Controversy and activism have long been linked to the subject of primate research. Even in the midst of raging ethical debates surrounding fertility treatments, genetically modified foods and stem-cell research, there has been no reduction in the campaigns of activists worldwide. Plying their trade of intimidation aimed at ending biomedical experimentation in all animals, they have succeeded in creating an environment where research institutions, often painted as guilty until proven innocent, have avoided addressing the issue for (...) fear of becoming targets. One area of intense debate is the use of primates in stroke research. Despite the fact that stroke kills more people each year than AIDS and malaria, and less than 5% of patients are candidates for current therapies, there is significant opposition to primate stroke research. A balanced examination of the ethics of primate stroke research is thus of broad interest to all areas of biomedical research. (shrink)

Controversy and activism have long been linked to the subject of primate research. Even in the midst of raging ethical debates surrounding fertility treatments, genetically modified foods and stem-cell research, there has been no reduction in the campaigns of activists worldwide. Plying their trade of intimidation aimed at ending biomedical experimentation in all animals, they have succeeded in creating an environment where research institutions, often painted as guilty until proven innocent, have avoided addressing the issue for (...) fear of becoming targets. One area of intense debate is the use of primates in stroke research. Despite the fact that stroke kills more people each year than AIDS and malaria, and less than 5% of patients are candidates for current therapies, there is significant opposition to primate stroke research. A balanced examination of the ethics of primate stroke research is thus of broad interest to all areas of biomedical research. (shrink)

Controversy and activism have long been linked to the subject of primate research. Even in the midst of raging ethical debates surrounding fertility treatments, genetically modified foods and stem-cell research, there has been no reduction in the campaigns of activists worldwide. Plying their trade of intimidation aimed at ending biomedical experimentation in all animals, they have succeeded in creating an environment where research institutions, often painted as guilty until proven innocent, have avoided addressing the issue for (...) fear of becoming targets. One area of intense debate is the use of primates in stroke research. Despite the fact that stroke kills more people each year than AIDS and malaria, and less than 5% of patients are candidates for current therapies, there is significant opposition to primate stroke research. A balanced examination of the ethics of primate stroke research is thus of broad interest to all areas of biomedical research. (shrink)

After offering a definition of “conspiracy theory” and highlighting some interesting interconnections between conspiracy theories and religious worldviews, we turn to epistemologically relevant analogies. Proponents of conspiracy theories and religions have often been accused of the same biases and epistemic vices, e.g., gullibility, hypersensitive proneness to personal explanations, or overemphasis on holistic thinking. So-called Generalism is best understood as the thesis that conspiracy theories are guilty until proven innocent because they share certain “bunkum-making properties.” However, we (...) argue for the particularist position, i.e. the position that a general epistemic presumption against conspiracy theories is not tenable. Building a negative valence into the very notion of conspiracy theory is not convincing either. Given the analogies, our analysis supports similar verdicts with respect to religious worldviews: Like conspiracy theories, they should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis rather than being dismissed simply for being religious. Finally, we reject Bezazel’s view that both conspiracy theories and religious worldviews constitute a-rational frames or “bliks” that, besides other things, ground what counts as an explanation. Such a proposal squares badly with epistemic misgivings about particularly preposterous examples of conspiracy theories and religious worldviews. (shrink)

After offering a definition of “conspiracy theory” and highlighting some interesting interconnections between conspiracy theories and religious worldviews, we turn to epistemologically relevant analogies. Proponents of conspiracy theories and religions have often been accused of the same biases and epistemic vices, e.g., gullibility, hypersensitive proneness to personal explanations or overemphasis on holistic thinking. So-called Generalism is best understood as the thesis that conspiracy theories are guilty until proven innocent because they share certain “bunkum-making properties” (Cassam 2015). (...) However, we argue for the particularist view, i.e. that a general epistemic presumption against conspiracy theories is not tenable. Building a negative valence into the very notion of conspiracy theory is not convincing either. Given the analogies, our analysis supports similar verdicts with respect to religious worldviews: Like conspiracy theories they should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, rather than being dismissed simply for being religious. Finally, we reject Bezazel’s (2021) view that both conspiracy theories and religious worldviews constitute a-rational frames or “bliks” that, besides other things, ground what counts as an explanation. Such a proposal squares badly with epistemic misgivings about particularly preposterous examples of conspiracy theories and religious worldviews. (shrink)

