Theology after Heidegger must take into account history and language as constitutive elements in the pursuit of meaning. Quite often, this prompts a hurried flight from metaphysics to an embrace of an absence at the center of Christian narrativity. In this book, Conor Sweeney explores the "postmodern" critique of presence in the context of sacramental theology, engaging the thought of Louis-Marie Chauvet and Lieven Boeve. Chauvet is an influential postmodern theologian whose critique of the perceived onto-theological constitution of (...) presence in traditional sacramental theology has made big waves, while Boeve is part of a more recent generation of theologians who even more wholeheartedly embrace postmodern consequences for theology. Sweeney considers the extent to which postmodernism a la Heidegger upsets the hermeneutics of sacramentality, asking whether this requires us to renounce the search for a presence that by definition transcends us. Against both the fetishization of presence and absence, Sweeney argues that metaphysics has a properly sacramental basis, and that it is only through this reality that the dialectic of presence and absence can be transcended. The case is made for the full but restless signification of the mother's smile as the paradigm for genuine sacramental presence. (shrink)

Avatars will represent us online, in virtual worlds, and in technologically supported hybrid environments. We and our avatars will stand not in an identity relation but in a proxy relation, an arrangement that is significant not least because our proxies’ actions can be counted as our own. However, this proxy relation between humans and avatars is not well understood and its consequences under-explored. In this paper I explore the relation and its potential ethical consequences.

According to the fitting-attitudes account of value, for X to be good is for it to be fitting to value X. But what is it for an attitude to be fitting? A popular recent view is that it is for there to be sufficient reason for the attitude. In this paper we argue that proponents of the fitting-attitudes account should reject this view and instead take fittingness as basic. In this way they avoid the notorious ‘wrong kind of reason’ problem, (...) and can offer attractive accounts of reasons and good reasoning in terms of fittingness. (shrink)

Beliefs are held to norms in a way that seems to require control over what we believe. Yet we don’t control our beliefs at will, in the way we control our actions. I argue that this problem can be solved by recognising a different form of control, which we exercise when we revise our beliefs directly for reasons. We enjoy this form of attitudinal control not only over our beliefs, but also over other attitudes, including intentions—that is, over the will (...) itself. Closely tied to our capacity for reasoning, attitudinal control is in important respects more fundamental than the voluntary control that we exercise over our actions. In the course of developing this account I respond to two objections recently raised against an earlier version of it by Booth. (shrink)

Nostalgia is standardly assumed to be directed towards the past, to involve some salient feeling of the irretrievability of the past, and to be directed towards the memory of an event. In this paper I argue that none of these standard assumptions hold. I use a time‐traveller example to demonstrate that nostalgia is not essentially past‐directed. Once nostalgia is prised from the objective past, we can examine the other purported conditions, making space for the conclusion that the felt irretrievability of (...) the past is not the necessary feature of nostalgia that we assumed it to be. I then argue that the notion that nostalgia is directed towards the memory of an event is misguided. Finally, I distinguish two routes to nostalgia and, with this distinction in place, argue that nostalgia is neither essentially time nor place directed. Nostalgia is simply change‐directed. (shrink)

Nihilism is the logic of nothing as something, which claims that Nothing Is. Its unmaking of things, and its forming of formless things, strain the fundamental terms of existence: what it is to be, to know, to be known. But nihilism, the antithesis of God, is also like theology. Where nihilism creates nothingness, condenses it to substance, God also makes nothingness creative. Negotiating the borders of spirit and substance, theology can ask the questions of nihilism that other disciplines do not (...) ask: Where is it? What is it made of? Why is it so destructive? How can it be made holy, or overcome? Genealogy of Nihilism rereads Western history in the light of nihilistic logic, which pervades two millennia of Western thought and is coming to fruition in our present age in a virulently dangerous manner. From Parmenides to Alain Badiou, via Plotinus, Avicenna, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze and Derrida, a genealogy of nothingness can be witnessed in development, with devastating consequences for the way we live. Conor Cunningham's elaborate and sophisticated theology, spanning the disciplines of philosophy, science and popular culture, permits us to see not simply how modernity has formulated its philosophies of nothing, but how these philosophies might be transfigures by the crucial difference theology makes, and so be reconcilable with life and the living - with the very gift which being is. (shrink)

