This article argues for limiting the definition of the term “veganism” to a minimal one that denotes veganism as the abstention from the consumption of animal-derived products, thereby treating it as a neutral term exclusively describing a pattern of action. As the practice of veganism has become popularized, the promotion of veganism and animal rights has gained mainstream attention, and scholarly research on veganism has proliferated, the term veganism has often come to be used to denote an ethical or political (...) position. We argue that this slippage from treating veganism as a practice to treating it as a belief complicates and confuses both scholarly analysis of, and plain-language conversations about, veganism. We examine the history of the term, its different uses, and motivations individuals may have for arriving at vegan practice to show that there is no coherent basis for treating veganism as anything other than a material practice. We argue that using veganism strictly to describe practice is not only logically appropriate and conducive to more clarity in discussions and research about veganism, but will encourage clearer and more nuanced engagement with the ethics, activism, and everyday practices of vegans in all their variety. (shrink)

This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching ...

In a recent interview, yoga historian David Gordon White commented on the precarious commitment that modern yoga has to so-called Classical Yoga. The predicament stems from a disjuncture between the contents of the Yogasūtra and the practices and concepts commonly taught in many yoga centers and trainings. The latter teachings resonate stronger with alternative traditions, specifically those illustrated in haṭha yoga and Vedānta sources and within their related living communities.1 As White concluded regarding this peculiar and ubiquitous selection of the (...) YS, “They chose the wrong text, but so be it.”2 It is crucial to note that White’s allegation of “wrongness” implicates consonance rather than... (shrink)

Unlike anthropocentric, zoocentric, speciocentric, or biocentric perspectives, Jainism advances a sentiocentric view that grounds inherent worth in an organism’s capacity to feel, a capacity present in humans, animals, plants, and even microbes. Drawing on the insights of Christopher Framarin and Kristi Wiley, this article explores Jain sentiocentrism and examines it alongside “modernist” views that question the sentience attributed to certain organisms in the traditional Jain taxonomy. The article has three aims: (1) to demonstrate how the Jain sentiocentric system endures as (...) a strong position in contemporary animal and environmental ethics; (2) to constructively critique Jain assertions of sentience in microbes, plants, and possibly some animals; (3) to ask if insentient organisms could still qualify as having inherent worth according to an alternative standard than sentience, and what this question might mean for a “modernist” reconsideration of Jain environmental ethics. (shrink)

This book initiates the discussion between psychoanalysis and recent humanist and social scientific interest in a fundamental contemporary topic – the nonhuman. The authors question where we situate the subject in current critical investigations of a nonanthropoentric universe. In doing so they unravel a less-than-human theory of the subject; explore implications of Lacanian teachings in relation to the environment, freedom, and biopolitics; and investigate the subjective enjoyments of and anxieties over nonhumans in literature, film, and digital media. This innovative volume (...) fills a valuable gap in the literature, extending investigations into an important and topical strand of the social sciences for both analytic and pedagogical purposes. (shrink)

Recent work in economics has rediscovered the importance of belief-based utility for understanding human behaviour. Belief ‘choice’ is subject to an important constraint, however: people can only bring themselves to believe things for which they can find rationalizations. When preferences for similar beliefs are widespread, this constraint generates rationalization markets, social structures in which agents compete to produce rationalizations in exchange for money and social rewards. I explore the nature of such markets, I draw on political media to illustrate their (...) characteristics and behaviour, and I highlight their implications for understanding motivated cognition and misinformation. (shrink)

I clarify and defend the hypothesis that human belief formation is sensitive to social rewards and punishments, such that beliefs are sometimes formed based on unconscious expectations of their likely effects on other agents – agents who frequently reward us when we hold ungrounded beliefs and punish us when we hold reasonable ones. After clarifying this phenomenon and distinguishing it from other sources of bias in the psychological literature, I argue that the hypothesis is plausible on theoretical grounds and I (...) show how it illuminates and unifies a range of psychological phenomena, including confabulation and rationalisation, positive illusions, and identity-protective cognition. (shrink)

