This article examines the concepts of retrospective and retroactive—both forms of ex post facto—law. It shows that although the distinction between retrospective and prospective law is difficult to draw (given that laws generally alter rights), the classification of particular laws as retrospective is not arbitrary, since the proposition that only some legal rules interfere with “vested” rights is, while vague, not meaningless. Retroactive legislation is recognized to attract a long list of objections. The article seeks to identify and assess (...) those objections, and to provide a comprehensive account of the various possible (if invariably limited) justifications for retroactivity. The conclusion offers some brief reflections on why the complaint that a law operates ex post facto is less likely to be directed at a judicial decision than at a statute. (shrink)

Process reliabilism is a theory about ex post justification, the justification of a doxastic attitude one has, such as belief. It says roughly that a justified belief is a belief formed by a reliable process. It is not a theory about ex ante justification, one’s justification for having a particular attitude toward a proposition, an attitude one might lack. But many reliabilists supplement their theory such that it explains ex ante justification in terms of (...) reliable processes. In this paper I argue that the main way reliabilists supplement their theory fails. In the absence of an alternative, reliabilism does not account for ex ante justification. (shrink)

After the cessation of conflict the majority of those involved in violations of international law will not be held criminally accountable. Rather, it is frequently the case that the bulk of perpetrators receive amnesty. Often, consequentialist considerations weigh heavily on the decision to grant amnesty. For instance, amnesties may be offered in order to generate aggregate security benefits in volatile post-conflict settings. My contention is that states cannot morally justify amnesties by appealing solely to the aggregate benefits they are (...) expected to deliver. The moral objection concerns the distribution of associated costs, where such costs include the risk of re-offense that amnesty generates. Importantly, these costs may be unevenly imposed onto the society. This means that certain citizens will expect to bear individual losses greater than any gains the amnesty can deliver to them. Those placed at a net-disadvantage can object that amnesties are morally unjustifiable: they impose unreasonable burdens on them in order to secure benefits for others. However, as amnesties are often vital to achieve peace there remain strong pragmatic reasons to favour limited prosecutions. Given these concerns it is necessary to justify the differential imposition of cost associated with amnesties. I argue that ex ante contractualism, as a theory of moral justification, is well-suited to this task. According to this framework amnesties are justified only if no individual could reasonably reject the associated burdens. By developing a non-aggregative justification of amnesty this account offers a novel approach to the design and implementation of post-conflict prosecutorial strategies. (shrink)

A dogma accepted in many ethical, religious, and legal frameworks is that the reasons behind conscientious objection (CO) in healthcare cannot be evaluated or judged by any institution because conscience is individual and autonomous. This paper shows that this background view is mistaken: the requirement to reveal and explain the reasons for conscientious objection in healthcare is ethically justified and legally desirable. Referring to real healthcare cases and legal regulations, this paper argues that these reasons should be evaluated either ex (...) ante or ex post and defends novel conceptual claims that have not been analyzed in the debates on CO. First, a moral threshold requirement: CO is only justified if the reasons behind a refusal are of a moral nature and meet a certain threshold of moral importance. Second, this paper considers the rarely discussed conceptual similarities between CO in healthcare and the legal regulations concerning military refusals that place the burden of proof on conscientious objectors. This paper concludes that conscientious objection in healthcare can be accommodated only in some cases of destroying or killing human organisms. (shrink)

At least since the French moralists—Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère—it has been a commonplace that people can fool themselves as well as others about their beliefs and motivations. In this article, I consider some mechanisms oftransmutation(deceiving oneself) andmisrepresentation(deceiving others), and their impact on behavior. (I refer to these collectively astransformations.) I argue that deception and self-deception are not merely ex post rationalizations of behavior whose real motive and explanation are found elsewhere, but that they have independent causal and (...) explanatory power. If people, that is, did not fool themselves or others about why they do what they do they would act differently. The reason is that deception and self-deception take place underconstraintsthat prevent us from offering totally opportunistic or self-serving rationalizations of what we do. There is aconsistency constraintthat is induced by the costs of being seen (by oneself or others) as offering inconsistent justifications for one's behavior, and animperfection constraintdiat is induced by the costs of being seen (by oneself or others) as offering justifications that are too blatantly self-serving. (shrink)

