We present behavioral lateralizations of spiders and ants and their probable survival value. They clearly conform to the vertebrate lateralizations reviewed by Vallortigara & Rogers and to earlier arthropod studies. We suggest two complementary reviews: differences in lesion susceptibility and muscle strength between left and right body side, and perceptual biases and predator inspection in invertebrates.

This paper argues that liberal freedom (non-interference) is epistemologically prior to republican freedom (non-domination). I start investigate three relations between liberal and republican freedom: (i) Logical Equivalence, or the question whether republican freedom entails liberal freedom (and vice versa); (ii) Degree Supervenience, or whether changes in the degree (amount, quantity) of republican freedom are mirrored by changes in the degree of liberal freedom (and vice versa); and (iii) Epistemological Priority, that is, whether knowledge about arrangements of republican freedom presupposes knowledge (...) about arrangements of liberal freedom. If Logical Equivalence holds, liberals are right to claim that republicans have not introduced a new concept of freedom. It is easy to see, though, that Logical Equivalence does not hold. If Degree Supervenience holds, liberals can maintain that while republican freedom is a new concept of freedom, fostering or promoting it is not very different from fostering or promoting liberal freedom. Degree Supervenience does not hold either, though, and as a result two straightforward counterarguments against republican freedom fail. Yet, I argue, first, that the relation of Epistemological Priority holds: knowing something about arrangements of republican freedom presupposes that you know something about arrangements of liberal freedom. Using Epistemological Priority, I show, second, that the benefits claimed for republican freedom over and above liberal freedom (it minimizes the need for strategic deference, it minimizes uncertainty, and it minimizes subordination) can be accounted for in purely liberal terms. (shrink)

This paper presents an argument for the value of privacy that is based on a purely negative concept of freedom only. I show that privacy invasions may decrease a person’s negative freedom as well as a person’s knowledge about the negative freedom she possesses. I argue that not only invasions that lead to actual interference, but also invasions that lead to potential interference (many cases of identity theft) constitute actual harm to the invadee’s liberty interests, and I critically examine the (...) courts’ reliance on a principle of ‘no harm, no foul’ in recent data breach cases. Using a number of insights from the psychology of human belief, I also show that the liberal claim for protection of privacy is strengthened by the observation that often the privacy invader cannot be held responsible for the influence on the invadee’s negative freedom. (shrink)

The global financial crisis has led to a surprising interest in professional oaths in business. Examples are the MBA Oath, the Economist’s Oath and the Dutch Banker’s Oath, which senior executives in the financial services industry in the Netherlands have been obliged to swear since 2010. This paper is among the first to consider oaths from the perspective of business ethics. A framework is presented for analysing oaths in terms of their form, their content and the specific contribution they make (...) to business ethics management: oaths may foster professionalism, facilitate moral deliberation and enhance compliance. This framework is used to analyse and evaluate the MBA Oath, the Economist’s Oath and the Banker’s Oath as well as various other similar initiatives. (shrink)

The articles in this book display the originality and creativity of Eros and Eris, and their important role in the history of our culture, particularly in the history of philosophy and its role in today's systematic philosophy. Although these contributions to a hermeneutical phenomenology in this compilation are organized in a linear-chronological order (treating Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Cusanus, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas), they all carry out their own hermeneutical movement in the (...) history of philosphy on the basis of a commitment with out life, here and now, and a thematic, professional interest. Among the contributors are: R. Bernasconi, J. Colette, J.F. Courtine, L. Dupré, Kl. Düsing, J. Greisch, J. Kockelmans, P.-J. Labarrière and G. Jarczyk, E. Levinas, Al. Lingis, J.-L. Marion, O. Pöggeler, W. Richardson, P. Ricoeur, J. Sallis, M. Theunissen and S. IJsseling. (shrink)

Although Emmanuel Levinas is widely respected as one of the classic thinkers of our century, the debate about his place within Continental philosophy continues. In _Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,_ Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak shows Levinas's thought to be a persistent attempt to point beyond the borders of an economy where orderly interests and ways of reasoning make us feel at home--beyond the world of needs, beyond the self, beyond politics and administration, beyond logic and ontology, even beyond freedom (...) and autonomy. Peperzak's examination begins with a general overview of Levinas's life and thought, and shows how issues of ethics, politics, and religion are intertwined in Levinas's philosophy. Peperzak also discusses the development of Levinas's relations with Husserl and Heidegger, demonstrating thematically the evolution of both Levinas's anti-Heideggerian view of technology and his critical attitude toward nature. (shrink)