Claims pertaining to understanding are made in a variety of contexts and ways. As a result, few in the philosophical literature have made an attempt to precisely characterize the state that is y understanding x. This paper builds an account that does just that. The account is motivated by two main observations. First, understanding x is somehow related to being able to manipulate x. Second, understanding is a mental phenomenon, and so what manipulations are required to be an understander must (...) only be mental manipulations. Combining these two insights, the paper builds an account (URM) of understanding as a certain representational capacity—specifically, understanding x involves possessing a representation of x that could be manipulated in useful ways. By tying understanding to representation, the account correctly identifies that understanding is a fundamentally cognitive achievement. However, by also demanding that which representations count as understanding-conferring be determined by their practical effects, URM captures the insight that understanding is vitally connected to practice. URM is fully general, and can apply equally well to understanding states of affairs, understanding events, and even understanding people and works of art. The ultimate test of URM is its applicability in actual scientific and philosophical discourse. To that end the paper discusses the importance of understanding in the philosophy of science, psychology, and computer science. (shrink)

Popular discussions of faith often assume that having faith is a form of believing on insufficient evidence and that having faith is therefore in some way rationally defective. Here I offer a characterization of action-centered faith and show that action-centered faith can be both epistemically and practically rational even under a wide variety of subpar evidential circumstances.

Background: Positioned at the frontlines of the battle against COVID-19 disease, nurses are at increased risk of contraction, yet as they feel obligated to provide care, they also experience ethical pressure. Research question and objectives: The study examined how Israeli nurses respond to ethical dilemmas and tension during the COVID-19 outbreak, and to what extent this is associated with their perceived risk and motivation to provide care? Research design: The study implemented a descriptive correlative study using a 53-section online questionnaire, (...) including 4 open-ended questions. Participants and research context: The questionnaire was complete by 231 registered and intern nurses after being posted on nurses’ Facebook and WhatsApp groups, and through snowball sampling. Ethical considerations: The research was pre-approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel. Findings: In all, 68.8% of the respondents had received some form of training about COVID-19. Respondents positioned themselves at perceived high risk levels for contracting the virus. About one-third feared going to work because of potential contraction and due to feeling inadequately protected. While 40.9% were scared to care for COVID-19 patients, 74.7% did not believe they have the right to refuse to treat certain patients. When asked about defining an age limit for providing patients with scarce resources (such as ventilation machines) in cases of insufficient supplies, respondents stated that the maximum age in such scenarios should be 84 (standard deviation (SD = 19) – yet most respondents (81.4%) believed that every patient has the right to receive optimal treatment, regardless of their age and medical background. Discussion: Correlating with their strong commitment to care, nurses did not convey intention to leave the profession despite their stress, perceived risk, and feelings of insufficient support and protection at work. The nurses did not hold a utilitarian approach to resource allocation, thereby acknowledging the value of all people and their entitlement to care, regardless of optimal outcomes. Conclusion: While experiencing significant personal risk and emotional burden, nurses conveyed strong dedication to providing care, and did not regret working in the nursing profession, yet they did seek a supportive climate for their needs and ethical concerns. (shrink)

A normative reason for a person to? is a consideration which favours?ing. A motivating reason is a reason for which or on the basis of which a person?s. This paper explores a connection between normative and motivating reasons. More specifically, it explores the idea that there are second-order normative reasons to? for or on the basis of certain first-order normative reasons. In this paper, I challenge the view that there are second-order reasons so understood. I then show that prominent views (...) in contemporary epistemology are committed to the existence of second-order reasons, specifically, views about the epistemic norms governing practical reasoning and about the role of higher-order evidence. If there are no second-order reasons, those views are mistaken. (shrink)

What does the aesthetic ask of us? What claims do the aesthetic features of the objects and events in our environment make on us? My answer in this paper is: that depends. Aesthetic reasons can only justify feelings – they cannot demand them. A corollary of this is that there are no aesthetic obligations to feel, only permissions. However, I argue, aesthetic reasons can demand actions – they do not merely justify them. A corollary of this is that there are (...) aesthetic obligations to act, not only permissions. So, I conclude, the aesthetic asks little of us as patients and much of as agents. (shrink)

