Is it possible to remain a sports fan when prominent sports teams and events are utilized to “sportswash” human rights abuses and other controversies? Indeed, while there is an abundance of analyses critiquing different instances of sportswashing, the exploration of the role of sportswashing and its connection to the “sports fan” presents an essential and necessary area of investigation and theoretical inquiry. To unpick this dilemma, this article proposes the concept of “fetishistic disavowal” to help theorize the impact of sportswashing, (...) as well as its relation to the sports fan and critical sports academic. This argues that, as spectators and fans of sport—and, moreover, as critical academics—we often acknowledge and accept that sport is used to perpetuate and even maintain a variety of social, economic, and political inequalities. Yet, while we are aware of such knowledge, we nonetheless remain fully capable of disavowing this very knowledge as an accepted part of sport. Given this, it is argued that the fetishization of sport can provide a suitable conduit for the fetishistic disavowal that sportswashing requires, with the concept offering a unique way of approaching sport’s inherent contradictions, while also theorizing how subjects relate to these contradictions as part of their involvement in and with sport. Where sportswashing directly implicates the fan in its implementation—relying upon a level of fetishistic disavowal between the fan and their club and proffering a disavowed acknowledgement of the effects of sportswashing and its interpellation through sport—this article outlines how applications of fetishistic disavowal provide a unique theoretical lens through which analyses of sport, and its ethical significance, can be critiqued. (shrink)

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ (...) protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)

This paper further develops the system of illocutionary logic presented in ?Propositional logic of supposition and assertion? (Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 1997, 38, 325-349) to accommodate an ?I believe that? operator and resolve Moore's Paradox. This resolution is accomplished by providing both a truth-conditional and a commitment-based semantics. An important feature of the logical system is that the correctness of some arguments depends on who it is that makes the argument. The paper then shows that the logical system (...) can be expanded to resolve the surprise execution paradox puzzle. The prisoner's argument showing that he can't be executed by surprise is correct but his beliefs are incoherent. The judge's beliefs (and our beliefs) about this situation are not incoherent. (shrink)

Daniel Whiting’s excellent new book, The Range of Reasons (2022), makes a number of noteworthy contributions to the philosophical literature on reasons and normativity. A good deal has been written on normative reasons, and it is no easy thing to make novel and promising arguments. Yet, this is what Whiting manages to do. We are sympathetic to some of his ideas and critical of others. It makes sense for us to focus on the first half of his book, where Whiting (...) presents two accounts of normative reasons (the first superseded by, although possibly also compatible with, the second). We welcome this opportunity to clarify our own current views on the nature of normative reasons by contrasting them with Whiting’s views. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue for a particular informative and unified analysis of normative reasons. According to this analysis, a fact F is a reason to act in a certain way just in case it is evidence that one ought to act in that way. Similarly, F is a reason to believe a certain proposition just in case it is evidence for the truth of this proposition. Putting the relatively uncontroversial claim about reasons for belief to one side, we present (...) several arguments in favor of our analysis of reasons for action. We then turn to consider a series of objections to the analysis. We conclude that there are good reasons to accept the analysis and that the objections do not succeed. (shrink)

This article reflects on the relevance and applicability of the Belmont Report nearly four decades after its original publication. In an exploration of criticisms that have been raised in response to the report and of significant changes that have occurred within the context of biomedical research, five primary themes arise. These themes include the increasingly vague boundary between research and practice, unique harms to communities that are not addressed by the principle of respect for persons, and how growing complexity and (...) commodification in research have shed light on the importance of transparency. The repercussions of Belmont's emphasis on the protection of vulnerable populations is also explored, as is the relationship between the report's ethical principles and their applications. It is concluded that while the Belmont Report was an impressive response to the ethical issues of its day, the field of research ethics involving human subjects may have outgrown it. (shrink)

This paper is a response to two sets of published criticisms of the 'Reasons as Evidence’ thesis concerning normative reasons, proposed and defended in earlier papers. According to this thesis, a fact is a normative reason for an agent to Φ just in case this fact is evidence that this agent ought to Φ. John Broome and John Brunero have presented a number of challenging criticisms of this thesis which focus, for the most part, on problems that it appears to (...) confront when it comes to the topic of the weighing of reasons. Our paper responds to all of the criticisms that these critics have provided, shedding fresh light on this interesting topic in the process. (shrink)

In “Proposed Principles for International Bioethics Conferencing: Anti-Discriminatory, Global, and Inclusive” the authors offer a framework for assessing the ethics of international bioethics confe...