Data protection law has a linear logic, in that it purports to trace the lifecycle of personal data from creation to collection, processing, transfer, and ultimately its demise, and to regulate each step so as to promote the data subject’s control thereof. Big data defies this linear logic, in that it decontextualizes data from its original environment and conducts an algorithmic nonlinear mix, match, and mine analysis. Applying data protection law to the processing of big data does not work well, (...) to say the least. This Article examines the case of big medical data. A survey of emerging research practices indicates that studies either ignore data protection law altogether or assume an ex post position, namely that because they are conducted after the data has already been created in the course of providing medical care, and they use de-identified data, they go under the radar of data protection law. These studies focus on the end-point of the lifecycle of big data: if sufficiently anonymous at publication, the previous steps are overlooked, on the claim that they enjoy immunity. I argue that this answer is too crude. To portray data protection law in its best light, we should view it as a process-based attempt to equip data subjects with some power to control personal data about them, in all phases of data processing. Such control reflects the underlying justification of data protection law as an implementation of human dignity. The process-based approach fits current legal practices and is justified by reflecting dignitarian conceptions of informational privacy. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Michael Moore’s (1997), and other similar formulations of desert retributivism – viz., the theory that holds punishment to be justified because of the deserved suffering it imposes on guilty offenders – are epistemically problematic. The argument draws on John Dewey’s inchoate critique of retribution, and on Dewey’s more general contention that the justification of ethical judgments and principles proceeds ex post – viz., that it depends on the experiences elicited by acting on (...) those judgments and principles. Based on Dewey’s ex post take on justification, I more specifically argue that, given its commitment to moral naturalism and to coherentism, Moore’s version of desert retributivism is epistemically unwarranted. This is because we have evidentially grounded reasons to think that many of the retributive judgments that underlie the principle of retributive justice are not clearly supported ex post in the relevant, desert retributivist sense. (shrink)

Closure principles loom large in recent internalist critiques of epistemic externalism. Cohen (Philos Phenomenol Res 65:309–329, 2002, Philos Phenomenol Res 70:417–430, 2005), Vogel (J Philos 97:602–623, 2000), and Fumerton (Meta-Epistemology and skepticism. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 1995) argue that, given closure, epistemic externalism is committed to the possibility of implausibly easy knowledge. By contrast, Zalabardo (Philos Rev 114:33–61, 2005) proposes that epistemic closure actually precludes the possibility of easy knowledge, and appeals to closure principles to solve the problem of easy (...) knowledge. In my view, disagreement over closure’s bearing on externalism and the problem of easy knowledge is rooted in a failure to bear in mind the familiar distinction between ex ante and ex post forms of epistemic justification and warrant. When this distinction is kept in focus, the result is clear: epistemic closure provides no relief from the problem of easy knowledge. (shrink)

Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is that scientific uncertainty becomes a ready-made dodge for what is in reality just a difficult political decision. Interdisciplinary assessments necessary to address complex environmental policy issues invariably result in findings that are inherently contestable, especially when applied in the unrestrained realm of partisan politics. (...) In this article, the authors argue that predictive scientific assessments are inherently limited in the extent to which they can guide policy development and that rigorous scientific assessments can be much more valuable in the role of ex post policy evaluation than they can in the context of ex ante policy formulation. (shrink)

This Article argues that when credit suppliers market and advertise their credit products, they utilize and enhance consumers’ cognitive biases, particularly their optimism bias and illusion of control. We apply the concept of manipulation to this practice. The biased and manipulated debtors attribute unrealistically low probability to negative life events, such as job loss, illness, accident or divorce, and high probability to positive life events. As a result of the manipulation, the biased debtors are triggered to borrow more than they (...) would have borrowed otherwise. This additional borrowing may contribute to the default of these debtors and to their eventual bankruptcy. Empirical studies of the causes of bankruptcy show that before their default, bankrupts have often experienced negative life events that decrease income, increase expenses, or both. The bias and its manipulation justify legal intervention. The Article discusses various justifications for legal intervention and offers tentative and partial prescriptions for intervention. It analyzes the comparative advantages and shortcomings of ex ante intervention, in the form of regulation of credit marketing practices and credit contracts, of tax and insurance, and ex post intervention, at the bankruptcy stage. Its main contribution is in bringing together bodies of literature on cognitive biases, consumer decision making, lifecycle, social influence, advertising and marketing, behavioral law and economics, economic analysis of bankruptcy and socio-legal studies of bankruptcy. By combining these bodies of literature, the Article provides a new perspective on bankruptcy and credit and offers a promising framework for future work. (shrink)