It is commonly said that some standards, such as morality, are ‘normatively authoritative’ in a way that other standards, such as etiquette, are not; standards like etiquette are said to be ‘not really normative’. Skeptics deny the very possibility of normative authority, and take claims like ‘etiquette is not really normative’ to be either empty or confused. I offer a different route to defeat skeptics about authority: instead of focusing on what makes standards like morality special, we should focus on (...) what makes standards like etiquette ‘not really normative’. I defend a fictionalist theory on which etiquette is ‘not really normative’ in roughly the same way that Sherlock is ‘not really a detective’, and show that fictionalism about some normative standards helps us explain the possibility of normative authority. (shrink)

What is a normative reason for acting? In this paper, I introduce and defend a novel answer to this question. The starting-point is the view that reasons are right-makers. By exploring difficulties facing it, I arrive at an alternative, according to which reasons are evidence of respects in which it is right to perform an act, for example, that it keeps a promise. This is similar to the proposal that reasons for a person to act are evidence that she ought (...) to do so; however, as I explain, it differs from that proposal in two significant ways. As a result, I argue, the evidence-based account of reasons I advance shares the advantages of its predecessor while avoiding many of the difficulties facing it. (shrink)

Predictive processing has recently been advanced as a global cognitive architecture for the brain. I argue that its commitments concerning the nature and format of cognitive representation are inadequate to account for two basic characteristics of conceptual thought: first, its generality—the fact that we can think and flexibly reason about phenomena at any level of spatial and temporal scale and abstraction; second, its rich compositionality—the specific way in which concepts productively combine to yield our thoughts. I consider two strategies for (...) avoiding these objections and I argue that both confront formidable challenges. (shrink)

This classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalism harbors the seeds of its downfall, particularly by effecting a certain cultural tendency among its most successful subjects that is bound to corrode its very foundations. As such, it is a conservative critique employing cultural concerns precisely where Marx prioritized economic ones.

This article explores the ethical architecture of the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle, which holds that agents can come to possess remedial obligations of corrective justice to others through the involuntary receipt of benefits stemming from injustice. Advocates of the principle face challenges of both persuasion and limitation in seeking to convince those unmoved of its normative force, and to explain in which cases of benefiting from injustice it does and does not give rise to rectificatory obligations. The article considers ways in (...) which advocates of the principle might seek to win over those sceptical of its merits by employing a modified principle which sidesteps the issue of enforceability, before considering the question of whether the argument can be expanded from cases of benefiting from wrongdoing specifically to other sorts of situation where one agent involuntarily benefits from another's loss. (shrink)

Meaning, according to a significant number of philosophers, is an intrinsically normative notion.1 For this reason, it is suggested, meaning is not conducive to a naturalistic explanation. In this paper, I shall not address whether this is indeed so. Nor shall I present arguments in support of the normativity thesis (see Glock 2005; Kripke 1982). Instead, I shall examine and respond to two forceful objections recently (and independently) raised against it by Boghossian (2005), Hattiangadi (2006) and Miller (2006). Although I (...) shall argue that the objections are unsuccessful, they are worth attending to, not only because the normativity thesis is so widely accepted and is thought to have such ramifications but, most importantly, because doing so offers the opportunity to help clarify how it is to be understood. (shrink)

This book discusses a range of important issues in current philosophical work on the nature of possible worlds. Areas investigated include the theories of the nature of possible worlds, general questions about metaphysical analysis and questions about the direction of dependence between what is necessary or possible and what could be.

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of generics in social cognition. First, we explore the nature and effects of the most common form of generics about social kinds. Second, we discuss the nature and effects of a less common but equally important form of generics about social kinds. Finally, we consider the implications of this discussion for how we ought to use language about the social world.