ABSTRACTDiagnostic self‐testing devices are being developed for many illnesses, chronic diseases and infections. These will be used in hospitals, at point‐of‐care facilities and at home. Designed to allow earlier detection of diseases, self‐testing diagnostic devices may improve disease prevention, slow the progression of disease and facilitate better treatment outcomes. These devices have the potential to benefit both the individual and society by enabling individuals to take a more proactive role in the maintenance of their health and by helping society improve (...) health and reduce health costs. However, the full implications of future home‐based diagnostic technology for individuals and society remain unclear due to their novelty.We argue that the development of diagnostic tools, especially for home use, will heighten a number of ethical challenges. This paper will explore some of the ethical implications of home‐based self‐testing diagnostic devices for the autonomous and relational dimensions of the person. This will be facilitated by examining the impact of diagnostic devices for individual autonomy, for the delivery of accurate diagnosis and for the personal significance of the information for the user. The latter will be examined using Charles Taylor's view of personhood and his emphasis on human agency and interpretation.While the ethical issues are not necessarily new, the development of home‐based self‐testing diagnostic devices will make issues regarding autonomy, accuracy of information and personal significance more and more demanding. This will be the case particularly when an individual's autonomous choices come into conflict with the person's relational responsibilities. (shrink)

Alfred Mele’s zygote argument for incompatibilism is based on a case involving an agent in a deterministic world whose entire life is planned by someone else. Mele’s contention is that Ernie (the agent) is unfree and that normal determined agents are relevantly similar to him with regards to free will. In this paper, I examine four different ways of understanding this argument and then criticize each interpretation. I then extend my criticism to manipulation arguments in general. I conclude that the (...) zygote argument is no threat to compatibilism. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, significant advances have been made in public engagement with, and the democratization of, science and technology. Despite notable successes, such developments have often struggled to enhance public trust, avert crises of expertise and democracy, and build more socially responsive and responsible science and innovation. A central reason for this is that mainstream approaches to public engagement harbor what we call “residual realist” assumptions about participation and publics. Recent coproductionist accounts in science and technology studies offer (...) an alternative way of seeing participation as coproduced, relational, diverse, and emergent but have been somewhat reluctant to articulate what this means in practice. In this paper, we make this move by setting out a new framework of interrelating paths and associated criteria for remaking public participation with science and democracy in more experimental, reflexive, anticipatory, and responsible ways. This framework comprises four paths to: forge reflexive participatory practices that attend to their framings, emergence, uncertainties, and effects; ecologize participation through attending to the interrelations between diverse public engagements in wider systems; catalyze practices of anticipatory reflection to bring about responsible democratic innovations; and reconstitute participation as constitutive of systems of technoscience and democracy. (shrink)

Situationism is, roughly, the thesis that normatively irrelevant environmental factors have a great impact on our behaviour without our being aware of this influence. Surprisingly, there has been little work done on the connection between situationism and moral luck. Given that it is often a matter of luck what situations we find ourselves in, and that we are greatly influenced by the circumstances we face, it seems also to be a matter of luck whether we are blameworthy or praiseworthy for (...) our actions in those circumstances. We argue that such situationist moral luck, as a variety of circumstantial moral luck, exemplifies a distinct and interesting type of moral luck. Further, there is a case to be made that situationist moral luck is perhaps more worrying than some other well-discussed cases of moral luck. (shrink)

I argue that no one knows whether there is free will.