Criminal law scholars approach legality in various ways. Some scholars eschew over-arching principles and proceed directly to one or more distinct “rules”: (1) the rule against retroactive criminalization; (2) the rule that criminal statutes be construed narrowly; (3) the rule against the judicial creation of common-law offenses; and (4) the rule that vague criminal statutes are void. Other scholars seek a single principle, i.e., the “principle of legality,” that they claim underlies the four rules. In contrast, I believe that both (...) approaches are misguided. There is no such thing as a single “principle of legality;” yet, the four aforementioned rules are not unrelated to each other. The so-called “principle of legality” consists of two distinct norms that derive, respectively, from two fundamental principles of criminal justice, viz., the principle, “No person shall be punished in the absence of a bad mind,” and the principle that underlies the maxim, “Every person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.” The first norm of legality explains the rules regarding ex post facto legislation, and rules regarding “notice” and “fair warning” of judicial decisions. When a person is punished for violating a rule that was non-existent or unclear at the time he acted, he is punished for conduct that the state now condemns and seeks to prevent by means of penal sanctions. Accordingly, at the time the person is prosecuted, his claim is not that he did not do anything that the state regards as wrong, but, rather, that he neither knew nor should have known that he was doing something that the state would come to regard as wrong. He ought, indeed, to be excused for his mistake, but only because of a principle that is common to excuses generally: “No person ought to be punished in the absence of a guilty mind.” He should be excused because even when a person does something the state condemns and seeks to prevent, he ought not to be blamed for it unless he was motivated in a certain way, namely, by an attitude of disrespect for the legitimate interests of the political community by whose norms he is bound.The second norm of legality informs several of the remaining rules, though not all of them. The second norm is that a person ought not to be punished in the name of a political community unless it can confidently be said that the community officially regards his conduct as warranting the criminal punishment at issue. It is a norm that is most commonly associated with the rule of lenity, but it is not confined to the construction of statutes that are ambiguous or vague. It can also be also violated when a person is punished for violating a statute that has fallen into desuetude, regardless of how widely promulgated or narrowly defined the statute may be. This second norm derives from a principle that also underlies the presumption of innocence - the only difference being that the presumption of innocence is a preference for acquittal in the event of uncertainty regarding the facts which an actor is charged, while the second norm of legality is a preference for acquittal in the event of uncertainty regarding the scope of the offense which he is charged.Nevertheless, one “rule” remains that this analysis throws into question - namely, the rule that “vague” criminal statutes are void. Criminal statutes are sometimes so broadly defined that they do, indeed, infringe constitutionally protected rights of speech, movement, etc. - in which event they ought to be invalidated on those very grounds. And criminal statutes are sometimes so broadly drafted that, before applying them, courts ought to construe them to apply only to constitutionally unprotected acts that courts can confidently say the relevant political community regards as warranting punishment. But once statutes are so construed to apply only to constitutionally unprotected conduct, courts have no further reason to invalidate them on grounds of “vagueness.” Lack of “notice” is no reason to invalidate them because, with respect to the narrowly defined conduct such statutes are construed to prohibit, “common social duty” alone ought to alert actors that their conduct is suspect. (shrink)

In order to ward off the global threat of a regress of justification, Brandom argues that some claims in our linguistic practices must be treated as “innocent until proven guilty’, i.e. participants must be treated as prima facie entitled when making them. Examples he gives include claims such as “There have been black dogs” and “I have ten fingers”. Brandom calls this idea “the default and challenge structure of entitlement”. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein argues that there (...) are basic certainties (“hinge propositions” or “hinges”) such as “The world existed long before I was born” or “This is a tree” that cannot be meaningfully doubted because they provide the basic frameworks for our language–games in the first place. The aim of this article is threefold. First, it offers an understanding of Brandom’s philosophical project in the light of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Secondly, it shows how Brandom may help to elucidate some of the more mysterious passages in Wittgenstein’s “third masterpiece”. Thirdly, it outlines a sketch of a promising solution to an old philosophical riddle. (shrink)

At criminal trial, we demand that those accused of criminal wrongdoing be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. What are the moral and/or political grounds of this demand? One popular and natural answer to this question focuses on the moral badness or wrongness of convicting and punishing innocent persons, which I call the direct moral grounding. In this essay, I suggest that this direct moral grounding, if accepted, may well have important ramifications (...) for other areas of the criminal justice process, and in particular those parts in which we (through our legislatures and judges) decide how much punishment to distribute to guilty persons. If, as the direct moral grounding suggests, we should prefer under-punishment to over-punishment under conditions of uncertainty, due to the moral seriousness of errors which inappropriately punish persons, then we should also prefer erring on the side of under-punishment when considering how much to punish those who may justly be punished. Some objections to this line of thinking are considered. (shrink)

With few exceptions, philosophers working on immigration have not taken up the topic of epistemic injustice, primarily, I imagine, because immigration justice is often too narrowly conceived of as encompassing moral and political concerns rather than epistemic ones. But the more I think about the injustices immigrants endure on a daily basis, the more I take this to be a mistake; epistemic injustices must be seen as a central aspect of immigration injustice too. In what follows, I will demonstrate how (...) this is the case. More specifically, after providing an overview of the nature of epistemic injustice, I will highlight some examples of it in the lives of displaced Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia. In doing so, I hope to show why discussions about immigration injustice must include identifying and confronting epistemic wrongs. (shrink)

This article clarifies and further defends the view that the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, protected by Article 6(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights has implications for the substantive law. It is shown that a ‘purely procedural’ conception of the presumption of innocence has absurd implications for the nature of the right. Objections to the moderate substantive view defended are considered, including the acceptability of male prohibits offences, the difficulty of ascertaining (...) intentions of legislatures and the proper role of prosecutorial discretion. (shrink)

Can one sense one’s own mind, as one senses nonmental entities in one’s environment and body? According to many contemporary philosophers of mind, the fraudulent commonsense idea of a "mind’s eye" obstructs clearheaded attempts to explain introspection and consciousness. I concede that inner sense cannot directly explain consciousness and introspection in all their forms, but I do think a carefully specified kind of inner sense can account for one very special kind of introspective consciousness. It is special because it is (...) the key to explaining the most puzzling kind of consciousness, phenomenal consciousness—there being "something it is like" to have certain mental states. My aim in this paper is to defend this view against accusations— twenty-two in all!—rather than to argue positively for the view. However, I begin by indicating some of the motivation for the account I defend. (shrink)