I argue, contrary to standard claims, that accomplice liability need not be a causal relation. One can be an accomplice to another’s crime without causally contributing to the criminal act of the principal. This is because the acts of aid and encouragement that constitute the basis for accomplice liability typically occur in contexts of under- and over-determination, where causal analysis is confounded. While causation is relevant to justifying accomplice liability in general, only potential causation is necessary in particular cases. I (...) develop this argument through the example of the role of U.S. legal officials in abetting the acts of unlawful interrogation that have taken place since 2001. I also suggest that there may be a limited justification for ex post ratificatory accomplice liability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Henry Newman and the Development of Doctrine: Encountering Change, Looking for Continuity by Stephen MorganReinhard HütterJohn Henry Newman and the Development of Doctrine: Encountering Change, Looking for Continuity by Stephen Morgan. Foreword by Ian Ker (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2021), xvi + 315 pp.St. John Henry Newman was controversial during much of his lifetime—as an Anglican as well as a Catholic. Nothing has changed (...) since. There has been an eagerness to silence his voice, and with it the challenge of his theological insights then, and there is such an eagerness to do so also now—in ways more or less subtle. There are historians whose chosen object of study happens to be the Victorian Newman in the Victorian age and who take the immanent frame they tacitly presuppose as normative horizon and their assumed attitude of scientific detachment as indispensable precondition for historical objectivity, and who dismiss all interpretations of Newman that happen to display signs of substantive agreement with his insights and tenets as "Newman hagiographies" lacking the allegedly requisite scientific distance from their object of investigation. This principle of critical detachment would, of course, entail that Platonists are disqualified from investigating reliably Plato's thought, and the same would obtain presumably for Aristotelians regarding Aristotle, for Thomists regarding Thomas Aquinas, for Marxists regarding Karl Marx, for Foucaultians regarding Foucault, and so on and so forth—and last but not least, for historians committed to the immanent frame and historicist tenets regarding their interpretations of Troeltsch and Mannheim. Such an assumption, when consistently applied, carries itself, of course, sooner or later ad absurdum, but the derogatory denomination "Newman hagiography" survives and is conveniently attachable to whatever interpretation one likes to disqualify as scholarly serious and academically reputable work on Newman. Next to the "unmaskers" of "Newman hagiographies" there are those Newman scholars of a primarily evangelical and Anglican provenance eager to demonstrate that Newman's self-characterization, primarily [End Page 1335] in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, is at best an ex post facto retro-projection, and hence an inherently unreliable, if not an intentional, re-composition of his intellectual past meant to be deceptive and hence bordering on the mendacious—in short, a renewal of Kingsley's charge. Things are not necessarily better on the Catholic side—since Orestes Brownson's attack, there continue notions, popular among Catholic traditionalists as well as Lefebvrists, that Newman's theory of the development of doctrine, if not outright modernist, is at best crypto-modernist, a view sadly encouraged by Catholic neo-modernists who instrumentalize Newman's account as a justification for interpreting "change" as an interminable but allegedly unavoidable sequence of ruptures and "development" as the intentional activity of progressive developers of doctrine establishing an ongoing praxis of pre-projected desired transmutations of faith, doctrine, and practice.It takes so-called "Newman hagiographers" to set the record straight and to save Newman's ongoingly pertinent and indeed salutary insights from multiple distortions and instrumentalizations, let alone attempts of effectively silencing Newman by way of a more or less subtle character assassination. It requires painstaking archival work and a close, careful, and comprehensive reading of Newman's published letters, diary entries, and works (in their original unrevised versions) as well as letters and works of his interlocutors and collaborators in the Oxford Movement to set the record straight, to unearth Newman's authentic voice, and first and foremost, to acquit him of the charge of systematic disingenuity, if not duplicity, in putting together his own account of the development of his religious opinions.John Henry Newman and the Development of Doctrine comprises, next to an introduction and a conclusion, four substantive chapters of about equal length: the first covering the years up to 1833, with a focus on Newman's first monograph, The Arians of the Fourth Century; the second considering the period from 1833 to 1838, with a focus on the Oxford Movement, the Tracts for the Times, and the Via Media; the third covering the period from 1839 to 1842, with a focus on Tract 90 and its aftermath; the fourth and final chapter advancing close... (shrink)