This paper defends the possibility of doxastic freedom, arguing that doxastic freedom should be modelled not on freedom of action but on freedom of intention. Freedom of action is exercised by agents like us, I argue, through voluntary control. This involves two conditions, intentions-reactivity and reasons-reactivity, that are not met in the case of doxastic states. Freedom of intention is central to our agency and to our moral responsibility, but is not exercised through voluntary control. I develop and defend an (...) account of freedom of intention, arguing that constitutive features of intention ensure that freedom of intention cannot require voluntary control. Then I show that an analogous argument can be applied to doxastic states. I argue that if we had voluntary control of intentions or of doxastic states, this would actually undermine our freedom. (shrink)

This is a survey of recent debates concerning the normativity of belief. We explain what the thesis that belief is normative involves, consider arguments for and against that thesis, and explore its bearing on debates in metaethics.

Many philosophers categorise judgment as a type of action. On the face of it, this claim is at odds with the seeming fact that judging a certain proposition is not something you can do voluntarily. I argue that we can resolve this tension by recognising a category of non-voluntary action. An action can be non-voluntary without being involuntary. The notion of non-voluntary action is developed by appeal to the claim that judging has truth as a constitutive goal. This claim, when (...) combined with a conception of judging as a way of settling a question, explains both why judging is genuinely agential, and why it is nevertheless non-voluntary. (shrink)

We tend to prescribe and appraise doxastic states in terms that are broadly deontic. According to a simple argument, such prescriptions and appraisals are improper, because they wrongly presuppose that our doxastic states are voluntary. One strategy for resisting this argument, recently endorsed by a number of philosophers, is to claim that our doxastic states are in fact voluntary (This strategy has been pursued by Steup 2008 ; Weatherson 2008 ). In this paper I argue that this strategy is neither (...) successful nor necessary. Our doxastic states are not voluntary in any interesting sense. But once we see why our doxastic states are not voluntary, we can also see that there is no apparent reason to think that deontic prescriptions and appraisals—epistemic ones, at any rate—presuppose doxastic voluntarism. Indeed, there is good reason to deny that they do so. Finally, I diagnose the misleading attraction of the idea that what I call ‘epistemic deontology’ presupposes doxastic voluntarism. (shrink)

This book has two main aims. First, it develops and defends a constitutive account of normative reasons as premises of good reasoning. This account says, roughly, that to be a normative reason for a response (such as a belief or intention) is to be premise of good reasoning, from fitting responses, to that response. Second, building on the account of reasons, it develops and defends a fittingness-first account of the structure of the normative domain. This account says that there is (...) a single normative property, fittingness, which is normatively basic, and on which all other normative properties depend. On this view, reasons, oughts, value, and other normative phenomena all ultimately depend on fittingness. The account of normative reasons is a part of this general view of the normative domain. The book begins, in Chapter 1, by motivating the account of reasons as premises of good reasoning. Chapter 2 argues that good reasoning is, roughly, reasoning that preserves fittingness. Chapter 3 addresses the question of what fittingness is. Chapter 4 defends constitutive accounts of evaluative properties, like goodness, in terms of fitting attitudes. Chapters 5 and 6 shows how the view provides an attractive account of how reasons determine the deontic status of a response—whether you ought or may so respond. Chapter 7 addresses some challenges concerning certain reasons for belief, the relationship between reasons for action and reasons for intention, and reasons for emotion. (shrink)

Among the many important contributions of John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning is an account of what reasoning is and what makes reasoning correct. In this paper we raise some problems for both of these accounts and recommend an alternative approach.