The presumption of innocence (POI) requires all judges, juries, and other officials in a trial, to presume and treat any accused of criminal wrongdoing as innocent, until he or she is proven guilty. Although a POI lacks an authoritative definition, this overarching principle of procedural fairness is so robust and vital for the exercise of legal power in matters of criminal law that one rarely finds anyone questioning its standing. In this article I examine the rationale (...) behind the POI from a different perspective. The basic assumption is that this procedural standard captures the tenor of a broader principle which seeks to ensure fairness in criminal proceedings as well as in criminal law doctrine. I argue that honouring a principle of fairness is not exclusively a matter of criminal procedural law but also something that is deeply rooted in other areas of criminal law doctrine. Hence: not maintaining a principle of fairness in criminal law doctrine could lead to the POI being compromised or even undermined. In the article, I draw attention to three areas in which I believe that criminal law policies threaten a principle of fairness: criminalising remote harm, doctrine of ignorance of law and inversed presumptions of guilt. My conclusion is that some solutions to so called doctrinal problems in criminal law, are questionable and their practical consequences (on a general level) are, at least partially, equal to treating an individual (in a trial) as guilty for something for which he or she ought not to be accountable. Hence: gaining the support of a POI could thus work as principle for keeping the use of criminal law moderate and in accordance with a principle of fairness. (shrink)

We develop an argument for a novel version of moral intuitionism centered on the claim that moral intuitions are trustworthy. Our argument employs an epistemic principle that we call the Trustworthiness Criterion, a distinctive feature of which is its emphasis on oft-neglected social dimensions of cognitive states, including non-doxastic attitudes such as intuition. Thus our argument is not that moral intuitions are trustworthy because they are regress-stoppers, or because they are innocent until proven guilty, or because (...) denying their epistemic contribution would be self-defeating, or because they are presupposed in rational inference, or because they are analogous to perceptions, or because they are based on understanding—individualistic claims that have elsewhere been used (controversially) in defense of the thesis that moral intuitions are in good epistemic standing. Rather, our argument appeals to the idea that moral intuitions are trustworthy because they are the outputs of a cognitive practice, which has epistemically-fecund social elements, that is in good working order. (shrink)

_How Do You Know?_ explores problems of knowledge that arise in everyday life. If you are not an expert, how can you know that another person is an expert? If experts are politically biased should you still trust them? More generally, how should you approach the testimony of other people: treat it all as "innocent until proven guilty," or is that too simple? Does the internet make us better knowers, or is it just a minefield of (...) misinformation? Is it always irrational to believe a conspiracy theory? Suppose someone just as intelligent and well-informed as you are disagrees with you about something, how should that affect your belief? Can we have knowledge of what is right and wrong? _How Do You Know?_ approaches these issues through the lens of social epistemology and via the preeminently social genre of philosophical dialogue. Its characters think and speak like real people in the world today, discussing and debating issues that are current, practically relevant, and even controversial—while equipping readers with tools and concepts to see more clearly for themselves. (shrink)

Bornstein has proposed a manuscript submission process based on an adversary legal model, with the manuscript, like a criminal defendant, being presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty by the referees, who act as "prosecutors." The author would be provided with an opportunity for rebuttal, and the associate editor would serve as the trial judge, deciding whether the piece should ultimately be published. The editor-in-chief would hear appeals from decisions made by the associate editor. While there (...) is much to be said about this adversary approach, this paper points out certain problems in using the criminal case as a model. The most significant problem is that the burden of proof is not properly allocated. A better model would be that of the civil law suit, where the plaintiff carries the burden of proof to establish the strength of the claim . This paper also suggests certain modifications to Bornstein's proposal, such as publication of the referees' comments and the author's rebuttal. Although Bornstein's proposal, as modified herein, would not solve all of the problems Bornstein has identified with the current submission process, this paper concludes that the new procedure would do much to advance the science. (shrink)

In light of the development of “CRISPR” technology, new promising advances in therapeutic and preventive approaches have become a reality. However, with it came many ethical challenges. The most recent worldwide condemnation of the first use of CRISPR to genetically modify a human embryo is the latest example of ethically questionable use of this new and emerging field. Monotheistic religions are very conservative about such changes to the human genome and can be considered an interference with God’s creation. Moreover, these (...) changes could cause perpetual changes to future generations. The Muslim scholars establish their decisions by addressing five foundations of Islamic law i.e. “maqāṣid al sharı̄`a”; the purposes of the law. These are dın̄, nafs, nasl, `aql and māl. To achieve this, the five principles should all be met before approval of an experiment like the Chinese embryo modifications; Qaṣd which is achieved in this case as it aims to protect the embryo from HIV. Yaqın̄ and Ḍarar were not satisfied as they require strong scientific certainty of the procedures, and evidence of safety. Ḍarūra by which the alternatives being compared; in this case more established and proven safe alternatives to protect the HIV transmission from the father are available, so this principle is not met. The final principle is `Urf, by which the social context of using any contemporary technology should be taken in consideration, and clearly this was not achieved. Collectively, germline changes are rejected from an Islamic perspective until the five principles are fulfilled. In the Chinese Twins gene editing case, there was clearly no justification or support for it according to the Muslim Jurisprudence laws. These laws and approaches can serve as an ethical checklist for such controversial research, especially in early stages of the research. (shrink)