The view that truth is the norm of assertion has fallen out of fashion. The recent trend has been to think that knowledge is the norm of assertion. Objections to the knowledge view proceed almost exclusively by appeal to alleged counterexamples. While it no doubt has a role to play, such a strategy relies on intuitions concerning hypothetical cases, intuitions which might not be shared and which might shift depending on how the relevant cases are fleshed out. In this paper, (...) I reject the knowledge view on principled grounds. More specifically, by appeal to a principle which is motivated independently of the debate over the norms of assertion and which is already accepted by many proponents of the knowledge view, I show the knowledge view to be false while simultaneously accounting for why it might seem to be true. In doing so, I provide a novel defence of the unfashionable truth view. (shrink)

What is understanding? My goal in this paper is to lay out a new approach to this question and clarify how that approach deals with certain issues. The claim is that understanding is a matter of compressing information about the understood so that it can be mentally useful. On this account, understanding amounts to having a representational kernel and the ability to use it to generate the information one needs regarding the target phenomenon. I argue that this ambitious new account (...) can accommodate much of the data that has motivated theories of understanding in philosophy of science, and can also be generally applicable in epistemology and daily life as well. (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy of race is between eliminativists and conservationists about what we ought do with ‘race’ talk. ‘Eliminativism’ is often defined such that it’s committed to holding that (a) ‘race’ is vacuous and races don’t exist, so (b) we should eliminate the term ‘race’ from our vocabulary. As a stipulative definition, that’s fine. But as an account of one of the main theoretical options in the debate, it’s a serious mistake. I offer three arguments for why eliminativism (...) should not be tethered to vacuity or error theory, and three arguments for why the view shouldn’t be understood in terms of eliminating the term ‘race’ from our vocabulary. Instead, I propose we understand the debate as concerning whether certain uses of ordinary race terms are typically wrong. This proposal is quite simple, and naturally suggested by the common gloss that eliminativism about ‘race’ is akin to a commonsensical view about 'witch' talk. But nonetheless, I argue that it offers a significant recharacterization of this core debate in philosophy of race. (shrink)

We argue that one important aspect of the “cognitive neuroscience revolution” identified by Boone and Piccinini :1509–1534. doi: 10.1007/s11229-015-0783-4, 2015) is a dramatic shift away from thinking of cognitive representations as arbitrary symbols towards thinking of them as icons that replicate structural characteristics of their targets. We argue that this shift has been driven both “from below” and “from above”—that is, from a greater appreciation of what mechanistic explanation of information-processing systems involves, and from a greater appreciation of the problems (...) solved by bio-cognitive systems, chiefly regulation and prediction. We illustrate these arguments by reference to examples from cognitive neuroscience, principally representational similarity analysis and the emergence of dynamical models as a central postulate in neurocognitive research. (shrink)

An influential proposal is that knowledge involves safe belief. A belief is safe, in the relevant sense, just in case it is true in nearby metaphysically possible worlds. In this paper, I introduce a distinct but complementary notion of safety, understood in terms of epistemically possible worlds. The main aim, in doing so, is to add to the epistemologist’s tool-kit. To demonstrate the usefulness of the tool, I use it to advance and assess substantive proposals concerning knowledge and justification.

Majority rule is often regarded as an important democratic principle. But modern democracies divide voters into districts. So if the majority should rule, which majority should rule? Should it be the popular majority, or an electoral majority (i.e., either the majority of voters in the majority of districts, or the majority of voters in districts that contain the majority of the population)? I argue that majority rule requires rule by the popular majority. This view is not novel and may seem (...) obvious. But it is rarely defended, and often rejected. I defend it by arguing that this view about which majority should rule is best supported by the arguments for why the majority should rule, and best avoids the arbitrary and perverse verdicts of rule by electoral majorities. I close by considering the significant practical implications of the view. The Electoral College is often criticized on the basis that the winner of the popular vote doesn’t always win the election. But all district-based democracies have this feature, so all district-based democracies must be reformed if they are to satisfy the principle of majority rule. (shrink)