It is well known that there is a conflict between three intuitive principles for the evaluation of risky prospects in distributional contexts, Ex-Post Egalitarianism, Ex-Ante Pareto and Dominance. In this paper, I return to Peter Diamond’s suggestion that we reject Dominance as a principle of rationality in distributional contexts and present a new argument in support of this position. The argument is based on an observation regarding the right way for a distributor to weigh reasons for actions. In some (...) cases, I argue, reasons for action that are grounded in the interests of one of the patients ought to be disregarded by the distributor. These cases share the following property: it is in the patient’s overall interest that the distributor disregards them. I show that Dominance does not permit distributors to disregard such reasons and use this observation to argue against the claim that Dominance is a principle of rationality in distributional contexts. (shrink)

Résumé La défense du marché dans la tradition socialiste libérale est instrumentale : le marché est toléré lorsqu’il permet de produire des richesses en abondance que l’on peut redistribuer ex post. De son côté, la justification républicaine du marché, telle que présentée dans les travaux de Pettit, vise à réduire la domination dans l’échange. Cet article soutient qu’une telle justification nécessite d’être renforcée en l’adossant à un égalitarisme matériel, garant d’un échange entre égaux, établi ex ante.

Ticking time-bomb cases famously—or infamously—invite us to imagine a scenario wherein the torture of one guilty terrorist will lead to the acquisition of information that can be used to save the lives of many innocents. Despite the contemporary focus on such cases, they have a long tradition, dating to the early 1800s. And, throughout their history, they have appeared in various guises, from the literary to the public to the philosophical. The principal moral question suggested by these cases is whether (...) one harm can be effected such that a worse one is not; while there is certainly dissent, most moral philosophers would answer this question in the affirmative. That said, there is substantial doubt as to whether torture would be the lesser harm or, more generally, whether ticking time-bomb cases gain any purchase in the real world or are otherwise relegated to philosophical fiction. But even if they gain such purchase, then what? In other words, even if torture can be morally justified in exceptional cases, should we authorize it? I n the literature—and conceptually—there are three basic approaches to authorizing torture. The first is not to authorize it at all, which is to say that torture—even if justified—requires some sort of punishable civil disobedience . Another approach is to authorize torture ex ante, such as through torture warrants. On this approach, torture remains prohibited except for when a judge grants permission for its application. Torture warrants have been defended by Alan Dershowitz, and we will evaluate that debate . Finally, torture can be legitimized ex post, which is to say that torture remains illegal but can nevertheless be justified or excused; our discussion will focus on the justifications of self-defense and necessity. (shrink)