Libertarians and non libertarians alike agree that counterfeiting legitimate money owned by innocent people is illicit. But what about counterfeiting counterfeit money owned by the guiltless? Davidson and I, both libertarians, take the position that this would be a rights violation; that this would violate the rights of innocent owners of currency, who would be victimized by such fraudulent behavior of counterfeiters, even those who limit themselves to counterfeiting counterfeit funds. But what about counterfeiting counterfeit money owned by (...) those who are guilty of crimes? Davidson opines, in effect, that there are no such people. The counterfeiter of counterfeit money is thus himself a criminal, she avers. I argue, very much to the contrary, that the relevant population consists mostly of guilty people, and thus they are not in a logical position to object to what would otherwise be considered victimization. As for the few innocents among them, they demonstrate their innocence to a large degree by not objecting to the counterfeiting of counterfeit money. If they do object, and take actions to prevent this practice, they act in a manner incompatible with the libertarian non aggression principle and thus enter the ranks of the guilty. I find Davidson’s economic analysis impeccable; her understanding of libertarianism highly problematic. In the interests of full disclosure, I should make it clear that the present paper contains the radical suggestion that we should do away with our established monetary- and financial system. If need be, and this is by no means my first choice, we are entitled to do so by means of massive counterfeiting of established currencies. Of course, this is illegal in extant nations, and I would not want to be imprisoned for committing a crime. So, for purposes of our discussion, we will be considering only the imaginary country of Ruritania. (shrink)

If something like Reformed Epistemology is correct, an agent is innocent in regarding certain ways of forming beliefs to be reliable until those ways have been proven guilty. An important species of argument purporting to show guilt (1) identifies the ways of forming beliefs at the core of our cognitive activity, (2) isolates the features of our core practices which account for their reliability, and (3) determines whether or not peripheral practices which ought to have those (...) features enjoy at least their functional equivalents. An example. Sense perception is at the heart of our cognitive activity; a feature of sense-perception which provides us with confidence in its reliability is that we can subject sense-perceptual beliefs to intersubjective criticism - others can check our beliefs. Beliefs about God formed on the basis of religious experience cannot be so checked and therefore lack positive epistemic status.An important response to such criticism consists of arguing that the difference between two ways of forming beliefs is just what we should expect given some relevant difference between the subject matters of those two ways of forming beliefs. This species of response employs what I call ‘the Ontological Principle,’ viz., that the nature or characteristics of an object constrain the way an agent ought to form beliefs about that object.In this paper, I attempt to provide a rationale for the Ontological Principle. I argue as follows. Any epistemic norm which requires of an agent that she enter into causal relations with an object which she cannot in the ‘nature’ of the case enter lacks epistemic merit - it violates the ought implies can dictum. Because the epistemic norms properly governing the cognitive activity of a given agent are constrained by the causal relations possible between an agent and an object of belief, and because the causal relations possible between an object of belief and an agent are determined in part by the characteristics of the object of belief, the epistemic norms properly governing the cognitive activity of a given agent are determined in part by the characteristics of the object of belief. That is, the Ontological Principle is true. (shrink)

About one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping is the gold standard for the identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects. Broadband gamma activity recorded with extraoperative electrocorticography during cognitive tasks may be an alternative to ESM but until now has not proven of definitive clinical value. Considering their role in cognition, the alpha and beta bands (...) could further improve the identification of eloquent cortex. We compared gamma, alpha and beta activity, and their combinations for the identification of eloquent cortical areas defined by ESM. Ten patients with intractable focal epilepsy participated in a delayed-match-to-sample task, where syllable sounds were compared to visually presented letters. We used a generalized linear model approach to find the optimal weighting of each band for predicting ESM-defined categories and estimated the diagnostic ability by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Gamma activity increased more in eloquent than in non-eloquent areas, whereas alpha and beta power decreased more in eloquent areas. Diagnostic ability of each band was close to 0.7 for all bands but depended on multiple factors including the time period of the cognitive task, the location of the electrodes and the patient’s degree of attention to the stimulus. We show that diagnostic ability can be increased by 3–5% by combining gamma and alpha and by 7.5–11% when gamma and beta were combined. We then show how ECoG power modulation from cognitive testing can be used to map the probability of eloquence in individual patients and how this probability map can be used in clinical settings to optimize ESM planning. We conclude that the combination of gamma and beta power modulation during cognitive testing can contribute to the identification of eloquent areas prior to ESM in patients with refractory focal epilepsy. (shrink)

No provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has proven to be more contentious than the so-called “individual mandate.” Starting in 2014, the mandate will impose a penalty on non-exempt individuals who lack health insurance. According to Congress, the mandate is essential to ensuring near universal coverage. Without it, PPACA’s insurance reforms will lead healthy individuals to delay purchasing health insurance until they require medical care, resulting in risk pools with a disproportionate share of high-risk people. (...) The price of insurance will then climb, causing more and more not-so-sick people to forego health insurance. The resulting “death spiral” will make insurance unaffordable to many more Americans. (shrink)

