Frank Jackson has put forward a famous thought experiment of a physician who has to decide on the correct treatment for her patient. Subjective consequentialism tells the physician to do what intuitively seems to be the right action, whereas objective consequentialism fails to guide the physician’s action. I suppose that objective consequentialists want to supplement their theory so that it guides the physician’s action towards what intuitively seems to be the right treatment. Since this treatment is wrong according to objective (...) consequentialism, objective consequentialists have to license it without calling it right. I consider eight strategies to spell out the idea of licensing the intuitively right treatment and argue that objective consequentialism is on the horns of what I call the licensing dilemma : Either the physician’s action is not guided towards the intuitively right treatment. Or the guidance towards the intuitively right treatment is ad hoc in some respect or the other. (shrink)

This paper shows that versions of prioritarianism that focus at least partially on well-being levels at certain times conflict with conventional views of prudential value and prudential rationality. So-called timeslice prioritarianism, and pluralist views that ascribe importance to timeslices, hold that a benefit matters more, the worse off the beneficiary is at the time of receiving it. We show that views that evaluate outcomes in accordance with this idea entail that an agent who delays gratification makes an outcome worse, even (...) if it is better for the agent and worse for no one else. We take this to show that timeslice prioritarianism and some pluralist views violate Weak Pareto, and we argue that these versions of prioritarianism are implausible. (shrink)

This paper critiques the All-Subjected Principle. The All-Subjected Principle is one of the most prominent answers to the Boundary Problem, which consists in determining who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision. The All-Subjected Principle comes in many versions, but the general idea is that all people who are subjected in a relevant sense with regard to a democratic decision should be entitled to participate in that decision. One respect in which versions of the All-Subjected Principle differ concerns (...) how to best understand ‘subjectedness’. One view spells out ‘subjectedness’ in terms of legal bindingness. Another view understands ‘subjectedness’ in terms of coercion. I argue that the All-Subjected Principle is extensionally inadequate on both views in that it yields verdicts that are at odds with our considered judgements about certain cases. These cases involve legal norms of referral or international administrative assistance. (shrink)

In this book, Kristina Musholt offers a novel theory of self-consciousness, understood as the ability to think about oneself. Traditionally, self-consciousness has been central to many philosophical theories. More recently, it has become the focus of empirical investigation in psychology and neuroscience. Musholt draws both on philosophical considerations and on insights from the empirical sciences to offer a new account of self-consciousness—the ability to think about ourselves that is at the core of what makes us human. -/- Examining theories (...) of nonconceptual content developed in recent work in the philosophy of cognition, Musholt proposes a model for the gradual transition from self-related information implicit in the nonconceptual content of perception and other forms of experience to the explicit representation of the self in conceptual thought. A crucial part of this model is an analysis of the relationship between self-consciousness and intersubjectivity. Self-consciousness and awareness of others, Musholt argues, are two sides of the same coin. -/- After surveying the philosophical problem of self-consciousness, the notion of nonconceptual content, and various proposals for the existence of nonconceptual self-consciousness, Musholt argues for a non-self-representationalist theory, according to which the self is not part of the representational content of perception and bodily awareness but part of the mode of presentation. She distinguishes between implicitly self-related information and explicit self-representation, and describes the transitions from the former to the latter as arising from a complex process of self–other differentiation. By this account, both self-consciousness and intersubjectivity develop in parallel. (shrink)

Orthodox Christianity has often been understood as not pertaining to Modernity due to its different historical and theological trajectory. This essay disputes such a view with regard to 20th century Orthodox thought, which it examines from the point of view of a sociology of Modernity in order to identify where Orthodox thinkers of the Russian Diaspora and in Russia today position themselves in relation to modern society and philosophy. Two essentially modern positions within Orthodoxy are singled out: an institutional and (...) an ontological response to the modernist paradigm. (shrink)

An analysis of group justification enables us to understand what it means to say that a research group is justified in making a claim on the basis of evidence. I defend Frederick Schmitt's (1994) joint account of group justification by arguing against a simple summative account of group justification. Also, I respond to two objections to the joint account, one claiming that social epistemologists should always prefer the epistemic value of making true judgments to the epistemic value of maintaining consistency, (...) and another one claiming that the notion of joint commitment implicit in the joint account is epistemically unacceptable. (shrink)

This discussion note attempts to show that, pace Niko Kolodny and John MacFarlane, the Miners case intuitively speaks in favor of subjectivism. I argue that properly understood the intuitively correct judgements concerning the case are compatible with subjectivism. My argument is based, among other things, on a comparison between the Minders case and other cases as well as on considerations of blameworthiness.