In this topical book, Boudewijn de Bruin examines the ethical 'blind spots' that lay at the heart of the global financial crisis. He argues that the most important moral problem in finance is not the 'greed is good' culture, but rather the epistemic shortcomings of bankers, clients, rating agencies and regulators. Drawing on insights from economics, psychology and philosophy, de Bruin develops a novel theory of epistemic virtue and applies it to racist and sexist lending practices, subprime mortgages, CEO (...) hubris, the Madoff scandal, professionalism in accountancy and regulatory outsourcing of epistemic responsibility. With its multidisciplinary reach, Ethics and the Global Financial Crisis will appeal to scholars working in philosophy, business ethics, economics, psychology and the sociology of finance. The many concrete examples and case studies mean that this book will also prove useful to policy-makers and regulators. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas has exerted a profound influence on 20th-century continental philosophy. This anthology, including Levinas's key philosophical texts over a period of more than forty years, provides an ideal introduction to his thought and offers insights into his most innovative ideas. Five of the ten essays presented here appear in English for the first time. An introduction by Adriaan Peperzak outlines Levinas's philosophical development and the basic themes of his writings. Each essay is accompanied by a brief introduction and (...) notes. This collection is an ideal text for students of philosophy concerned with understanding and assessing the work of this major philosopher. (shrink)

Susan Hurley has argued against a well known argument for freedom of speech, the argument from autonomy, on the basis of two hypotheses about violence in the media and aggressive behaviour. The first hypothesis says that exposure to media violence causes aggressive behaviour; the second, that humans have an innate tendency to copy behaviour in ways that bypass conscious deliberation. I argue, first, that Hurley is not successful in setting aside the argument from autonomy. Second, I show that the empirical (...) data are irrelevant to statutory regulation of media violence. They do not yield a sufficiently strong correlation between exposure to media violence and non-autonomously copied criminal violence, and they do not yield a way ex ante to individuate the viewers who will be affected by media violence. (shrink)

Using epistemic logic, we provide a non-probabilistic way to formalise payoff uncertainty, that is, statements such as ‘player i has approximate knowledge about the utility functions of player j.’ We show that on the basis of this formalisation common knowledge of payoff uncertainty and rationality (in the sense of excluding weakly dominated strategies, due to Dekel and Fudenberg (1990)) characterises a new solution concept we have called ‘mixed iterated strict weak dominance.’.

This article provides an outsider perspective on the scientificity of legal studies. First, I argue that the presence of controversies does not mean that legal studies lack the status of a genuine science. Astronomy, mathematics, and economics have their controversies, too. Second, I show that non-empirical, non-normative research is no less scientific than empirical research. This is illustrated by work in mathematical logic. Third, I demonstrate the same claim for non-empirical, normative research.Here the example is research on social contract theories (...) by means of gametheoretic models. (shrink)

Historisch-kritische analyse van canonieke en apocriefe geschriften over Jezus en van de waarheidsclaim van het christendom.

The fruit of the author's many courses on Emmanuel Levinas in Europe and the United States, this study is a clear introduction for graduate students and scholars who are not yet familiar with Levinas's difficult but exceptionally important oeuvre. After a first chapter on the existential background and the key issues of his thought, chapters 2, 3, and 4 concentrate on and include a short text, "Philosophy and the idea of the Infinite," which contains the program of Levinas's entire oeuvre. (...) Chapter 5 is a companion to the reading of Levinas's first opus magnum, Totality and the Infinite. It analyzes the structure of this book and shows how its questions and answers adhere together. "Through phenomenology toward a saying beyond phenomena and essence" could be the summary of Levinas's attempt to think, with and against Martin Heidegger, the otherness of the Other. -- Amazon.com. (shrink)