The right to resist and the right to rebel have again become relevant as legal problems. Their justifications traditionally derive from natural law, human rights, the principle of the lesser evil or of the social contract. Interpretation of the right to resist expresses the tendencies to the law of people, in particular, the right to self-determination, distinguishing national and international understanding, and underscores the special nature of such right. Also, two-level research of the right to resist should be distinguished research (...) of the right to resist – the first is a debate about the nature character and legislative consolidation of this right, partly focused on preventive-limiting its properties, whereas the second one is updated at the time of social upheaval and legal concerns, and it contains not only the evaluation of the events, but sometimes attempts to justify ex post risk of abuse and original post-legitimation of public authorities. An important condition for the existence of the right to resistance is a legitimate aim. This could be called the internal condition, which is provided by those who implement this right. Other condition (which can be called external) and the base of implementation should recognize certain actions, acts or decisions by public authorities – those that violate human rights are illegal and unfair. At the same time, the purpose and result of the right to resistance may be changes in the public authorities, the termination of abuse of authority and violation of human rights by its agents, return to democratic legal regime or change in the constitutional system, aimed at creating a state of law, as well as in some cases, when combined with the right to self-determination, – the achievement of independence. The author of the present paper considers that the right to resist is an individual right, a human right. The author inclines to the idea of the collective nature of the right to resist implementation, but warns against simply counting the number of persons engaged in it. In other words, it does not matter how many people commit acts, but it does matter how many people support them. Considering the modalities of implementing the right to resist, it should be noted that these forms can be active or passive, expressed in actions directly or indirectly. The right of rebellion is an extreme form of the right to resist, which is carried out in case if the non-violent means of resistance are exhausted or proved ineffective. The conditions (and bases) of the right of rebellion are phenomena, such as the following: (1) massive human rights violations by public authorities (quantitative criterion); (2) systematic human rights violations by public authorities (accumulating criterion); or (3) extraordinary human rights violations by public authorities (criterion by serious, explicit and violent nature of the violation). Ambiguous is an issue of the limits of the right of rebellion, its permission and proportion, as well as whether it is possible to develop a mechanism for exercising this right. (shrink)

According to contractualist theories in ethics, whether an action is wrong is determined by whether it could be justified to others on grounds no one could reasonably reject. Contractualists then think that reasonable rejectability of principles depends on the strength of the personal objections individuals can make to them. There is, however, a deep disagreement between contractualists concerning from which temporal perspective the relevant objections to different principles are to be made. Are they to be made on the basis of (...) the prospects the principles give to different individuals ex ante or on the basis of the outcomes of the principles ex post? Both answers have been found to be problematic. The ex ante views make irrelevant information about personal identity morally significant and lead to objectionable ex ante rules, whereas ex post views lead to counterintuitive results in the so-called different harm and social risk imposition cases. The aim of this article is to provide a new synthesis of these views that can avoid the problems of the previous alternatives. I call the proposal ‘risk-acknowledging’ ex post contractualism. The crux of the view is to take into account in the comparisons of different objections both the realized harms and the risks under which individuals have to live. (shrink)

In this article we argue that governmental practices of secrecy threaten the epistemic dimension of rights. We defend the view that possessing a right entitles its holder to the largest extent of available knowledge of the circumstances that may impede the enjoyment of that right. We call this the ‘epistemic entitlement’ of rights. Such an entitlement holds in ideal conditions once full transparency is assumed. However, under non-ideal conditions secrecy is a fact that should be accounted for. We argue that, (...) under such conditions, interference due to secrecy is legitimate when the circumstances under which it occurs are open to assessment by the right-holder. We call this the ‘right of assessment’. It ensures the ex-post fulfillment of the epistemic entitlement under non-ideal conditions of partial compliance where full transparency is unattainable due to the fact of secrecy. The right of assessment shields against arbitrary interference by imposing an obligation on the government to provide justification for any interference in the sphere of fundamental rights. (shrink)

We show that Bayesian ex post aggregation is unstable with respect to refinements. Suppose a group of Bayesians use ex post aggregation. Since it is a joint problem, each agent’s problem is captured by the same model, but probabilities and utilities may vary. If they analyze the same situation in more detail, their refined analysis should preserve their preferences among acts. However, ex post aggregation could bring about a preference reversal on the group level. Ex post (...) aggregation thus depends on how much information is used and may keep oscillating (‘‘flipping’’) as one keeps adding more information. (shrink)

The hypothesis of this paper is that we maintain a relationship with the dead precisely in their death, and this relationship is best understood in terms of Peirce's semiotics and its influence on the work of Jacques Derrida. Roland Bardies' theory of photography illustrates this semiotics of death. The subsistent and continuous reality of the non-extant, absent and silent being of the dead individual is manifested—and continues to communicate—through indexical signs, i.e., any traces left behind by the dead individual (such (...) as photos, clothes, glasses, writings, recordings). (shrink)