Why might someone consider the answer to the titular question to be trivial? Perhaps because she has read some mereology and understands that mereologists distinguish between parthood on the one hand and proper parthood on the other. She understands that, at least when talking in the language of mereology, a thing is necessarily not a proper part of itself, but is necessarily a part of itself. Whether the English word “part” expresses parthood or proper parthood does not seem too important, (...) seeing as either can be taken as primitive and one defined in terms of the other. Thus, whether something is part of itself or not is indeed a trivial matter of definition. If by “part” one means parthood, everything is part of itself. If by “part” one means proper parthood, nothing is part of itself. (shrink)

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.comDavid Shoemaker’s new book, Responsibility from the Margins, is an excellent and insightful explication of Shoemaker’s tripartite theory of moral responsibility. After setting out the main elements of his account, Shoemaker uses underexplored marginal cases of responsible agency to illustrate, support and shape his main theses concerning responsibility. The book as a whole thus presents us with a thoroughly (...) defended, subtle, and plausible theory of the extent and the nature of moral responsibility.Shoemaker takes as his starting point Peter Strawson’s claim that an agent’s responsibility for an action stems from the ‘quality of will’ expressed by that action. In particular, the appropriateness of our reactive attitudes towards an... (shrink)

The paper challenges Williamson’s safety based explanation for why we cannot know the cut-off point of vague expressions. We assume throughout (most of) the paper that Williamson is correct in saying that vague expressions have sharp cut-off points, but we argue that Williamson’s explanation for why we do not and cannot know these cut-off points is unsatisfactory. -/- In sect 2 we present Williamson's position in some detail. In particular, we note that Williamson's explanation relies on taking a particular safety (...) principle ('Meta-linguistic belief safety' or 'MBS') as a necessary condition on knowledge. In section 3, we show that even if MBS were a necessary condition on knowledge, that would not be sufficient to show that we cannot know the cut-off points of vague expressions. In section 4, we present our main case against Williamson's explanation: we argue that MBS is not a necessary condition on knowledge, by presenting a series of cases where one's belief violates MBS but nevertheless constitutes knowledge. In section 5, we present and respond to an objection to our view. And in section 6, we briefly discuss the possible directions a theory of vagueness can take, if our objection to Williamson's theory is taken on board. (shrink)

Situations are powerful: the evidence from experimental social psychology suggests that agents are hugely influenced by the situations they find themselves in, often without their knowing it. In our paper, we evaluate how situational factors affect our reasons-responsiveness, as conceived of by John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, and, through this, how they also affect moral responsibility. We argue that the situationist experiments suggest that situational factors impair, among other things, our moderate reasons-responsiveness, which is plausibly required for moral responsibility. However, (...) even though we argue that situational factors lower the degree of our reasons-responsiveness, we propose that agents remain moderately reasons-responsive to the degree required for moral responsibility. Nonetheless, those affected by situational factors are arguably less morally responsible than those who are not subject to similar situational factors. We further evaluate an understanding of reasons-responsiveness which relativizes reasons-responsiveness to agents’ circumstances. We argue that the situationist data do not warrant this kind of divergence from Fischer’s and Ravizza’s account. We conclude by discussing what situationist experiments tell us about our relationship to non-reasons. (shrink)

This presentation of a system of propositional logic is a foundational paper for systems of illocutionary logic. The language contains the illocutionary force operators '' for assertion and ' ' for supposition. Sentences occurring in proofs of the deductive system must be prefixed with one of these operators, and rules of take account of the forces of the sentences. Two kinds of semantic conditions are investigated; familiar truth conditions and commitment conditions. Accepting a statement A or rejecting A commits a (...) person to accepting some statements (the symbol '' marks this value), to rejecting some statements (), and will leave the person uncommitted with respect to others (). Commitment valuations assign the values to sentences of ; such a valuation is conceived as reflecting the beliefs/knowledge of a particular person. This paper explores the relations between truth conditions and commitment conditions, and between semantic concepts defined in terms of these conditions. (shrink)

LeMans’s gontological argument aims to prove the non-existence of God on the basis that it is possible to conceive of a being that is greater than any actual thing. If God were actual, then it would be possible to conceive of something greater than God. As this is not possible, God does not exist.