This phenomenological study begins by presenting trust as a characteristic form of interpersonal and communal relationship. In the second chapter, the scope is narrowed to someone's reliance on one or more trustworthy individuals. Chapters 3 to 5 explore specific aspects of trust, insofar as we confide in social structures or movements, the impersonal regularities and events of nature, or our own particular talents, motivations, and possibilities. In a world that is ravaged by the omnipresence of suffering and the most outrageous (...) manifestations of evil, no philosopher can avoid the question of what kind of trust may be profound and strong enough to overcome the ultimate anxiety or despair that threatens all human existence. In the Western tradition of belief, thinking, faith, and searching for the first and ultimate, that question is approached here through reflection upon the radical difference between trust in the universe and faith in God. (shrink)

This book, the result of 40 years of Hegel research, gives an integral interpretation of G.W.F. Hegel's mature practical philosophy as contained in his textbook, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, published in 1820, and the courses he gave on the same subject between 1817 and 1830.

Contents. Introduction. 1. Preliminaries. 2. Normal Form Games. 3. Extensive Games. 4. Applications of Game Theory. 5. The Methodology of Game Theory. Conclusion. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. Does game theory—the mathematical theory of strategic interaction—provide genuine explanations of human behaviour? Can game theory be used in economic consultancy or other normative contexts? Explaining Games: The Epistemic Programme in Game Theory—the first monograph on the philosophy of game theory—is an attempt to combine insights from epistemic logic and the philosophy of science to (...) investigate the applicability of game theory in such fields as economics, philosophy and strategic consultancy. I prove new mathematical theorems about the beliefs, desires and rationality principles of individual human beings, and explore in detail the logical form of game theory as it is used in explanatory and normative contexts. I argue that game theory reduces to rational choice theory if used as an explanatory device, and that game theory is nonsensical if used as a normative device. A provocative account of the history of game theory reveals that this is not bad news for all of game theory, though. Two central research programmes in game theory tried to find the ultimate characterisation of strategic interaction between rational agents. Yet, while the Nash Equilibrium Refinement Programme has done badly thanks to such research habits as overmathematisation, model-tinkering and introversion, the Epistemic Programme, I argue, has been rather successful in achieving this aim. "The 'epistemic' approach to game theory has emerged over the past twenty-five years. What is this approach? How does it differ from the conventional equilibrium-based approach to game theory? What have been its strengths and weaknesses to date? To find out, read this comprehensive and excellently written account". Adam Brandenburger, J. P. Valles Professor of Business Economics and Strategy, Stern School of Business, New York University "Reading Boudewijn de Bruin's book should be rewarding both for game theorists interested in the conceptual foundations of their discipline and for philosophers who want to learn more about formal analysis of strategic interaction. It provides an in-depth logical study of the currently dominant epistemic approaches to non-cooperative games, with an eye both to the attractions and to the serious challenges facing the Epistemic Programme". Wlodek Rabinowicz, Professor of Practical Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Lund University . (shrink)

In various publications over the past years, Floridi has developed a theory of semantic information as well-formed, meaningful, and truthful data. This theory is more or less orthogonal to the standard entropy-based notions of information known from physics, information theory, and computer science that all define the amount of information in a certain system as a scalar value without any direct semantic implication. In this context the question rises what the exact relation between these various conceptions of information is and (...) whether there is a real need to enrich these mathematically more or less rigid definitions with a less formal notion of semantic information. I investigate various philosophical aspects of the more formal definitions of information in the light of Floridi’s theory. The position I defend is that the formal treatment of the notion of information as a general theory of entropy is one of the fundamental achievements of modern science that in itself is a rich source for new philosophical reflection. This makes information theory a competitor of classical epistemology rather than a servant. In this light Floridi’s philosophy of information is more a reprise of classical epistemology that only pays lip service to information theory but fails to address the important central questions of philosophy of information. Specifically, I will defend the view that notions that are associated with truth, knowledge, and meaning all can adequately be reconstructed in the context of modern information theory and that consequently there is no need to introduce a concept of semantic information. (shrink)

This paper applies emerging research on epistemic virtues to business ethics. Inspired by recent work on epistemic virtues in philosophy, I develop a view in which epistemic virtues contribute to the acquisition of knowledge that is instrumentally valuable in the realisation of particular ends, business ends in particular. I propose a conception of inquiry according to which epistemic actions involve investigation, belief adoption and justification, and relate this to the traditional ‘justified true belief’ analysis of knowledge. I defend the view (...) that epistemic virtues enable and/or motivate people to perform epistemic actions. An examination of the key epistemic virtues of love of knowledge, epistemic courage, temperance, justice, generosity and humility provides some initial evidence suggesting that the way epistemic virtues enable or motivate is by countering a number of biases that have been uncovered by behavioural economics, and also indicates ways in which the instrumental epistemic value view is superior to other approaches to epistemic virtue offered in the literature. (shrink)