Suppose n Bayesian agents need to make a decision as a group. The groupas a whole is also supposed to be a Bayesian agent whose probabilities andutilities are derived or aggregated in reasonable ways from the probabilitiesand utilities of the group members. The aggregation could beex ante, i.e., interms of expected utilities, or it could be ex post, i.e., in terms of utilitiesonly, or in terms of utilities and probabilities separately. This study exploresthe ex post approach. Using the (...) Bolker/Jeffrey framework, we show thatex post aggregation is subject to an instability phenomenon. That is, it mayhappen that the group preference between actions ``flips back and forth'''' dependingon the level of detail in which the decision problem is described. Structurally verysimilar phenomena also occur elsewhere in social choice theory, in statistics (Simpson''sParadox), and in voting theory (Ostrogorski''s Paradox). (shrink)

This paper is part of an attempt to clarify the relationship between explanatory reasons and justificatory reasons for actions of various kinds. It draws on a distinction between two notions of rationalization, viz., ex ante and ex post rationalization, to recast the akratic case on the one hand and to explicate an adequate sense in which an explanatory but non-justificatory reason for an action rationalizes the latter on the other hand. The explication is helped by analysis of a hypothetical (...) example, and the name "quasi-rational" is legitimated for the type of actions this example represents. Last, but not least, the paper demonstrates that an implication of the argument is the falsity of one well-known principle in Davidson's action theory, i.e., the principle claiming that the (primary) reason for an action is also its cause. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, (...) but instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

This research explores how a person with whom information has been shared and, importantly, an artificial intelligence (AI) system used to deduce information from the shared data contribute to making the disclosure context private. The study posits that private contexts are constituted by the interactions of individuals in the social context of intersubjectivity based on trust. Hence, to make the context private, the person who is the trustee (i.e., with whom information has been shared) must fulfil trust norms. According to (...) the commitment account of trustworthiness, a person is trustworthy only if they satisfy the norm of competence. It is argued that a person using an AI system to answer a question is competent only if they are ex post justified in believing what has been delivered by the AI system. A person’s belief is justified in the doxastic sense only if the AI system is accurate. This feature of AI’s performance affects a person’s competence and, as a result, trustworthiness. The effect of AI on trust as an essential component of making the context private, and thus on privacy, means an AI system also impacts privacy. Therefore, a private context is constituted when the individual with whom the information is shared fulfils the competence norm and the AI system used for analysing the information is sufficiently accurate to adhere to this norm. The result of this research emphasises the significance of the relationship between individuals involved in information-sharing and how an AI system used for analysing that information impacts the relationship regarding making the context private, as well as how it impacts privacy. The findings of this research have significant implications for improving or ameliorating privacy regulations in light of trust. (shrink)

We argue for a novel view of suspending judgment properly--i.e., suspending judgment in an ex post justified way. In so doing we argue for a Kantian virtue-theoretic view of epistemic normativity and against teleological virtue-theoretic accounts.

When distributing an indivisible harm or benefit between multiple individuals, all of whom have an equal claim to avoid the harm or receive the benefit, it is commonly thought that one should hold a lottery in order to give each claimant an equal chance of winning. Moreover, it is often said that, by holding a lottery, one makes the resultant outcome inequality between those who receive the harm or benefit and those who do not less unfair than it would otherwise (...) have been. The stated view – the ‘egalitarian mixed view’ – claims that the unfairness of a brute luck ex post distribution is a function of both the degree of inequality in the ex post distribution itself, and the degree of inequality in the ex ante distribution of chances from which it is derived. Versions of the view have been prominently endorsed by a number of authors, including Arneson, Broome, Diamond, Lang, Otsuka, Parfit, and Temkin. The appeal of the view is linked to its apparent promise to accommodate intuitions that have been thought to threaten views which link the fairness of an outcome either solely to the ex ante distribution or solely to the ex post distribution. I argue, to the contrary, that the egalitarian mixed view is mistaken. In particular, I argue that the distinction at the heart of the view – that between outcomes and changes to probabilities – is morally arbitrary at best and incoherent at worst. I consider possible responses to the charge and find them wanting. I note that the failure of the egalitarian mixed view has significant consequences for policy, including most importantly for how we should interpret the goal of fair equality of opportunity. (shrink)