Self-control is a fundamental part of what it is to be a human being. It poses important philosophical and psychological questions about the nature of belief, motivation, judgment, and decision making. More immediately, failures of self-control can have high costs, resulting in ill-health, loss of relationships, and even violence and death, whereas strong self-control is also often associated with having a virtuous character. What exactly is self-control? If we lose control can we still be free? Can we be held responsible (...) for loss of self-control? -/- In this thorough and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of self-control, the authors examine and assess the following topics and questions: • The importance of self-control • What is self-control? • Self-control and the law of desire • Mechanisms of self-control • How is it possible to lose self-control? • Blameworthiness and (the loss of) self-control • Externalist self-control • Pathologies of self-control. -/- Combining philosophical analysis with surveys of the latest psychological research, and including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary of key terms, Self-Control is essential reading for students of philosophy of mind and psychology, moral psychology, free will, and ethics. It will also be of interest to those in related fields such as psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

It is commonly held that no one can be morally responsible for a necessary truth. In this paper, I will provide various examples that cast doubt on this idea. I also show that one popular argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism (van Inwagen’s Direct Argument) fails given my examples.

The concept of missed care refers to an irrefragable truth that required nursing care, which is left undone, occurs in the delivery of health care. As a technical concept, missed care offers nurses the opportunity to articulate a problematic experience. But what are we to make of missed care from an ethical perspective? Can nurses be held morally responsible for missed care? Ethically speaking, it is generally accepted that if a person has a moral obligation to do something, s/he needs (...) to have the capacity to do it. If a person does not have the capacity to fulfil a moral obligation, then s/he cannot be held responsible for failing to do so. This is captured by the “ought implies can” (OIC) principle. This paper brings the OIC principle to the forefront of the discussion on missed care. It is contended that nurses – qua moral agents – may be discharged from a moral obligation to carry out a required caring act because of some inability that is not of their making and therefore may not be morally responsible for missed care. However, the OIC principle may not be applied to all situations of missed care depending on their causes. In addition, following in the thought of Sapontzis (The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1991, XXIX, 383–393) it is contended that when an original obligation to deliver a required act of care cannot be fulfilled, other obligations may be generated as summed up in the “Principle of Making Amends” and the “Principle of Appropriate Feeling.” It is the view of this paper that these further principles could prevent the OIC principle from being used to simply excuse omissions of care from a normative standard and could support the view that nurses continue to have alternative obligations to make amends and to respond with appropriate feelings to missed care. (shrink)

This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion on national corporate social responsibility plans from the perspectives of the three logics as articulated in Caritas in Veritate, by using the Irish national CSR plan as an example. Good for Business, Good for the Community: Ireland’s National Plan on Corporate Social Responsibility 2014–2016 maintains that CSR activities can enable organisations to build relationships and trust with communities. One of the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis was the decrease in trust in (...) banking systems and in business more broadly. It is well recognised that relationships of trust are essential to the life of the market, the state and civil society. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate contends that corresponding to the life of the market, the state and civil society are three logics: the logic of exchange, the logic of public obligation and the logic of gift. This paper proposes that the normative framework of the three logics of Caritas in Veritate can be read into the Irish national CSR plan. This paper argues that the examples of CSR initiatives proffered by the plan could point organisations in the direction of the logic of gift and therefore enable the rebuilding of relationships of trust with citizens and communities. (shrink)

The main aim of the book is to provide a good understanding of a range of semantic phenomena and issues in semantics, adopting a truth-conditional account of meaning, but without using a compositional formalism. The book assumes no particular background in linguistics of philosophy, and all the technical tools used are explained as they are introduced. They style is accessible, with numerous examples.