This selection of writings nicely illustrates the many sided career of Joseph Priestley. Priestley is best remembered today for his discovery of oxygen. In his varied career Priestley managed to combine qualities and positions that most men find contradictory. His theological writings offended rationalists because of his defense of Scripture, miracles, and the doctrine of the resurrection, and were even more offensive to orthodox theologians because of his materialism and extreme unitarianism. Though a lifelong defender of civil liberties and minority (...) rights, he yet taught that it is better for the law to punish the innocent than to take a chance on letting the guilty go free. Passmore's excellent introduction summarizes Priestley's career and gives a balanced appraisal of his merits. In Priestley's writings the major intellectual and political movements of the period are reflected and refracted by a mind which, though not profound enough to play a leading role, yet was bold, energetic, and above all else, commonsensical.—E. M. M. (shrink)

In this essay I analyze and defend the common sense moral conviction that terrorism, i.e., the use of violence against civilians for political or military purposes, is always morally impermissible. Terrorism violates the fundamental moral prohibition against harming the innocent, even to produce greater overall good. It is therefore just the sort of case that serves as a refutation of consequentialist moral theories. From a deontological perspective, the only remotely plausible forms of justification for a terrorist act would be (...) that it constitutes a form of justifiable punishment of the guilty, or that it is legitimate self-defense against an aggressor. But an examination of the fundamental moral and legal principles of punishment and self-defense demonstrates that neither of these claims can succeed. Since terrorism cannot be justified either as punishment or as self-defense, it cannot be morally justified at all. (shrink)

The philosophy of John Smith is not a dispassionate subject for me. He was my teacher from my sophomore year in college through the PhD, which he mentored. I worked in his office nearly every day during that time. He became my intellectual father and framed the way I took up philosophy. He performed my wedding and twenty-five years later taught my two daughters. We worked together philosophically and in the politics of the academy from my first day as his (...) undergraduate typist, when I was utterly naïve about both topics, until the day he died, when I had no innocence left. His daughter Diana informed me of his death by responding to an e-mail I had sent him that afternoon. I preached his funeral, threw frozen dirt .. (shrink)

Observations on Two Mural Paintings from Early Medieval Rome. Fresco of St Agatha and an Unknown Painting with a Bust of the Saint Little is known about the two fragments of early medieval Roman paintings with female saints considered here. One was first exhibited in 2016; the other remained totally obscure until it came onto the antiquarian art market 2019. The goal of this study is to provide context for these two pieces by attempting to reconstruct their original art (...) historical environment. The study also aims, through archival and documentary research, to offer plausible dates by means of stylistic comparisons (e.g., frescoes in Santa Maria Antiqua, in the Catacombs of Generosa, in the narthex of Santa Sabina etc.) and to explore the fragments’ possible original provenance. For the painting with the bust of St Agatha, the study proposes a date around the late seventh-early eighth centuries; for the other, the first half of the eighth century. For both paintings, a Roman context is assumed. (shrink)

Opponents of biotechnology ofteninvoke the Precautionary Principle to advancetheir cause, whereas biotech enthusiasts preferto appeal to ``sound science.'' Publicauthorities are still groping for a usefuldefinition. A crucial issue in this debate isthe distribution of the burden of proof amongthe parties favoring and opposing certaintechnological developments. Indeed, the debateon the significance and scope of thePrecautionary Principle can be fruitfullyre-framed as a debate on the proper division ofburdens of proof. In this article, we attemptto arrive at a more refined way of thinkingabout (...) this problem in order to escape from theexisting polarization of views between ``guiltyuntil proven innocent'' and ``innocent untilproven guilty.'' This way of thinking alsoenables a critical review of currentdemarcations between risk assessment and riskmanagement, or science and politics, and of themorally laden controversy on the relativeimportance of type-I and type-II errors instatistical testing. (shrink)

Existing solutions to the epistemic regress problem, and the theories of justification built upon them, are inadequate, for they fail to diagnose the root source of the problem. The problem is rooted in our attachment to a pernicious dogma of modern epistemology: the idea that a judgement must be supported by some kind of reason or evidence to be justified. The epistemic analogue of the doctrine of original sin, this idea renders every judgement in need of redemption – guilty (...) until shown to be innocent – distorting our understanding of reason at a very deep level, and preventing us from conceptualizing a satisfactory solution to the problem. If we opt for a more context–sensitive mechanism for assigning default epistemic status, however, we get a more plausible picture of justification, an epistemology more in tune with epistemic practice, and an elegant solution to the regress problem. (shrink)

..............................................................................................101 I. The Idea of a Noncombatant ........................................................104 II. The Moral Shield Protecting Noncombatants.............................106 A. Accommodation.......................................................................107 B. Guilty Past ...............................................................................107 C. Guilty Bystander Trying to Inflict Harm .................................109 D. Guilty Bystander Disposed to Inflict Harm .............................109 E. Guilty Bystander Exulting in Anticipated Evil ........................109 F. Fault Forfeits First Doctrine in Just Warfare ...........................110 III. Noncombatants as Wrongful Trespassers ...................................110 IV. The Noncombatant Status of Captured Soldiers ........................111 V. Guerrilla Combat ..........................................................................116 VI. Morally Innocent Unjust Combatants.........................................118 (...) VII. Should Rights Reflect What We Can Know? ............................121 VIII. Absolute and Moderate Construction of the Revised Right.. (shrink)