“X-Firsters” hold that there is some normative feature that is fundamental to all others (and, often, that there’s some normative feature that is the “mark of the normative”: all other normative properties have it, and are normative in virtue of having it). This view is taken as a starting point in the debate about which X is “on first.” Little has been said about whether or why we should be X-Firsters, or what we should think about normativity if we aren’t (...) X-Firsters. Hence the chapter’s two main goals. First, to provide a simple argument that one shouldn’t be an X-Firster about the normative domain, which starts with the observation that analogous views have dubious merits in analogous domains. Second, to offer an alternative view—taking normativity to be a determinable explained in terms of its determinates—that offers an interesting way to think about the structure and unity of normativity. (shrink)

The distinction between objective and subjective reasons plays an important role in both folk normative thought and many research programs in metaethics. But the relation between objective and subjective reasons is unclear. This paper explores problems related to the unity of objective and subjective reasons for actions and attitudes and then offers a novel objectivist account of subjective reasons.

Well-being measurements are frequently used to support conclusions about a range of philosophically important issues. This is a problem, because we know too little about the intervals of the relevant scales. I argue that it is plausible that well-being measurements are non-linear, and that common beliefs that they are linear are not truth-tracking, so we are not justified in believing that well-being scales are linear. I then argue that this undermines common appeals to both hypothetical and actual well-being measurements; I (...) first focus on the philosophical literature on prioritarianism and then discuss Kahneman’s Peak-End Rule as a systematic bias. Finally, I discuss general implications for research on well-being, and suggest a better way of representing scales. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that explanations just ARE those sorts of things that, under the right circumstances and in the right sort of way, bring about understanding. This raises the question of why such a seemingly simple account of explanation, if correct, would not have been identified and agreed upon decades ago. The answer is that only recently has it been made possible to analyze explanation in terms of understanding without the risk of collapsing both to merely phenomenological states. (...) For the most part, theories of explanation were for 50 years held hostage to the historical accident that they far outstripped in sophistication corresponding accounts of understanding. (shrink)

Why do well‐functioning psychological systems sometimes give rise to absurd beliefs that are radically misaligned with reality? Drawing on signalling theory, I develop and explore the hypothesis that groups often embrace beliefs that are viewed as absurd by outsiders as a means of signalling ingroup commitment. I clarify the game‐theoretic and psychological underpinnings of this hypothesis, I contrast it with similar proposals about the signalling functions of beliefs, and I motivate several psychological and sociological predictions that could be used to (...) distinguish it from alternative explanations of irrational group beliefs. (shrink)

There’s an argument around from so-called “linguistic theories of vagueness”, plus some relatively uncontroversial considerations, to powerful metaphysical conclusions. David Lewis employs this argument to support the mereological principle of unrestricted composition, and Theodore Sider employs a similar argument not just for unrestricted composition but also for the doctrine of temporal parts. This sort of argument could be generalised, to produce a lot of other less palatable metaphysical conclusions. However, arguments to Lewis’s and Sider’s conclusions on the basis of considerations (...) about vagueness are uncompelling, even if we accept the crucial premises about vagueness. And a good thing too, since the generalised form of the argument would prove far too much. (shrink)

Systematic reviews, which were developed to improve policy-making and clinical decision-making, answer an empirical question based on a minimally biased appraisal of all the relevant empirical studies. A model is presented here for writing systematic reviews of argument-based literature: literature that uses arguments to address conceptual questions, such as whether abortion is morally permissible or whether research participants should be legally entitled to compensation for sustaining research-related injury. Such reviews aim to improve ethically relevant decisions in healthcare, research or policy. (...) They are better tools than informal reviews or samples of literature with respect to the identification of the reasons relevant to a conceptual question, and they enable the setting of agendas for conceptual and empirical research necessary for sound policy-making. This model comprises prescriptions for writing the systematic review's review question and eligibility criteria, the identification of the relevant literature, the type of data to extract on reasons and publications, and the derivation and presentation of results. This paper explains how to adapt the model to the review question, literature reviewed and intended readers, who may be decision-makers or academics. Obstacles to the model's application are described and addressed, and limitations of the model are identified. (shrink)

It is commonly held that p is a reason for A to ϕ only if p explains why A ought to ϕ. I argue that this view must be rejected because there are reasons for A to ϕ that would be redundant in any ex...