of topics, including collaborations and interactions in scientific communities, the spread of economic theories within and across fields, or the formation of new specialties in the discipline of economics. Against this backdrop, a debate is emerging about how (...) network analysis can help address questions that are pertinent to the history of economics. With this paper, we want to push this debate one step forward by offering and discussing five reasons why network analysis should have a future in the history of economics. (shrink)

If money is used in a market setting, and if it fulfils its three traditional functions well, this creates normative problems. Arguably, the two most pressing problems linked to markets – inequality and corruption – are partly caused by the prevailing monetary design. Given the history of suggested monetary reforms, one might reasonably hope that, by consciously re-designing the functions of a currency, one might overcome these issues. This essay argues that there are clear moral limits to this. Because of (...) the way inequality and corruption are intertwined via money’s functions, we cannot simultaneously overcome both problems. This also means that even though these problems have monetary causes, they do not have purely monetary solutions, but need to be addressed relying on fiscal or market reform as well. (shrink)

This paper analyses the emergence and persistence of disorder due to bellicose (i.e. ‘conflict-kindling’) institutions. It does so relying on a novel empirical approach, examining the predatory and productive interactions of 400,000 users of a virtual world as well as its institutions. The paper finds that while there are many cases of spontaneous order in that virtual world, and while the users are not more conflict-loving as such, bellicose institutions sanctioning suicidal attacks in a supposedly safe region spontaneously emerged and (...) rigidly persist, thus upholding disorder (i.e. a particularly violent kind of ordered anarchy). (shrink)

In a series of ten preregistered experiments (N=2043), we investigate the effect of outcome valence on judgments of probability, negligence, and culpability – a phenomenon sometimes labelled moral (and legal) luck. We found that harmful outcomes, when contrasted with neutral outcomes, lead to increased perceived probability of harm ex post, and consequently to increased attribution of negligence and culpability. Rather than simply postulating a hindsight bias (as is common), we employ a variety of empirical means to demonstrate that the outcome-driven (...) asymmetry across perceived probabilities constitutes a systematic cognitive distortion. We then explore three distinct strategies to alleviate the hindsight bias and its downstream effects on mens rea and culpability ascriptions. Not all are successful, but at least some prove promising. They should, we argue, be taken into consideration in criminal jurisprudence, where distortions due to the hindsight bias are likely considerable and deeply disconcerting. (shrink)

According to indexical contextualism, the perspectival element of taste predicates and epistemic modals is part of the content expressed. According to nonindexicalism, the perspectival element must be conceived as a parameter in the circumstance of evaluation, which engenders “thin” or perspective-neutral semantic contents. Echoing Evans, thin contents have frequently been criticized. It is doubtful whether such coarse-grained quasi-propositions can do any meaningful work as objects of propositional attitudes. In this paper, I assess recent responses by Recanati, Kölbel, Lasersohn and MacFarlane (...) to the “incompleteness worry”. None of them manages to convince. Particular attention is devoted to an argument by John MacFarlane, which states that if perspectives must be part of the content, so must worlds, which would make intuitively contingent propositions necessary. I demonstrate that this attempt to defend thin content views such as nonindexical contextualism and relativism conflates two distinct notions of necessity, and that radical indexicalist accounts of semantics, such as Schaffer’s necessitarianism, are in fact quite plausible. (shrink)

This chapter replies to and reflects on the comments and discussions provided by the contributors to the festschrift.

When two actors have the same mental state but one happens to harm another person (unlucky actor) and the other one does not (lucky actor), the latter elicits a milder moral judgement. To understand how this outcome effect would affect post-harm interactions between victims and perpetrators, we examined how the social role from which transgressions are perceived moderates the outcome effect, and how outcome effects on moral judgements transfer to agentic and communal interpersonal goals. Three vignette experiments (N = 950) (...) revealed similar outcome effects on moral judgement across social roles. In contrast, outcome effects on agentic and communal goals varied by social role: victims exhibited the strongest outcome effects and perpetrators the weakest, with bystanders falling in between. Moral judgement did not mediate the effects of outcome severity on interpersonal goals. We discuss the possibility that outcome severity raises normative expectations regarding post-harm interactions that are unrelated to moral considerations. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss a phenomenon we call perspectival plurality, which has gone largely unnoticed in the current debate between relativism and contextualism about predicates of personal taste. According to perspectival plurality, the truth value of a sentence containing more than one PPT may depend on more than one perspective. Prima facie, the phenomenon engenders a problem for relativism and can be shaped into an argument in favor of contextualism. We explore the consequences of perspectival plurality in depth and (...) assess several possible responses on behalf of advocates of relativism. (shrink)