G.E.M. Anscombe famously claimed that ‘the Hebrew-Christian ethic’ differs from consequentialist theories in its ability to ground the claim that killing the innocent is intrinsically wrong. According to Anscombe, this is owing to its legal character, rooted in the divine decrees of the Torah. Divine decrees confer a particular moral sense of ‘ought’ by which this and other act-types can be ‘wrong’ regardless of their consequences, she maintained. There is, of course, a potentially devastating counter-example. Within the Torah, Abraham (...) is apparently commanded by God to slaughter and set fire to his innocent son, Isaac. For attempting to do so, he is praised in the Biblical passage and by later Jewish and Christian commentators. This paper examines rabbinic and early Christian analyses of the story and finds that it was not unambiguously held by these interpreters that God absolutely prohibits killing the innocent, until the time of Augustine, whose position on the story evolved over time. (shrink)

Until today the question of »theodicy« is very much contested among philosophers and theologians. Some hold the problem to be principally unsolvable, while others take the question for unavoidable. Since Leibniz the notion is generally used to explain the origin and function of evil or its allowing by God. This article deals with some occurences of »theodicy« in the 18th and 19th century, overlooked until now. Besides, the widely known essais on theodicy are interpreted as being permanent transformations (...) of the original question. E. g. Kant designes a concept of »authentic theodicy« in which man is called up to fight against the evil by his own means. During the French Revolution G. Forster hopes for a kind theodicy as political improvement of mankind. For Schelling and Hegel the course of world history is the real theodicy. Finally, for Nietzsche art is the only sufficient theodicy, the aesthetic justification of the world. Later on Nietzsche attacks all kinds of theodicy as they ask for the meaning of existence instead of believing in the innocence of all development. (shrink)

Mistakes are a fact of life, and the criminal law is sadly no exception to the rule. Wrongful convictions are rightfully abhorred, and false acquittals can likewise inspire outrage. In these cases, we implicitly draw a distinction between a court’s finding and a defendant’s actual guilt or innocence. These are intuitive concepts, but as this paper aims to show, contemporary use of the reasonable person standard in the law of self-defense muddles them. -/- Ordinarily, we can distinguish between a person's (...) material guilt or innocence and his juridical guilt or innocence. Someone is materially guilty if his actions in fact matched the conduct proscribed by the penal law. Someone is juridically guilty if he is found guilty by a tribunal, i.e., convicted by a judge or jury. When a tribunal convicts a innocent person or acquits a guilty person, the accuracy of its verdicts can be criticized. -/- There are three definitions of the reasonable person extant amongst courts and commentators: the reasonable person is either (1) a hypothetical ordinary, average person; (2) the embodiment of a community ideal; or (3) an embodiment of an objective ethical standard, i.e., ethical principles independent of community opinion. Nonetheless, after observing the circularity, vagueness, and lack of consistency in the definitions, wise courts and commentators have sometimes resorted to identifying the reasonable person with the judgment of the jury. -/- This piece argues that failure to settle on a fixed definition of the "reasonable person" in the criminal law of self-defense effectively conflates material guilt and innocence and juridical guilt and innocence at the doctrinal level. When courts do not clearly and consistently choose between standards one, two, and three, or when they expressly treat the reasonable person as a form of words standing in for the judgment of the jury, they make it conceptually impossible for observers outside the court system to apply a fixed, definite standard to assess the actual guilt of a person apart from the judgments of tribunals. -/- This paper's main purpose is to identify a conceptual knot rather than propose reforms. Still, it recommends two small changes meant to lift the confusion surrounding the reasonable person. First, it urges that courts expressly settle on one of the three definitions canvassed above. Second, it recommends that courts be mindful of the nature of the reasonable person standard and as such, be wary of treating conclusions about reasonableness as ordinary legal precedents, and wield the power of directed verdict aggressively to protect unpopular defendants from abuse by juries. (shrink)

We propose a modification of the exhaustivity operator from Fox Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 71–120, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230210752_4) that on top of negating all the Innocently Excludable alternatives affirms all the ‘Innocently Includable’ ones. The main result of supplementing the notion of Innocent Exclusion with that of Innocent Inclusion is that it allows the exhaustivity operator to identify cells in the partition induced by the set of alternatives whenever possible. We argue for this (...) property of ‘cell identification’ based on the simplification of disjunctive antecedents and the effects on free choice that arise as the result of the introduction of universal quantifiers. We further argue for our proposal based on the interaction of only with free choice disjunction. (shrink)

Phenomenal consciousness can be conceptualized innocently enough that its existence should be accepted even by philosophers who wish to avoid dubious epistemic and metaphysical commitments such as dualism, infallibilism, privacy, inexplicability, or intrinsic simplicity. Definition by example allows us this innocence. Positive examples include sensory experiences, imagery experiences, vivid emotions, and dreams. Negative examples include growth hormone release, dispositional knowledge, standing intentions, and sensory reactivity to masked visual displays. Phenomenal consciousness is the most folk-psychologically obvious thing or feature that the (...) positive examples possess and that the negative examples lack, and which preserves our ability to wonder, at least temporarily, about antecedently unclear issues such as consciousness without attention and consciousness in simpler animals. As long as this concept is not empty, or broken, or a hodgepodge, we can be phenomenal realists without committing to dubious philosophical positions. (shrink)