Ethics as First Philosophy brings together original essays by an outstanding group of international scholars that discuss the work of Emmanuel Levinas. The book explores the significance of Levinas' work for philsophy, psychology and religion. Ethics as First Philosophy comprises an excellent collection of work on this major contemporary thinker. The book presents Levinas philosophy from a wide and well-balanced variety of perspectives. The contributions range from thematic discussions of Levinas central concepts to explorations of his affinities and differences with (...) other key writers such as Kant, Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Blanchot and Derrida. Some of the authors focus on the religious and philosophical issues presented by Levinas while others analyze the role of Levinas within phenomenology in or within recent French philosophy. (shrink)

Financial incentives, learning, group consultation, and increased experimental control are among the experimental techniques economists have successfully used to deflect the behavioral challenge posed by research conducted by such scholars as Tversky and Kahneman. These techniques save the economic armchair to the extent that they align laypeople judgments with economic theory by increasing cognitive effort and reflection in experimental subjects. It is natural to hypothesize that a similar strategy might work to address the experimental or restrictionist challenge to armchair philosophy. (...) To test this hypothesis, a randomized controlled experiment was carried out, as well as two lab experiments. Three types of knowledge attribution tasks were used. No support for the hypothesis was found. The paper describes the close similarities between the economist’s response to the behavioral challenge, and the expertise defense against the experimental challenge, and presents the experiments, results, and an array of robustness checks. The upshot is that these results make the experimental challenge all the more forceful. (shrink)

Cloud computing is rapidly gaining traction in business. It offers businesses online services on demand (such as Gmail, iCloud and Salesforce) and allows them to cut costs on hardware and IT support. This is the first paper in business ethics dealing with this new technology. It analyzes the informational duties of hosting companies that own and operate cloud computing datacenters (e.g., Amazon). It considers the cloud services providers leasing ‘space in the cloud’ from hosting companies (e.g, Dropbox, Salesforce). And it (...) examines the business and private ‘clouders’ using these services. The first part of the paper argues that hosting companies, services providers and clouders have mutual informational (epistemic) obligations to provide and seek information about relevant issues such as consumer privacy, reliability of services, data mining and data ownership. The concept of interlucency is developed as an epistemic virtue governing ethically effective communication. The second part considers potential forms of government restrictions on or proscriptions against the development and use of cloud computing technology. Referring to the concept of technology neutrality, it argues that interference with hosting companies and cloud services providers is hardly ever necessary or justified. It is argued, too, however, that businesses using cloud services (banks, law firms, hospitals etc. storing client data in the cloud, e.g.) will have to follow rather more stringent regulations. (shrink)

Information is a recognized fundamental notion across the sciences and humanities, which is crucial to understanding physical computation, communication, and human cognition. The Philosophy of Information brings together the most important perspectives on information. It includes major technical approaches, while also setting out the historical backgrounds of information as well as its contemporary role in many academic fields. Also, special unifying topics are high-lighted that play across many fields, while we also aim at identifying relevant themes for philosophical reflection. There (...) is no established area yet of Philosophy of Information, and this Handbook can help shape one, making sure it is well grounded in scientific expertise. As a side benefit, a book like this can facilitate contacts and collaboration among diverse academic milieus sharing a common interest in information. . First overview of the formal and technical issues involved in the philosophy of information . Integrated presentation of major mathematical approaches to information, form computer science, information theory, and logic . Interdisciplinary themes across the traditional boundaries of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. (shrink)

The global financial crisis has led to a surprising interest in professional oaths in business. Examples are the MBA Oath, the Economist’s Oath and the Dutch Banker’s Oath, which senior executives in the financial services industry in the Netherlands have been obliged to swear since 2010. This paper is among the first to consider oaths from the perspective of business ethics. A framework is presented for analysing oaths in terms of their form, their content and the specific contribution they make (...) to business ethics management: oaths may foster professionalism, facilitate moral deliberation and enhance compliance. This framework is used to analyse and evaluate the MBA Oath, the Economist’s Oath and the Banker’s Oath as well as various other similar initiatives. (shrink)

Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak contends that while many Catholic philosophers try to practice a modern, autonomous style of thinking, their experience of a faith-guided life necessarily compels them to integrate their scholarly pursuits with their Christian faith. He writes, "Christians who think cannot separate their thought from their faith and theology." Indeed, he argues that the work of Christian, particularly Catholic, philosophers loses its vitality when philosophers try to restrict their reflections to natural reason alone. In this book he explores (...) the essential unity of philosophical and theological thought from various perspectives and pleads for a radical change of method in philosophy. "This book breaks the modern taboo of the separation between philosophy and theology. It is an invitation to philosophy to recover its rooting in life and to become knowledgeable about love. It is an invitation to theology to rediscover its vocation as a mature consciousness of faith, to communicate using all forms of human thought, and to avoid the pathology of fundamentalism. Peperzak, whose thought is rooted in the traditions of Western philosophy and Christian theology and who is also profoundly aware of the contemporary philosophical-theological debate, is able to speak efficaciously whether to Catholic intellectuals or to any scholar interested in the integrality of human wisdom." —_Giovanni Ferretti_, Università degli Studi, Macerata, Italy "_Philosophy between Faith and Theology_ is a masterful expression of the intellectual resources of the Catholic tradition, as brought to bear on issues of Catholic faith, education, and culture." —_Jeffrey Bloechel_, College of the Holy Cross _ "This book makes an original contribution to Catholic studies, philosophy, and theology by charting a useful, cogent, and meditative course between Christian faith and scholarship. On the basis of a lifetime's erudition and experience, Adriaan Peperzak transforms the ways we think about faith, theology, and philosophy." — Kevin Corrigan, Emory University_. (shrink)

This paper presents an argument for the value of privacy that is based on a purely negative concept of freedom only. I show that privacy invasions may decrease a person’s negative freedom as well as a person’s knowledge about the negative freedom she possesses. I argue that not only invasions that lead to actual interference, but also invasions that lead to potential interference (many cases of identity theft) constitute actual harm to the invadee’s liberty interests, and I critically examine the (...) courts’ reliance on a principle of ‘no harm, no foul’ in recent data breach cases. Using a number of insights from the psychology of human belief, I also show that the liberal claim for protection of privacy is strengthened by the observation that often the privacy invader cannot be held responsible for the influence on the invadee’s negative freedom. (shrink)

One of our most distinguished thinkers, Adriaan Peperzak has masterfully explored the connections between philosophy, ethics, religion, and the social and historical contexts of human experience. He offers a personal gathering of influences on his own work as guides to the uses of philosophy in our search for sense and meaning. In concise, direct, and deeply felt chapters, Peperzak moves from Plato, Plotinus, and the Early Christian theologians to Anselm, Bonaventure, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Hegel, and Levinas. Throughout these carefully (...) linked essays, he touches on the fundamental ideas-from reason and faith to freedom and tradition-that inform the questions his work has consistently addressed, most specifically those concerning philosophy as a practice. (shrink)

Situationists maintain that psychological evidence (e.g., the well-known Good Samaritan experiment) challenges a key assumption of virtue ethics, namely that virtuous people display cross-situational consistency of behavior. This situationist critique is frequently thought to pose a serious threat to virtue ethics. Virtue ethicists have so far mainly put forward conceptual rather than empirical arguments against situationism. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a plausible empirical argument can be developed against situationism, and in favor of virtue ethics. We (...) note that such an argument will naturally entail empirical simplification, and consequently concessions from both sides of the debate will be required. We argue, however, that with such concessions in place, the debate between situationists and virtue ethicists can be captured by a claim about the way that virtuous behavior may change when situations change. We report the results of an experiment (conducted twice, for replication) showing how social science methods can be introduced to the situationism debate to test such a claim empirically. Our results offer tentative support for eudaemonist and agent-based varieties (but not for target-centered) versions of virtue ethics. (shrink)

That we are a conversation -- On the unity of thematic philosophy and philosophy as history of thought -- The relevance of intersubjectivity for first philosophy and the history of philosophy -- Education: responsive tradition -- Philosophy: wise about friendship? -- Vocative -- Philosophy versus faith? -- The universality of a Christian philosophy -- Sacrificium laudis, sacrificium intellectus -- Philosophy as mediation between faith and culture.

