Many philosophers believe that luck egalitarianism captures “desert-like” intuitions about justice. Some even think that luck egalitariansm distributes goods in accordance with desert. In this paper, we argue that this is wrong. Desertism conflicts with luck egalitarianism in three important contexts, and, in these contexts, desertism renders the proper moral judgment. First, compared to desertism, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too stingy: it fails to justly compensate people for their socially valuable contributions—when those contributions arose from “option luck”. Second, luck egalitarianism (...) is sometimes too restrictive: it fails to justly compensate people who make a social contribution when that contribution arose from “brute luck”. Third, luck egalitarianism is too limited in scope: it cannot diagnose economic injustice arising independently of comparative levels of justice. The lesson of this paper is that luck egalitarians should consider supplementing their theory with desert considerations. Or, even better, consider desertism as a superior alternative to their theory. (shrink)

Does the moral badness of pain depend on who feels it? A common, but generally only implicitly stated view, is that it does not. This view, ‘unitarianism’, maintains that the same interests of different beings should count equally in our moral calculus. Shelly Kagan’s project in How to Count Animals, more or less is to reject this common view, and develop an alternative to it: a hierarchical view of moral status, on which the badness of pain does depend on who (...) feels it. In this review essay, we critically examine Kagan’s argument for status hierarchy. In particular, we reject two of the central premises in his argument: that moral standing is ultimately grounded in agency and that unitarianism is overdemanding. We conclude that moral status may, despite Kagan’s compelling argument to the contrary, not be hierarchical. (shrink)

C W Evers, J C Walker; Knowledge, Partitioned Sets and Extensionality: a refutation of the forms of knowledge thesis, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume.

This article aims to present Christology not as an add-on to monotheism, but as its specific Christian form. What Christ means can only be explained with reference to God and vice versa; what God stands for in a Christian sense has to be explained with reference to Jesus Christ and not with reference to generic religious terms. Christology thus informs and forms the Christian understanding of how to relate God and reality. Therefore, Christology has to be developed as combinatory Christology (...) bringing different dimensions of reality including scientific and evolutionary perspectives into creative interplay. Theology is an ‘art of combination’, which in ever new ways relates traditions of faith with theoretical and historical knowledge in order to find relevant ways of understanding God’s presence in the world, to articulate the Christian faith in a meaningful way and to form our ways of living in such a way as to conform to God’s passion for the life of God’s creatures. This article wants to lay grounds for such an endeavour by re-evaluating the history of Christology and combining this analysis with present day challenges. (shrink)

Progress in neuroscience – notably, on the dynamic functions of neural networks – has deepened our understanding of decision‐making, acquisition of character and temperament, and the development of moral dispositions. The evolution of our cerebral architecture is both genetic and epigenetic: the nervous system develops in continuous interaction with the immediate physical and socio‐cultural environments. Each individual has a unique cerebral identity even in the relative absence of genetic distinction, and the development of this identity is strongly influenced by social (...) and cultural environments leaving major traces in the connectivity of the brain. This interaction introduces important elements of variability and plasticity. Synaptic epigenetic theories of cultural and social imprinting on our brain architecture suggest the possibility that we can be “epigenetically proactive” and adapt our social structures, in both the short and the long term, to benefit and constructively interact with the ever‐developing neuronal architecture of our brains. Epigenetic proaction can be described as a way to socially steer evolution by influencing the cultural imprints to be stored in our brains. The purpose of this article is to present, in a historical and ideological light, the idea that we may culturally shape the developing brain, and discuss some key risks and benefits of this endeavour. The article is a contribution to neuroethics. (shrink)

BackgroundAssessing consciousness in other subjects, particularly in non-verbal and behaviourally disabled subjects (e.g., patients with disorders of consciousness), is notoriously challenging but increasingly urgent. The high rate of misdiagnosis among disorders of consciousness raises the need for new perspectives in order to inspire new technical and clinical approaches. Main bodyWe take as a starting point a recently introduced list of operational indicators of consciousness that facilitates its recognition in challenging cases like non-human animals and Artificial Intelligence to explore their relevance (...) to disorders of consciousness and their potential ethical impact on the diagnosis and healthcare of relevant patients. Indicators of consciousness mean particular capacities that can be deduced from observing the behaviour or cognitive performance of the subject in question (or from neural correlates of such performance) and that do not define a hard threshold in deciding about the presence of consciousness, but can be used to infer a graded measure based on the consistency amongst the different indicators. The indicators of consciousness under consideration offer a potential useful strategy for identifying and assessing residual consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness, setting the theoretical stage for an operationalization and quantification of relevant brain activity.ConclusionsOur heuristic analysis supports the conclusion that the application of the identified indicators of consciousness to its disorders will likely inspire new strategies for assessing three very urgent issues: the misdiagnosis of disorders of consciousness; the need for a gold standard in detecting consciousness and diagnosing its disorders; and the need for a refined taxonomy of disorders of consciousness. (shrink)