God is thought to be eternal. Does this mean that he is timeless? Or is he, rather, omnitemporal? In this paper we want to show that God cannot be omnitemporal. Our starting point, which we take from Bernard Williams’ article on the Makropulos Case, is the intuition that it is inappropriate for persons not to become bored after a sufficiently long sequence of time has passed. If God were omnitemporal, he would suffer from boredom. But God is the greatest possible (...) being and therefore cannot be bored. God, hence, is not omnitemporal. After the presentation of our argument, we address several objections by examining possible differences between human and divine persons. (shrink)

Hedonism claims that all and only pleasure is intrinsically good. One worry about Hedonism focuses on the “only” part: Are there not things other than pleasure, such as personal projects and relationships, that are intrinsically good? If so, it can be objected that Hedonism is incomplete. In this paper, I defend Hedonism against this objection by arguing for a distinction between goodness and desirability that understands “desirability” as a deontic concept, in terms of “reason to desire”, but goodness as an (...) evaluative concept. Based on this distinction, I attempt to show that Hedonists should accept that things other than pleasure, such as personal projects and relationships, are desirable for their own sakes but deny that these things are intrinsically good. (shrink)

Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that some groups qualify as rational agents over and above their members. Examples include churches, commercial corporations, and political parties. According to the theory developed by List and Pettit, these groups qualify as agents because they have beliefs and desires and the capacity to process them and to act on their basis. Moreover, the alleged group agents are said to be rational to a high degree and even to be fit to be held morally (...) responsible. And the group agents under consideration are autonomous, according to the List-Pettit Theory, because their beliefs and desires cannot easily be reduced to the beliefs and desires of the groups’ members. I want to show that we should not accept the List-Pettit Theory, because it implies the absurd claim that instrument-user units, like car-driver units, are rational agents over and above their user-parts, say drivers. The focus of my argument is on whether instrument-user units are autonomous in relation to their user-parts on the List-Pettit Theory. (shrink)

Error theories about practical deontic judgements claim that no substantive practical deontic judgement is true. Practical deontic judgements are practical in the sense that they concern actions, and they are deontic in the sense that they are about reasons, rightness, wrongness, and obligations. This paper assumes the truth of an error theory about practical deontic judgements in order to examine its ramifications. I defend three contentions. The first is that, if so-called fitting-attitude analyses of value fail, the truth of some (...) substantive evaluative judgements would not be threatened by the fact that no substantive practical deontic judgment is true. Secondly, in light of the truth of these evaluative judgements, the best thing we could do is to continue to make practical deontic judgements despite the truth of an error theory about practical deontic judgements. My third contention is that, if some evaluative judgements are unaffected by an error theory about practical deontic judgements, then such an error theory will eventually lead us to some version of consequentialism. (shrink)

This paper is about conflicts of rights, and the particularly difficult challenges that such conflicts present when they entail women’s equality and claims of cultural recognition. South Africa since 1994 has presented a series of challenging—but by no means unique—circumstances many of which entail conflicting claims of rights. The central aim of this paper is, to make sense of the idea that the institution of traditional leadership can be sustained—and indeed given new, more concrete powers—in a democracy; and to explore (...) the implications that this has for women’s equality and equal human rights. This is a particularly pertinent question in the South African context, and I think it is worth reiterating from the outset that there is a distinct impression that women’s equality is always “up for grabs” when other, perhaps more powerful interests, come into play, in a way that would be unacceptable for other aspects of identity, and therefore signifiers of equality. It would be inconceivable, for example, to countenance a claim for a hierarchical racial arrangement in a given community, no matter how deeply culturally entrenched that arrangement was, and regardless of how much support it (ostensibly) had from the community concerned. I think therefore that we are obliged to ask difficult questions about the new legislation on traditional leadership, and to put it under the microscope of political theory in assessing the claim that this is one way of recognizing people’s rights and freedoms in a new democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I critique one way of arguing for global democracy on grounds of affected interests and defend another. A famous argument for global democracy, which I call the Demos-Based Argument, attempts to justify global democracy based on the claim that affected interests vindicate individual claims to democratic participation or representation. I analyze and evaluate the Demos-Based Argument and consider different ways of interpreting and justifying its crucial premise: the Principle of Affected Interests. The result is that the argument (...) fails. One lesson of the discussion of the Demos-Based Argument is that the most promising, though eventually unsuccessful, justification of the Principle of Affected Interests is utilitarian. Given the failure of the Demos-Based Argument, the question suggests itself if there is another way to argue for global democracy on utilitarian grounds. I will outline a promising alternative argument for global democracy, which I call the Direct Argument. Like the De... (shrink)

This introduction consists of two parts. In the first part, the special issue editors introduce inductive metaphysics from a historical as well as from a systematic point of view and discuss what distinguishes it from other modern approaches to metaphysics. In the second part, they give a brief summary of the individual articles in this special issue.