As rational agents, we are governed by reasons. The fact that there’s beer at the pub might be a reason to go there and a reason to believe you’ll enjoy it. As this example illustrates, there are reasons for both action and for belief. There are also many other responses for which there seem to be reasons – for example, desire, regret, admiration, and blame. This diversity raises questions about how reasons for different responses relate to each other. Might certain (...) such reasons be more fundamental than others? Should certain reasons and not others be treated as paradigmatic? At least implicitly, many philosophers treat reasons for action as the fundamental or paradigmatic case. In contrast, this paper articulates and defends an alternative approach, on which reasons for attitudes are fundamental, and reasons for action are both derivative and, in certain ways, idiosyncratic. After outlining this approach, we focus on defending its most contentious thesis, that reasons for action are fundamentally reasons for intention. We offer two arguments for this thesis, which turn on central roles of reasons: that reasons can be responded to, and that reasons can feature as premises of good reasoning. We then examine objections to the thesis and argue that none succeed. We conclude by sketching some ways in which our approach is significant for theorising about reasons. (shrink)

Does belief have an aim? According to the claim of exclusivity, non-truth-directed considerations cannot motivate belief within doxastic deliberation. This claim has been used to argue that, far from aiming at truth, belief is not aim-directed at all, because the regulation of belief fails to exhibit a kind of interaction among aims that is characteristic of ordinary aim-directed behaviour. The most prominent reply to this objection has been offered by Steglich-Petersen (Philos Stud 145:395–405, 2009), who claims that exclusivity is in (...) fact compatible with belief’s genuinely having an aim. I argue, based on consideration of what is involved in pursuing an aim, that Steglich-Petersen’s reply fails. I suggest that the defender of the idea that belief has an aim should instead reject the claim of exclusivity, and I sketch how this can be done. (shrink)

Danaher and Nyholm (Philosophy & Technology 37:106, 2024) explore whether avatar technology makes humans less valuable by making them less scarce. They identify two forms of human scarcity, intrinstic scarcity and instrumental scarcity, and explore how each is impacted by avatar representation. Here I argue that avatars cannot make humans less scarce but that, nevertheless, the use of avatar technology can undermine the value of human uniqueness.

Beliefs can be correct or incorrect, and this standard of correctness is widely thought to be fundamental to epistemic normativity. But how should this standard be understood, and in what way is it so fundamental? I argue that we should resist understanding correctness for belief as either a prescriptive or an evaluative norm. Rather, we should understand it as an instance of the distinct normative category of fittingness for attitudes. This yields an attractive account of epistemic reasons.

Reasoning is a certain kind of attitude-revision. What kind? The aim of this paper is to introduce and defend a new answer to this question, based on the idea that reasoning is a goodness-fixing kind. Our central claim is that reasoning is a functional kind: it has a constitutive point or aim that fixes the standards for good reasoning. We claim, further, that this aim is to get fitting attitudes. We start by considering recent accounts of reasoning due to Ralph (...) Wedgwood and John Broome, and argue that, while these accounts contain important insights, they are not satisfactory: Wedgwood’s rules out too much, and Broome’s too little. We then introduce and defend our alternative account, discuss some of its implications and attractions, and, finally, consider objections. (shrink)

I argue that, if belief is subject to a norm of truth, then that norm is evaluative rather than prescriptive in character. No prescriptive norm of truth is both plausible as a norm that we are subject to, and also capable of explaining what the truth norm of belief is supposed to explain. Candidate prescriptive norms also have implausible consequences for the normative status of withholding belief. An evaluative norm fares better in all of these respects. I propose an evaluative (...) account according to which the goodness of true belief is, in Geach's sense, attributive rather than predicative. (shrink)