In order to defend the regress argument for foundationalism against Post’s objection that relevant forms of inferential justification are not transitive, Lydia McGrew and Timothy McGrew define a relation E of positive evidence, which, they contend, has the following features: It is a necessary condition for any inferential justification; it is transitive and irreflexive; and it enables both a strengthened regress argument proof against Post’s objection and an argument that nothing can ever appear in its own (...) justificational ancestry. In reply, we construct in their own terms both a counterexample to the would-be transitivity of E, and a related objection to their never-in-its-own-ancestry argument. We also rebut their rejection of certain counterexamples to the would-be transitivity of some forms of inferential justification. By doing so, and by questioning their transitivity claim for E, we aim to further the project of undermining the circularity arguments advanced by a zoo of skeptics, relativists, antirealists and internalists against realism and externalism. (shrink)

The terminal philosopher thinks there must always be beliefs or other posits that are terminal: they can neither be justified nor criticized by inference from anything further. In any context whatever, reason giving must at some point leave off - not for practical reasons, such as lack of time, energy or resources, but in principle. No further argumentative recourse is possible at this level of fundamentality. The terminal matters must therefore be justified or criticized non-inferentially - that is to say, (...) immediately - or not at all. Most terminal philosophers conclude "Not at all," on the ground that there is no such thing as unmediated knowledge, justification or critique. (shrink)

John Post has argued that the traditional regress argument against nonfoundational justificatory structures does not go through because it depends on the false assumption that “justifies” is in general transitive. But, says Post, many significant justificatory relations are not transitive. The authors counter that there is an evidential relation essential to all inferential justification, regardless of specific inference form or degree of carried-over justificatory force, which is in general transitive. They respond to attempted counterexamples to transitivity brought (...) by Watkins and Salmon as well as to Post’s, arguing that none of these counterexamples apply to the relation they are describing. Given the revived transitivity assumption using this relation, the regress argument does indeed demonstrate the need for foundational stopping points in inferential justification. (shrink)

The foundationalism in irrealism is structural foundationalism, according to which reason giving must terminate with some affair beyond the reach of noncircular inferential justification or critique. Even relativist irrealists are structural foundationalists. But structural foundationalism is only as good as the regress argument for it, which presupposes that the relevant forms of inferential justification are all transitive. Since they are not, structural foundationalism fails. So too does the “God’s-eye-view” or look-see argument against realism, to the effect that when (...) it comes to correspondence and universals or samenesses found not made, realists have no noncircular argumentative recourse, hence must gaze on reality bare, looking to see that the categories of our language or thought conform to something in reality. Furthermore, realists can justify their view via nontransitive forms of inferential justífication, without recourse either to look-see or to morally problematic notions of sameness and difference made rather than lovingly found. (shrink)