When faced with a dilemma between believing what is supported by an impartial assessment of the evidence (e.g., that one's friend is guilty of a crime) and believing what would better fulfill a moral obligation (e.g., that the friend is innocent), people often believe in line with the latter. But is this how people think beliefs ought to be formed? We addressed this question across three studies and found that, across a diverse set of everyday situations, people treat (...) moral considerations as legitimate grounds for believing propositions that are unsupported by objective, evidence-based reasoning. We further document two ways in which moral considerations affect how people evaluate others' beliefs. First, the moral value of a belief affects the evidential threshold required to believe, such that morally beneficial beliefs demand less evidence than morally risky beliefs. Second, people sometimes treat the moral value of a belief as an independent justification for belief, and on that basis, sometimes prescribe evidentially poor beliefs to others. Together these results show that, in the folk ethics of belief, morality can justify and demand motivated reasoning. (shrink)

In his seminal Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault aims at outlining the historical course that led to the promulgation and consolidation of the institution of imprisonment as a means of punishment as well as narrating how the corresponding human type, i.e. the contemporary disciplined subject, has been shaped. Obviously, the disciplined subject gradually took the place of the tormented subject. Consequently, this study aims at describing the sequential mutations of the imposed punishment as it progressively (...) shifted from the spectacular slaughtering of the body to the strictly scientific manipulation of the non-material dimension of the human being. The reformation of the punitive practices “constructs” a docile body. It must be noticed, however, that this body is not necessarily guilty, since the disciplinary schemes concern everybody, even the most innocent sides of the everyday life as for example the hospital, the school or the barracks. Additionally, discipline is imposed through the division of the space, what Foucault calls the “art of allocation”, so that every working person is easily seen and supervised by the eye of the authority, while the disciplined subject is being forged gradually through the sense of responsibility before the flowing time. Foucault highlights the “political technology of the body”, that is its usurpation by the authorities, who aim at imposing to it adictated activity that produces palpable results in a binding frame of time. Although selective and brief, the present account of the punitive concepts of the three last centuries clarifies the fact that the authoritarian strategies are indissolubly interwoven with the different connotations of the human body, through the use of which they subdue human beings. (shrink)

People often think there are moral duties that hold irrespective of the consequences, until those consequences exceed some threshold level – that we shouldn’t kill innocent people in order to produce the best consequences, for example, except when those consequences involve saving millions of lives. This view is known as “threshold deontology.” While clearly controversial, threshold deontology has significant appeal. But it has proven quite difficult to provide a non-ad hoc justification for it. This chapter develops a (...) new justification, showing that acting like a threshold deontologist is a good strategy for being moral, given our uncertainty and imperfect moral knowledge. And failing to use good strategies for being moral is, itself, morally bad. (shrink)

As soon as we try to philosophize about morality, a tension arises. We are confronted with radically different conceptions of the best human life. Philosophers as dissimilar as Aristotle, Kant, and Bentham have tried to find a principle or a set of principles that could serve as the ground of morality. With such a foundation, it would be possible to adjudicate among these different conceptions and explain why one is better than another, by making reference to the "seamless whole" of (...) human morality. Hampshire argues, persuasively, that this search is doomed to failure, at least if the basic principles are meant to have any substantive content. In particular, the virtues associated with innocence, and the virtues associated with experience, are incompatible: a person can't have both kinds at once, and most people achieve only some of only one set at any time in their lives. But if there are no foundational principles, then what is the alternative to complete relativism? A total moral skepticism? Hampshire suggests what he calls "minimum procedural justice" as a way of balancing competing conceptions of the good life as much as possible, without suggesting that the procedure can resolve all moral disagreements. Across the radical differences, there is one recognition that we all share: "[h]umanity is united in the recognition of the great evils which render life scarcely bearable...". Minimum procedural justice, a minimal fairness in negotiation, is required if these great evils are to be avoided. Furthermore, minimum procedural justice is the only concept that can play the role the substantive principles were to play. (shrink)

Ann Griffiths, was until comparatively recently the only female poet of any real prominence in the Welsh literary tradition. Born Ann Thomas, she lived all her life in rural Montgomeryshire. Ann experienced evangelical conversion aged 20 and joined the Calvinistic Methodists. She became noted for the depth of her spirituality and began producing verses encapsulating her insights and experiences. Of the seventy-three stanzas and eight letters attributed to her, only one letter and one verse survive in her own hand, (...) most of the extant verses having been transmitted orally to her maidservant, Ruth Evans. About two-thirds were published in early 1806, a few months after Anns death following childbirth, and were immediately acknowledged as religious verse of the highest order. They are characterized by a fervent subjectivism blended with an objective wondering and a plethora of biblical allusions and typology. The transmission of her hymns and letters has taken various forms - oral, manuscript and print - and most recently electronically, on the ‘Ann Griffiths Website’ in particular. (shrink)