The standard view of ignorance is that it consists in the mere lack of knowledge or true belief. Duncan Pritchard has recently argued, against the standard view, that ignorance is the lack of knowledge/true belief that is due to an improper inquiry. I shall call, Pritchard’s alternative account the Normative Account. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the Normative Account by providing an independent vargument supporting it.

The compatibilism debate revolves around the question whether moral responsibility and free will are compatible with determinism. Prima facie, this seems to be a substantial issue. But according to the triviality objection, the disagreement is merely verbal: compatibilists and incompatibilists, it is maintained, are talking past each other, since they use the terms “free will” and “moral responsibility” in different senses. In this paper I argue, first, that the triviality objection is indeed a formidable one and that the standard replies (...) to it are unconvincing. This, however, does not mean that the objection succeeds. Starting with the debate about moral responsibility, I attempt to show that there is an account of moral responsibility which enables us to defend the compatibilism debate against the charge of triviality—namely, the normative conception of moral responsibility. If “moral responsibility” is defined in normative terms, then we cannot distinguish between a compatibilist and an incompatibilist sense of “moral responsibility”, because such a disambiguation would be inconsistent with the essential action-guiding force of normative expressions. Finally, I examine how the normative conception of moral responsibility can help us to defend the free will debate against the triviality objection and draw some general conclusions. (shrink)

De Re Significance accounts of moral appraisal consider an agent’s responsiveness to a particular kind of reason, normative moral reasons de re, to be of central significance for moral appraisal. Here, I argue that such accounts find it difficult to accommodate some neuroatypical agents. I offer an alternative account of how an agent’s responsiveness to normative moral reasons affects moral appraisal – the Reasonable Expectations Account. According to this account, what is significant for appraisal is not the content of the (...) reasons an agent is responsive to, but rather whether she is responsive to the reasons it is reasonable to expect her to be responsive to, irrespective of their content. I argue that this account does a better job of dealing with neuroatypical agents, while agreeing with the De Re Significance accounts on more ordinary cases. (shrink)

Although collegial relationships are among the most prevalent types of interpersonal relationships in our lives, they have not been the subject of much philosophical study. In this paper, we take the first step in the process of developing an ethics of collegiality by establishing what qualifies two people as colleagues and then by determining what it is that gives value to collegial relationships. We argue that A and B are colleagues if both exhibit sameness regarding at least two of the (...) following three features: the same work content or domain of activity; the same institutional affiliation or common purpose; and/or the same status or level of responsibility. Moreover, we describe how the potential value of collegial relationships is grounded in the relationship goods that two colleagues have reason to generate qua colleagues, namely, collegial solidarity and collegial recognition. Two interesting conclusions that can be drawn from our analysis are that one has to be proficient at one’s work if one is to be considered a good colleague and that we are also more likely to be better colleagues if we regard the work we do as valuable. Finally, we draw special attention to the working conditions that are conducive to the generation of good collegial relationships and suggest some policies to promote them. (shrink)

Is normative uncertainty like factual uncertainty? Should it have the same effects on our actions? Some have thought not. Those who defend an asymmetry between normative and factual uncertainty typically do so as part of the claim that our moral beliefs in general are irrelevant to both the moral value and the moral worth of our actions. Here I use the consideration of Jackson cases to challenge this view, arguing that we can explain away the apparent asymmetries between normative and (...) factual uncertainty by considering the particular features of the cases in greater detail. Such consideration shows that, in fact, normative and factual uncertainty are equally relevant to moral assessment. (shrink)