What makes the difference between good and bad reasoning? In this paper we defend a novel account of good reasoning—both theoretical and practical—according to which it preserves fittingness or correctness: good reasoning is reasoning which is such as to take you from fitting attitudes to further fitting attitudes, other things equal. This account, we argue, is preferable to two others that feature in the recent literature. The first, which has been made prominent by John Broome, holds that the standards of (...) good reasoning derive from rational requirements. The second holds that these standards derive from reasons. We argue that these accounts face serious difficulties in correctly distinguishing good from bad reasoning, and in explaining what's worthwhile about good reasoning. We then propose our alternative account and argue that it performs better on these counts. In the final section, we develop certain elements of the account in response to some possible objections. (shrink)

While scholarly research on the relationship between female board representation and strategic decision-making has gained momentum, employee policy outcomes have remained relatively understudied. Integrating theory from the ethics of care perspective with research on the glass ceiling and workplace voice, we seek to understand the circumstances under which female directors influence policy changes for firm employees. We argue that firms with increasing female board representation are more likely to enact human capital development policies benefiting firm employees. However, this positive relationship (...) will ultimately diminish as boards accrue an increasing number of female directors. We further predict that the presence of a female leader at the firm (serving in the role of either the CEO or the board chair) will moderate this diminishing effect. Using a sample of S&P 1500 firms, we find support for our hypotheses. The findings from this study provide evidence that while female board representation is positively related to human capital development policies, this effect is nuanced and impacted by the presence of female leadership at the top of organizations. Our paper extends existing research on the nature of female directors’ influence on ethical decisions, emphasizing the impact of these directors on employees. (shrink)

The objects we encounter in platformised video games like Destiny 2 pose a challenge to philosophical theorisations of the object. For platformised video game objects, their phenomenological position is not spatio-temporally contiguous with the underlying systems leading to their emergence on-screen. While philosophers and media theorists tend to view such objects as simulations, fictions, or data objects that appear within game spaces, comparatively little thought has been given to the ontology of such objects. In this paper I develop an emergentist (...) approach that emphasises the embeddedness of these objects within platform-architectures. I argue that these objects should be viewed as emergent objects that are ontologically contingent on the interrelations occurring between different components of the platform-assemblage yet separate to them. (shrink)

According to Paul Boghossian and others, inference is subject to the taking condition: it necessarily involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion, and drawing the conclusion because of that fact. Boghossian argues that this condition vindicates the idea that inference is an expression of agency, and that it has several other important implications too. However, we argue in this paper that the taking condition should be rejected. The condition gives rise to several serious prima facie problems and (...) the reasons which have been offered in favour of it fail to convince. (shrink)

What should I do? What should I think? Traditionally, ethicists tackle the first question, while epistemologists tackle the second. Philosophers have tended to investigate the issue of what to do independently of the issue of what to think, that is, to do ethics independently of epistemology, and vice versa. This collection of new essays by leading philosophers focuses on a central concern of both epistemology and ethics: normativity. Normativity is a matter of what one should or may do or think, (...) what one has reason or justification to do or to think, what it is right or wrong to do or to think, and so on. The volume is innovative in drawing together issues from epistemology and ethics and in exploring neglected connections between epistemic and practical normativity. It represents a burgeoning research programme in which epistemic and practical normativity are seen as two aspects of a single topic, deeply interdependent and raising parallel questions. (shrink)

I consider two possible evidentialist responses to Schmidt. According to the first, all of the reason-giving work in the relevant cases is being done by evidence. According to the second, even if the ‘incoherence fact’ sometimes provides a reason, what it provides a reason for is not a doxastic attitude, or at least not one that is an alternative to belief. I argue that the first response is not satisfying, but the second is defensible.