David Lewis is widely regarded as the philosopher who introduced the concept of common knowledge. His account of common knowledge differs greatly from most later accounts in philosophy and economy, with the central notion of his theory being ‘having reason to believe’ rather than ‘knowledge’. Unfortunately, Lewis’s account is rather informal, and the argument has a few gaps. This paper assesses two major attempts to formalise Lewis’s account and argues that these formalisations are missing a crucial aspect of this account. (...) Therefore, a new reconstruction is proposed, which explicitly discusses ‘reasons’ and uses a logic inspired by justification logic. (shrink)

Access to other minds once presupposed other individuals’ expressions and narrations. Today, several methods have been developed which can measure brain states relevant for assessments of mental states without 1st person overt external behavior or speech. Functional magnetic resonance imaging and trace conditioning are used clinically to identify patterns of activity in the brain that suggest the presence of consciousness in people suffering from severe consciousness disorders and methods to communicate cerebrally with patients who are motorically unable to communicate. The (...) techniques are also used non-clinically to access subjective awareness in adults and infants. In this article we inspect technical and theoretical limits on brain–machine interface access to other minds. We argue that these techniques hold promises of important medical breakthroughs, open up new vistas of communication, and of understanding the infant mind. Yet they also give rise to ethical concerns, notably misuse as a consequence of hypes and misinterpretations. (shrink)

There is a large and growing body of empirical work on people’s intuitions about distributive justice. In this paper, we investigate how well luck egalitarianism and desertism—the two normative approaches that appear to cohere well with people’s intuitions—are supported by more fine-grained findings in the empirical literature. The time is ripe for a study of this sort, as the positive literature on justice has blossomed over the last three decades. The results of our investigation are surprising. In three different contexts (...) (good option luck, good brute luck, and bad brute luck) in which the demands of luck egalitarianism and those of a mainstream desert-based view come apart, the latter carries the day. One ramification of these findings is that people’s intuitions about justice are moralized; that is, they appeal to particular conceptions of the good. Luck egalitarians must decide whether to embrace these moralized intuitions by adopting desertism—or to resist them. (shrink)

De ontdekking van de aarde? is een gloednieuwe bundel van Huub Oosterhuis' essays. Dit boek maakt deel uit van het verzameld werk van Oosterhuis en bevat eerder verschenen, maar grondig bewerkte en nieuwe essays. Oosterhuis reflecteert in 'De ontdekking van de aarde' op taal, literatuur, geschiedenis en het woord God. Een rode draad door deze monumentale essaybundel is de bepalende invloed van het joods-christelijk geloof en de Bijbel op onze samenleving.

We outline three possible shortcomings of the SIMS model and specify these by applying the model to autism. First, the SIMS model assigns a causal role to brain processes, thereby excluding individual and situational factors. Second, there is no room for subjective and high-level conceptual processes in the model. Third, disentangling the different stages in the model is very difficult.

C Evers; Epistemology and the Structure of Educational Theory: some reflections on the O'Connor-Hirst debate, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Iss.

Aesthetic non-naturalism is the view that there are objective aesthetic truths that hold in virtue of sui generis facts. This view is seldom explicitly endorsed in philosophical aesthetics. I argue that many aestheticians should treat it as the view to beat, since (a) their commitments favour aesthetic realism, (b) non-naturalistic forms of aesthetic realism are particularly promising and (c) non-naturalists have reasonable answers to four important objections.

Serena Olsaretti argues that desert cannot serve as a plausible principle of stakes for luck egalitarianism. In this discussion note, we defend the claim that she is too pessimistic about this by introducing a simple, but plausible, desert-based account of stakes that is immune to her argument.

An introduction to the special issue of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics: "On the Very Idea of a Just Wage".

Wetenschappelijke speurtocht naar de betekenis van democratie in een technologische samenleving, met een pleidooi voor aanpassing van democratische concepten en werkwijzen, teneinde de soevereiniteit van burgers voldoende te kunnen waarborgen.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

C W Evers, J C Walker; Pyrotechnics Defended: a reply to Jim Mackenzie, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 139–142, http.