China’s extensive media presence in Africa aims to distinguish itself through the use of constructive journalism in contrast with the perceived dominance of conflict journalism by Western media outlets. However, many scholars have raised questions of consistency surrounding Chinese media’s use of constructive journalism in representing Africa (e.g. Marsh, Citation2016). With perspectives from Galtung’s (Citation1987, p. 1998) conflict and peace journalism, this research applies Critical Discourse Analysis to examine Chinese media’s representation of Africa to an international audience. Using linguistic data (...) from China Radio International’s Today, it challenges the distinctions among peace journalism, solutions journalism and constructive journalism. The findings show that China’s claim of constructive journalism strongly favors the coverage of China, yet is largely absent in the coverage of the African continent. It suggests that while Chinese state-sponsored media utilizes the so-called constructive journalism when presenting information about a specific region to that region, these representations are not consistent across their international coverage. Hence, Africa remains a victim of conflict journalism. (shrink)

De Vries' mutation theory has not stood the test of time. The supposed mutations of Oenothera were in reality complex recombination phenomena, ultimately explicable in Mendelian terms, while instances of large-scale mutations were found wanting in other species. By 1915 the mutation theory had begun to lose its grip on the biological community; by de Vries' death in 1935 it was almost completely abandoned. Yet, as we have seen, during the first decade of the present century it achieved an enormous (...) popularity. As this paper has tried to suggest, one of the principal reasons for this was that de Vries' theory served as a banner around which a whole crowd of disaffected Darwinians or anti-Darwinians could rally. However, not all of those who favored de Vries did so for quite the same reasons. Underlying the multitude of views ran several common threads: a dissatisfaction with current Darwinian theory born out of misunderstanding natural selection, a general misunderstanding of the nature of species, and a prejudice against speculative, nontestable theories in biology.Supporters of de Vries were not the only opponents of Darwinism, nor was the mutation theory the only alternative to natural selection. In the early twentieth century a number of theories had been proposed to explain away the problems which Darwin had left unsolved. There was the idea of orthogenesis, championed by the American paleontologists Cope, Osborn and others; organic selection (or orthoplasy) was championed by M. M. Baldwin and C. Lloyd Morgan; there were the concepts of convergent evolution proposed by Hermann Friedmann, the theory of physiological selection by John George Romanes, and the concepts of reproductive divergence by H. M. Vernon. Virtually none of these men either accepted or were strong supporters of the de Vriesian theory, for each had his own particular ‘ism” to advocate as the major factor in evolution. The existence of a large number of such theories, each purporting to be the explanation, was characteristic of evolutionary theory at the turn of the century. It is to a large extent the emphasis on such fragmentary concepts that retarded development of the comprehensive theory of evolution which emerged in the 1920's and 1930's. For the historian, however, a study of these alternative theories is instructive in trying to understand the inherent difficulties which Dawwinian theory posed to biologists at the time. De Vries' mutation theory serves historically as a mirror to reflect the critical mood of a generation hostile to the theory of natural selection.It has often been claimed that it was impossible to understand the mechanism of natural selection until it could be placed in genetic and mathematical terms. It is certainly true that great strides have been made in population genetics and the treatment of evolutionary concepts with mathematical tools in the last forty years. But the very people who developed the genetical and mathematical approach to evolution were already convinced of the essential correctness of Darwinian theory before they started. Advances in an understanding of Mendelian heredity aided greatly in solving one important issue for evolutionists: the origin of variations. And the rigor with which selection acted could best be studied by observing changes in gene frequencies (calculated mathematically) over a number of generations. But as this paper has shown, two of the basic problems which biologists faced in evaluating Darwinian theory at the turn of the century-the nature of species, and the criteria of what constituted an acceptable explanation in biological science-could not be answered directly by mathematics. What mathematical and genetical theory did do was to help convince the skeptics of the validity of the Darwinian proposition.The change in explanatory criteria which many hailed as de Vries' most important contribution to evolutionary theory seems to have been part of a general emergence of twentieth-century biology from the domination of theorizers in the nineteenth. It also marked the emergence of America from the domination of biological, and particularly evolutionary, influence of Europeans. The change occurred in three areas: in the kinds of questions asked: testable versus non-testable; in the kind of data sought: quantitative versus qualitative; and in the kinds of theories proposed: analytical and reductive—the attempt to see complex processes in terms of simpler components-as opposed to synthetic and speculative. Although ultimately wrong in his idea, de Vries and his theories rode high on the wave of “experimentalism” which was the harbinger of a new era in evolutionary theory. (shrink)

The doctrine of mens rea can be expressed in this way: MRP: If A is culpable for performing phi, then A performs phi intentionally in circumstances in which it is impermissible to perform phi. The Sermon on the Mount suggests the following principle: SMP: If A intends to perform phi in circumstances in which it would be impermissible for A to perform phi, then A’s intending to perform phi makes A as culpable as A would be were A to perform (...) phi. MRP and SMP are principles representative of intentionalism, a family of views that emphasizes the importance of intention to judgments about culpability. This essay examines an intentionalist’s defense of MRP with respect to lying, strict criminal liability, and the distinction between intention and foreseeability, along with a defense of SMP with respect to failed attempts, and self-defense. (shrink)

We consider the complex interactions between rape culture and epistemology. A central case study is the consideration of a deferential attitude about the epistemology of sexual assault testimony. According to the deferential attitude, individuals and institutions should decline to act on allegations of sexual assault unless and until they are proven in a formal setting, i.e., a criminal court. We attack this deference from several angles, including the pervasiveness of rape culture in the criminal justice system, the epistemology (...) of testimony and norms connecting knowledge and action, the harms of tacit idealizations away from important contextual factors, and a contextualist semantics for 'knows' ascriptions. (shrink)