It is often said that belief aims at truth. I argue that if belief has an aim then that aim is knowledge rather than merely truth. My main argument appeals to the impossibility of forming a belief on the basis of evidence that only weakly favours a proposition. This phenomenon, I argue, is a problem for the truth-aim hypothesis. By contrast, it can be given a simple and satisfying explanation on the knowledge-aim hypothesis. Furthermore, the knowledge-aim hypothesis suggests a very (...) plausible account of what it takes for evidence to be sufficiently good to make belief possible. I offer several further considerations in favour of the knowledge-aim hypothesis, and deal with objections. Although the main point of the paper is not to defend the view that belief has an aim, but to adjudicate between accounts of what that aim is, my argument nevertheless requires some attention to the motivation for attributing an aim to belief in the first place. In particular, I will explain an important advantage that this view has over the view that belief is not aim-directed, but only subject to a constitutive norm. (shrink)

This study examined the impact of perceived ethical culture of the firm and selected demographic variables on auditors’ ethical evaluation of, and intention to engage in, various time pressure-induced dysfunctional behaviours. Four audit cases and questionnaires were distributed to experienced pre-manager level auditors in Ireland and the U.S. The findings revealed that while perceived unethical pressure to engage in dysfunctional behaviours and unethical tone at the top were significant in forming an ethical evaluation, only perceived unethical pressure had an impact (...) on intention to engage in the behaviours. Country was also found to have a significant impact, with U.S. respondents reporting higher ethical evaluations and lower intentions to engage in unethical acts than Irish respondents. Implications of the findings and areas for future research are discussed. (shrink)

It is often assumed that an eternalist and a presentist will have the same emotional response to life's events because, regardless of one's metaphysical beliefs, we all have the same phenomenological experience of time passing and it is this experience that is relevant to emotional response. I question the assumption that beliefs about the metaphysics of time can have little impact on one's emotional responses and establish the position that scientific and metaphysical beliefs can offer succour.

In this paper I propose a Fictional Dualism model of social robots. The model helps us to understand the human emotional reaction to social robots and also acts as a guide for us in determining the significance of that emotional reaction, enabling us to better define the moral and legislative rights of social robots within our society. I propose a distinctive position that allows us to accept that robots are tools, that our emotional reaction to them can be important to (...) their usefulness, and that this emotional reaction is not a direct indicator that robots deserve either moral consideration or rights. The positive framework of Fictional Dualism provides us with an understanding of what social robots are and with a plausible basis for our relationships with them as we bring them further into society. (shrink)

Biobanking, the large-scale, systematic collection of data and tissue for open-ended research purposes, is on the rise, particularly in clinical research. The infrastructures for the systematic procurement, management and eventual use of human tissue and data are positioned between healthcare and research. However, the positioning of biobanking infrastructures and transfer of tissue and data between research and care is not an innocuous go-between. Instead, it involves changes in both domains and raises issues about how distinctions between research and care are (...) drawn and policed. Based on an analysis of the emergence and development of clinical biobanking in the Netherlands, this article explores how processes of bio-objectification associated with biobanking arise, redefining the ways in which distinctions between research and clinical care are governed. (shrink)

As Catholics, like all people of goodwill, work to confront the ongoing legacy of racism in the United States, they need additional resources to understand and challenge the suprapersonal aspects of racism at the social level. Building on existing Catholic analyses of racism as a form of cultural sin and incorporating recent refinements in the concept of structural sin, this paper argues that Catholic social thought can yield a more comprehensive account of systemic racism as a structural and cultural problem. (...) This combined analysis provides the theological resources to help Catholics recognize a duty to confront racism and promote racial justice as a natural extension of their faith commitments. (shrink)

Human desires for survival and things conducive to survival seem to be exactly what one would expect given natural selection. Thus, one might intuitively assume that such desires provide evidence for evolutionary naturalism. The purpose of this paper is to show that they do not: desires for survival, things conducive to survival, and other natural desires found in human beings are not an evidential asset to evolutionary naturalism. Indeed, they are severely problematic due to their intentionality and the fact that (...) they fit just as well, if not better, with theism. (shrink)