Companies continuously make choices about who gets hired and who does not, who gets a raise and who does not, and who gets a promotion and who does not. Those decisions have significant implications for the division of income in society—and consequently for economic inequality. That is why ethical questions about inequality and fairness are important to business ethics. In this chapter, we elaborate, explain, and compare three important ethical principles that can be used to guide decisions about hiring, remuneration, (...) and promotion: the utilitarian, libertarian, and desertist principles. (shrink)

Beschouwingen vanuit sociologisch perspectief over het tanende gezag van de wetenschap in de westerse cultuur.

Peace and judgement in the gospel according to Luke. Quite rightly Luke is called an evangelist of peace and non-violence. It is recognised in several studies that peace, nonviolence and love for the enemy are integral parts of the message of the Lucan Jesus. Yet this statement cannot be made without criticism. In the gospel of Luke there are many texts in which violence is present, which is incongruent with the message of peace and non-violence. Sometimes there is even violence (...) that is excessive. In many of these texts violence has to do with vengeance in the judgement. In some recent studies the relation of the peace-message of Jesus and the retribution in the judgement is discussed. In this article we first examine the problem of violence in Luke’s gospel with the help of Luke 19:9–27. In the vision of Luke the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE is a consequence of the refusal to accept the message of Jesus. To understand this it is necessary to place the fall of Jerusalem in the eschatological timetable of Luke. We see here a certain equivalence between the situation of the contemporaries of Jesus within the gospel and the situation of the intended readers in the last quarter of the first century CE. Moreover we propose to reverse the way the question is put. We do not have to enlighten how it is possible that after the peace-message of Jesus there will be vengeance in the judgement. First there is the announcement of the judgement. After that a delay is announced for the contemporaries of Jesus as well as for the intended readers of Luke’s gospel: a year of the Lord’s favour. This delay gives room for repentance.(Full text article to follow). (shrink)

This book explores the concept of Life from a range of perspectives. Divided into three parts, it first examines the concept of Life from physics to biology. It then presents insights on the concept from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, and ethics. The book concludes with chapters on the hermeneutics of Life, and pays special attention to the Biosemiotics approach to the concept. The question 'What is Life?' has been deliberated by the greatest minds throughout human history. Life as we (...) know it is not a substance or fundamental property, but a complex process. It is not an easy task to develop an unequivocal approach towards Life combining scientific, semiotic, philosophical, theological, and ethical perspectives. In its combination of these perspectives, and its wide-ranging scope, this book opens up levels and identifies issues which can serve as intersections for meaningful interdisciplinary discussions of Life in its different aspects. The book includes the four plenary lectures and selected, revised and extended papers from workshops of the 14th European Conference on Science and Theology (ECST XIV) held in Tartu, Estonia, April 2012. (shrink)

Hasta ahora, el acceso a otras mentes presuponía las expresiones y narraciones de los individuos. En la actualidad, se han desarrollado varios métodos que pueden medir los estados cerebrales relevantes para valorar las facultades mentales sin que se manifieste en 1ª persona habla o comportamiento externo alguno. La resonancia magnética funcional y el condicionamiento de huella se emplean fuera del ámbito clínico para acceder a la conciencia subjetiva; se utilizan clínicamente para identificar patrones de actividad en el cerebro que sugieran (...) la presencia de conciencia en personas que sufren trastornos graves de conciencia y métodos para comunicarse cerebralmente con pacientes con incapacidad motora para comunicarse. En este capítulo, examinamos las posibilidades y los límites del acceso a otras mentes mediante interfaces cerebro-máquina. Exponemos que estas técnicas auguran importantes avances médicos y abren nuevas perspectivas de comunicación y para entender la conciencia, sin embargo, también plantean preocupaciones éticas, en especial el uso incorrecto como consecuencia de las expectativas creadas y las malas interpretaciones. (shrink)

I argue that relativists about aesthetic and other evaluative language face some of the same objections as non-naturalists in ethics. These objections concern the metaphysics required to make it work. Unlike contextualists, relativists believe that evaluative propositions are not about the relation in which things stand to certain standards. Nevertheless, the truth of such propositions would depend on variable standards. I argue that relativism requires the existence of states of affairs very different from other things known to exist. Furthermore, there (...) seems to be no convincing reason to postulate such entities. However, if they do not exist, then relativism leads to an error theory. That is unattractive, as relativism was meant to preserve the truth of many evaluative claims. (shrink)