Against the widespread antiplatonism of our century, noted philosopher, Hegel, and two great postmodern thinkers, Heidegger and Levinas, transform Plato's thoughts about reality, truth, and the Good into elements of their own reflection. He then presents his own retrieval of Platonic themes and arguments, showing how fruitful a critical reexamination of Plato's work can be, even today. Anyone interested in continental philosophy, phenomenology, ethics, or the history of philosophy should read this book.

Dieser Kommentar zur Hegel'schen Philosophie des Geistes stellt ihre Struktur und die Hauptlinien ihrer Argumentationen heraus. Dazu stutzt sie sich auf eine Wort-fur-Wort-Analyse derjenigen Paragraphen der Berliner Enzyklopadie, in denen Hegel die Grundbegriffe und die Hauptubergange seiner Geistesphilosophie ausfuhrt. Die Rekonstruktionen des Hegel'schen Begriffs des Geistes, seiner Psychologie, seiner Auffassung des Verhaltnisses zwischen subjektivem, objektivem und absolutem Geiste sowie die ausfuhrliche Diskussion der Kapitel uber die Religion und das absolute Wissen ermoglichen eine neue Interpretation der Schlusse, mit denen die Enzyklopadie (...) endet. (shrink)

Climate change threatens humanity more than anything else. If we talk of nationalism, we ought therefore consider its pros and cons in light of the climate emergency. Anatol Lieven believes that civic nationalism along the lines of Chaim Gans, David Miller, and Yuli Tamir helps combat global warming. He thinks that when nationalists recognize that climate change is just as threatening to the survival of their nation-state as wars, they will make the sacrifices necessary to avert the threat. In this (...) view, the military has an important role, and migration will have to be restricted. In this paper, I show that this solution is at best highly risky, and more probably unsound. However difficult it will be to realize, addressing climate change must be based on international cooperation, normatively grounded in human rights. I show how international law rather than civic nationalism gives us examples of how to go forward. (shrink)

Game theory is the mathematical study of strategy and conflict. It has wide applications in economics, political science, sociology, and, to some extent, in philosophy. Where rational choice theory or decision theory is concerned with individual agents facing games against nature, game theory deals with games in which all players have preference orderings over the possible outcomes of the game. This paper gives an informal introduction to the theory and a survey of applications in diverse branches of philosophy. No criticism (...) is reviewed. Game theory is shown at work in discussions about epistemological dependence, liberalism and efficiency, Hume’s concept of convention, morality and rationality, and distributive justice and egalitarianism. A guide to the literature provides hints at applications in collective intentionality, epistemology, ethics, history of philosophy, logic, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. (shrink)

This article sketches ways in which business ethics should contribute to addressing the climate emergency. I consider some ways in which normative contributions to the debate on climate change and global warming have been defended, and how international thinking about environmental issues has moved from consequentialist to justice- and rights-based thinking. A recent case that came before the Hague District Court between a Dutch branch of Friends of the Earth, Milieudefensie, and Royal Dutch Shell (Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell), serves (...) as an illustration of how human rights have taken centre stage in climate change litigation – and how business ethics has entered the courtroom. I use this case also to show where the contributions of our field lie: to think about consequences and principles, to include various stakeholders in our evaluations, and to conceptualize the responsibilities of business and politics. (shrink)

This chapter argues for deregulation of the credit-rating market. Credit-rating agencies are supposed to contribute to the informational needs of investors trading bonds. They provide ratings of debt issued by corporations and governments, as well as of structured debt instruments (e.g. mortgage-backed securities). As many academics, regulators, and commentators have pointed out, the ratings of structured instruments turned out to be highly inaccurate, and, as a result, they have argued for tighter regulation of the industry. This chapter shows, however, that (...) the role of credit-rating agencies in achieving justice in finance is not as great as these commentators believe. It therefore argues instead for deregulation. Since the 1930s, lawgivers have unjustifiably elevated the rating agencies into official, legally binding sources of information concerning credit risk, thereby unjustifiably causing many institutional investors to outsource their epistemic responsibilities, that is, their responsibility to investigate credit risk themselves. (shrink)