This paper considers the tension between timelessness and timeboundedness in legal interpretation, examining parallels between sacred texts and secular law. It is argued that familiar dualities such as those between statute and judge-made law, law and equity, written and spoken discourse, dictionary meaning versus intended or contextual meaning, can be examined using this timeless/timebounded framework. Two landmark English cases, DPP v Shaw (1961) and R v R (1991) are analyzed as illustrating contrasting aspects of the socio-legal politics of “reasoning backwards”. (...) The related temporal distinction between ex ante and ex post points of view is examined both within legal theory and as a key issue for linguistic and semiotic systems. The argument is made that this distinction is the key to a wide range of methodological and theoretical problems in relating linguistics and semiotics to law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Verum-factum and Practical Wisdom in the Early Writings of Giambattista VicoRobert C. MinerAs several contemporary writers have noted, Giambattista Vico defends the idea of practical knowledge, a type of knowledge that cannot be fully expressed by propositions and defies reductions to method. 1 The defense of practical knowledge, against Descartes and the rise of objectifying science, is most clearly articulated in a group of Vico’s early writings: the oration (...) De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709), the metaphysical book De antiquissima Italorum sapientia ex linguae latinae originibus eruenda (1710), and two rejoinders (Prima and Seconda risposte) to critics of the De antiquissima. In these texts Vico criticizes Cartesian method in terms that remind us of Aristotle, or at least the Aristotle of the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. “If you were to import the geometrical method into practical life, you would do no more than exhaust yourself in becoming a rational lunatic” (A 7.5). 2This comment and many others like it seem to suggest that Vico is an “Aristotelian,” but any simple classification is problematic. In the same text in which Vico defends the Aristotelian topos he also announces that “the true and the made are convertible” (verum et factum convertuntur). The emphasis on the [End Page 53] role of “making” in truth seems incompatible with the Aristotelian idea of phronesis, whose knowledge is associated with praxis and cannot be reduced to techne. It would be simpler if Vico distinguished between a realm in which the verum-factum principle applied and one in which prudentia was supreme. However, Vico not only situates mathematics and experimental science within the metaphysical framework governed by verum-factum, but also implies strong connections between making and ethics. The prominence Vico assigns to making in all areas of human endeavor gives him a distinctly modern appearance in the fashion of Bacon, Galileo, and Hobbes.This gives rise to both hermeneutical and philosophical problems. Is Vico simply hesitating between the old and new? Does he coherently balance an Aristotelian perspective with the “modern” emphasis on artifice? 3 Perhaps Vico is caught in the middle of the querelle des anciens et modernes, somewhat like John Dunn’s version of Locke, a “tragic figure” who cannot reconcile his epistemological discoveries with a noninstrumentalist view of practical reason. 4 The purpose of this essay is to provide a sympathetic interpretation of Vico’s early writings on prudentia and its links to both verum-factum and rhetoric.Vico contra Rule-based EthicsThe denial that ethics is well understood as a matter of following or justifying general rules has become a commonplace among contemporary Aris-totelians and Wittgensteinians. 5 Against the Enlightenment ambition to construct a universally valid moral science, recent virtue ethics has emphasized the irreducibly contingent aspects of human life, aspects which resist the clutches of “method.” Although Descartes wrote little about morals directly, his influence can be detected in the ethical writings of Hobbes, Kant, Mill, and Sidgwick. These examples of modern moral philosophy presuppose the correctness of the Cartesian diagnosis of ancient and medieval writing on virtue. In the Discourse on Method Descartes compares previous moral teaching to “the most proud and magnificent palaces built on nothing but sand or mud.” 6 Descartes himself did not provide a rational justification of ethics, but he has had no shortage of successors who have tried to complete his foundational project. Jusnaturalism, Kantian deontology, and utilitarianism, as different as they are from one another, share the desire to ground ethics in principles as universal and certain as [End Page 54] those of mathematics. Each of these variants of post-Cartesian ethics claim to have discovered and justified such a principle or set of principles. Maxims deduced from the principle, if not the principle itself, will arguably enable moral agents to discover the right course of action in a particular situation.Vico did not live to witness the most articulate expressions of a Cartesian approach to ethics, but he did apprehend the shift in focus from prudence to method. In the De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, an oration delivered at the University of Naples in 1708 and published the following year, Vico criticizes approaches that locate... (shrink)

This chapter discusses desire theory and how the temporal gap between desires and the states of affairs that satisfy them affects this theory. Satisfaction is not that important in desire theory because even if getting what we want fails to satisfy, we are better off for having got it. The rationale for rejecting hedonistic accounts of well-being in favor of desire theories is the intuition that states of affairs that are not “like” anything for us can harm and benefit us. (...) Sumner, however, suggests that even if we grant the desire theorist’s fundamental assumption that they can make a difference to our well-being, the prospective character of desire, which opens a temporal gap between desires and the states of affairs that satisfy them, undermines the account. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off on each individual's expectation and then values prospects by the sum (...) total of those adjusted expectations. A standard objection to Ex-Post Prioritarianism is that it violates Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. In this article, I argue that Ex-Ante Prioritarianism suffers from much the same problem: it violates a sequential version of Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes sequences of choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. (shrink)