For millennia, human beings have believed that it is morally wrong to judge others by the fortuitous or unfortunate events that befall them or by the actions of another person. Rather, an individual’s own intended, deliberate actions should be the basis of his or her evaluation, reward, and punishment. In a series of studies, the authors investigated whether such rules guide the judgments of children. The first 3 studies demonstrated that children view lucky others as more likely than unlucky others (...) to perform intentional good actions. Children similarly assess the siblings of lucky others as more likely to perform intentional good actions than the siblings of unlucky others. The next 3 studies demonstrated that children as young as 3 years believe that lucky people are nicer than unlucky people. The final 2 studies found that Japanese children also demonstrate a robust preference for the lucky and their associates. These findings are discussed in relation to M. J. Lerner’s (1980) just-world theory and J. Piaget’s (1932/1965) immanent-justice research and in relation to the development of intergroup attitudes. (shrink)

Self-consciousness can be defined as the ability to think 'I'-thoughts. Recently, it has been suggested that self-consciousness in this sense can (and should) be accounted for in terms of nonconceptual forms of self-representation. Here, I will argue that while theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness do provide us with important insights regarding the essential genetic and epistemic features of self-conscious thought, they can only deliver part of the full story that is required to understand the phenomenon of self-consciousness. I will provide two (...) arguments to this effect, drawing on insights from the philosophy of language and on structural differences between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of representation. Both arguments rest on the intuition that while self-consciousness requires explicit self-representation, nonconceptual content can at best provide implicit self-related information. I will conclude that in order to explain the emergence of self-conscious thought out of more basic forms of representations one has to explain the transition between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation. (shrink)

I introduce a case study from organization studies to argue that social epistemologists’ recommendation to cultivate diversity and dissent in science is unlikely to be welcomed in the social sciences unless it is coupled with another epistemic ideal: the norm of epistemic responsibility. The norm of epistemic responsibility enables me to show that organization scholars’ concern with the fragmentation of their discipline is generated by false assumptions: the assumption that a diversity of theoretical approaches will lead to fragmentation and the (...) assumption that an imposed consensus on a theoretical approach is needed to maintain the unity of the discipline. (shrink)

This book develops an original version of act-consequentialism. It argues that act-consequentialists should adopt a subjective criterion of rightness. The book develops new arguments which strongly suggest that, according to the best version of act-consequentialism, the rightness of actions depends on expected rather than actual value. Its findings go beyond the debate about consequentialism and touch on important debates in normative ethics and metaethics. The distinction between criterion of rightness and decision procedures addresses how, why, and in which sense moral (...) theories must be implemented by ordinary persons. The discussion of the rationales of "ought" implies "can" leads to the discovery of a hitherto overlooked moral principle, "ought" implies "evidence", which can be used to show that most prominent moral theories are false. Finally, in the context of discussing cases that are supposed to reveal intuitions that favour either objective or subjective consequentialism, the book argues that which cases are relevant for the discussion of objectivism and subjectivism depends on the type of moral theory we are concerned with (consequentialism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, etc.). From Value to Rightness will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in normative ethics and metaethics. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation and argues that the latter is required for self-consciousness. It is further argued that self-consciousness requires an awareness of other minds and that this awareness develops over the course of an increasingly complex perspectival differentiation, during which information about self and other that is implicit in early forms of social interaction becomes redescribed into an explicit format.