This study examines the semantics of a root form underlying a wide range of Dene lexical expressions. The root evolved from a simple nominal denoting “club” to expressions lexicalizing the movement of stick-like objects and the rotation of helicopter blades. These semantic extensions arise through source-in-target and target-in-source metonymies. Drawing on Cognitive Linguistics, especially the theory of metonymy, offers a method of describing the range of meanings expressed by this root in a concise manner. Focusing on the results of metonymic (...) meaning extensions also opens the way to addressing questions in the history of Dene languages. This study contributes to increasing the typological scope of Cognitive Linguistic approaches and argues for the usefulness of the theory in addressing problems in Dene linguistics. (shrink)

In a book on Justinian’s wars of conquest, Peter Heather has argued that Rome’s ability to wage war in the sixth century CE was helped, to a large degree, by the military revolution that took place in Late Antiquity, which consisted of two principal parts: an increased deployment of Roman soldiers to the eastern frontier, and a shift towards Hunnic tactics. In this essay, however, I argue that these claims are misguided, and using five criteria set out by Lee Brice (...) in an article on military revolution during the reigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great of Macedon, I show that the changes which Heather argues in favour of had begun long before Late Antiquity. Instead, what we see is the continued gradual evolution of Rome’s military, with the Roman state shifting troops to the east from the beginning of the imperial era, and the first documented implementation of steppe-inspired changes dating to the second century. (shrink)

It is widely held that when you are deliberating about whether to believe some proposition p, only considerations relevant to the truth of p can be taken into account as reasons bearing on whether to believe p and motivate you accordingly. This thesis of exclusivity has significance for debates about the nature of belief, about control of belief, and about certain forms of evidentialism. In this paper I distinguish a strong and a weak version of exclusivity. I provide reason to (...) think that strong exclusivity is an illusion and that weak exclusivity may also be an illusion. I describe a number of cases in which exclusivity seems not to hold, and I show how an illusion of exclusivity may be generated by a rather different feature of doxastic deliberation, which I call demandingness. (shrink)

Social robots are an increasingly integral part of society, already appearing as customer service assistants, care-home helpers, teaching assistants and personal companions. This book argues that the wider inclusion of social robots in our society is having a revolutionary impact on some of our key intuitions regarding ethics, metaphysics and epistemology and, as such, will put pressure on many of our best theories. Social robots elicit an emotional and social response in humans that some have taken to be evidence that (...) robots deserve moral consideration. Others have argued that, as robots are only machines, we should avoid designing robots that encourage emotional engagement. The fictional dualism model provides a new way for us to view social robots and a new route for our continued relationship with them. When we engage with a social robot, we create a fictional overlay that has wants, needs and desires. Our emotional attachment to social robots is a natural continuation of our relationship to fiction: a life-enhancing and important connection, but not one that prompts moral consideration for the fictional entity. In this book, Paula Sweeney shows how the fictional dualism model of social robots differs from other popular models. In addition to providing a distinctive and ethically appropriate framework for emotional engagement without moral consideration, the model provides conditions for trusting social robots and, uniquely, allows us to individuate social robots as distinct persons, even in contexts in which they share a collective mind. (shrink)

This book brings together never-before published contributions of leading scholars in Greek and Medieval thought. The list of thinkers examined includes Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, Anselm, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Harclay, William of Auvergne, Paulus Soncinas and William of Alnwick.

Berkeley’s ‘master argument’ for idealism has been the subject of extensive criticism. Two of his strongest critics, A.N. Prior and J.L. Mackie, argue that due to various logical confusions on the part of Berkeley, the master argument fails to establish his idealist conclusion. Prior argues that Berkeley’s argument ‘proves too little’ in its conclusion, while Mackie contends that Berkeley confuses two different kinds of self-refutation in his argument. This paper proposes a defence of the master argument based on intuitionistic argument. (...) It begins by giving a brief exposition of the master argument and Prior's and Mackie's criticism. The following section explains why we might read the master argument along intuitionistic lines. The final section demonstrates that, according to intuitionistic logic, Berkeley's argument withstands the criticisms of Prior and Mackie. (shrink)