Some philosophers hold that objective consequentialism is false because it is incompatible with the principle that “ought” implies “can”. Roughly speaking, objective consequentialism is the doctrine that you always ought to do what will in fact have the best consequences. According to the principle that “ought” implies “can”, you have a moral obligation to do something only if you can do that thing. Frances Howard-Snyder has used an innovative thought experiment to argue that sometimes you cannot do what will in (...) fact have the best consequences because you do not know what will in fact have the best consequences. Erik Carlson has raised two objections against Howard-Snyder’s argument. This paper examines Howard-Snyder’s argument as well as Carlson’s objections, arguing that Carlson’s objections do not go through but Howard-Snyder’s argument fails nonetheless. Moreover, this paper attempts to show that objective consequentialism and other objectivist moral theories are compatible with the principle that “ought” implies “can”. Finally, this paper analyses a special kind of inability: ignorance-induced inability. (shrink)

Does matter consist of the simple or is it divisible into infinity? This is the question posed by the second antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason. In this first comprehensive systematic study of the antinomy of division, its derivation, the proofs for thesis and antithesis as well as the resolution are analysed. The developmental and historical dimensions of the topic are also discussed. The study shows that although the antinomy of division is on the one hand a critique of (...) metaphysics, it nevertheless achieves a positive result for Kant's transcendental philosophy: On the one hand, the resolution of the antinomy represents a conceptual sharpening of realism and idealism as well as of the transcendental concept of appearance. On the other hand, it shows that the structure of matter is conditioned by a priori determinations of reason and understanding. These insights are highly relevant not only for Kant's enterprise of an a priori foundation of the natural sciences, but also for the problem of the soul. (shrink)

This paper argues that objective consequentialism is incompatible with the rationales of ‘ “ought” implies “can” ’ – with the considerations, that is, that explain or justify this principle. Objective consequentialism is the moral doctrine that an act is right if and only if there is no alternative with a better outcome, and wrong otherwise. An act is obligatory if and only if it is wrong not to perform it. According to ‘ “ought” implies “can” ’, a person is morally (...) obligated to φ only if the person can φ. The rationales of ‘ “ought” implies “can” ’ include considerations related to intuitive plausibility, action-guidance, blameworthiness and fairness, and the nature of practical reasons. (shrink)

In today’s pandemic, many countries have experienced shortages of medical resources and many healthcare providers have often been faced with dramatic decisions about how to allocate beds, intensive care, or ventilators. Despite recognizing the need for triage, responses are not the same everywhere, and opinions and practices differ around what guidelines should be used, how they should be implemented, and who should ultimately decide. To some extent, triage issues reflect community values, revealing a given society’s moral standards and ideals. Our (...) goal is to study two countries which share many common features—Italy and France—as they deal with the pandemic, revealing the moral organization of medicine and healthcare, the power structures, and the nature of the disruptions in each context. (shrink)

How can legal norms be morally evaluated? In this paper we discuss and defend consequentialism about legal norms. According to this doctrine, the legitimacy of legal norms depends entirely on the consequences of the norms’ validity. Consequentialism about legal norms shares the advantages of both act- and rule-consequentialism while avoiding the respective disadvantages. In particular, consequentialism about legal norms has prima-facie plausibility like act-consequentialism and for similar reasons: it qualifies as a version of collective act-consequentialism. At the same time, the (...) implications of consequentialism about legal norms cohere with common-sense morality because, like rule-consequentialism, consequentialism about legal norms takes into account the motivational limits of human agents. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of disability on wellbeing and presents arguments against the mere-difference view of disability. According to the mere-difference view, disability does not by itself make disabled people worse off on balance. Rather, if disability has a negative impact on wellbeing overall, this is only so because society is not treating disabled people the way it ought to treat them. In objection to the mere-difference view, it has been argued, roughly, that the view licenses the permissibility of (...) causing disability and the impermissibility of causing nondisability. In her recent article, “Valuing Disability, Causing Disability”, Elizabeth Barnes attempts to show that this causation-based objection does not succeed. We disagree and argue why. We begin by explaining that in order to defeat the causation-based objection it does not suffice to show that it is not always true that the mere-difference view licenses causing disability. Rather, license in some cases, in a way that undermines the plausibility of the mere-difference view, would be sufficient for the causation-based objection to succeed. Then our discussion turns to an important challenge for proponents of the causation-based objection: Some defenders of the mere-difference view are prepared to simply accept the counterintuitive implications of their position. A dialogue with such proponents of the mere-difference view requires arguments with independent traction. We present several such arguments to the effect that the mere-difference view needs to be significantly reduced in scope – and may turn out to be false altogether. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of David Gauthier’s contractarian moral theory. I point out morally counter-intuitive implications of Gauthier’s theory – for example, with respect to societies with slavery or concerning the protection of animals – as well as theoretically unattractive features, such as the overly optimistic assumption of translucent agents. However, contractarian moral theories can be improved by correcting the theoretically unattractive features. Moreover, though some morally counter-intuitive implications cannot be avoided, whether we should accept these implications ultimately depends (...) on whether an instrumentalist account of practical reason is defensible and how morality relates to practical reason. Thus, contractarian moral theories cannot be refuted as easily as one might think at first. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall present the theoretical view on the reliability democracy as presented in Prijić Samaržija’s book Democracy and Truth, and examine its validity through the case of the division of epistemic labour in the process of deliberation on autism treatment policies. It may appear that because of their strong demands, namely, the demand for rejection of medical authority and for exclusive expertise on autism, autistic individuals gathered around the neurodiversity movement present a threat to the reliability democracy.

When forecasting their own behavior, people are often inaccurate and tend to predict that they will engage in more socially desirable behavior than they actually do. The problem with inaccurate behavioral forecasts is that they can lead to negative consequences both for the self and for others. One particularly negative consequence may be that such errors can produce overly harsh evaluations and condemnation of others who do not act in a way that most people predict they themselves would act. This (...) paper identifies these common behavioral forecasting errors, why they occur, and the negative interpersonal and unintended, unethical consequences they can have. (shrink)

This paper presents an Anscombian alternative to the traditional deontic conception of ought. According to the Anscombian conception of ought developed here, ought is general as opposed to ‘peculiarly moral’, norm-referring instead of law- or obligation-referring, and ‘heroic’ in the sense that it does not presuppose that individuals can do or be as they ought. Its connection to matters of fact can, moreover, be clearly stated. In the first part of the paper, I describe some significant logical characteristics of this (...) conception, and argue that it provides a more suitable account of the oughts of ethics as compared to the deontic conception. One particular strength of the Anscombian conception of ought is that it does justice to the possibility of tragedy in human life, where tragedy is understood as the possibility that a thoroughly well-intentioned individual might sometimes ensure her own moral imperfection, precisely by doing what is morally right or best at every step along the way. To motivate this feature of the view, I sketch a corresponding picture of responsibility for actions in terms of ownership of one’s deeds. This conception of responsibility allows that what one ought to do is not always constrained by what one can do, while saving the intuitions about fairness and the practical scope of moral norms that principally motivate ‘ought implies can’. To illustrate and motivate the overall account I discuss a number of cases, including the character Winston from George Orwell’s 1984. (shrink)

In der gegenwärtigen Debatte um Kritik und spezifischer um verschiedene Begründungsformen der kritischen Theorie spielt die kritische Theorie der Anerkennung, wie sie von Axel Honneth über die letzten 25 Jahre entwickelt worden ist, eine zentrale Rolle. Diese Theorie soll im vorliegenden Beitrag vorgestellt werden. Um den Aufbau und die Funktionsweise dieser Theorie richtig zu verstehen, ist es unabdingbar, sich zunächst zu vergegenwärtigen, wie sich Honneth in der Tradition der kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie positioniert, also innerhalb jenes Theorieprojekts, das seine Wurzeln bei Hegel (...) und Marx findet und durch Horkheimer in den 1930er Jahren Programm geworden ist. Nach der Lesart, die ich vertreten möchte, entwickelt Honneth seine Anerkennungstheorie vor dem Hintergrund eines wahrgenommenen Scheiterns der ersten und zweiten Generation der Frankfurter Schule an der methodischen Anforderung einer immanenten Kritik, die für das Projekt einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie definierend ist. Beides – die methodische Anforderung einer immanenten Kritik, wie sie Honneth begreift, und das Scheitern, das Honneth bei Horkheimer, Adorno und Habermas wahrnimmt – wird Gegenstand des ersten Teils (1) dieses Beitrags sein. „Anerkennung“ wird von Honneth als der Begriff eingeführt, mit dem das Kernproblem einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie gelöst werden soll. Mit dem Begriff der Anerkennung soll es nämlich, wie wir im zweiten Teil (2) eingehender nachvollziehen werden, möglich sein, Zugang zu konkreten Ansprüchen auf Befreiung zu finden, die von der Gesellschaft geschaffen und zugleich verletzt werden. In einer Diskussion ideologischer Anerkennung werde ich zuletzt (3) mögliche Grenzen der kritischen Theorie der Anerkennung Honneths aufzeigen, die sich unmittelbar aus dem Erbe der Frankfurter Schule, wie Honneth es begreift, ergeben. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 62 Heft: 2 Seiten: 231-238.

Straipsnyje analizuojami interviu, atlikti su priverstinę migraciją dėl Rusijos pradėto karo Ukrainoje patyrusiomis migrantėmis iš Ukrainos, kurios atvyko į Lietuvą po 2022 m. vasario 24 d. Gilinamasi į pasakojimus apie karo bei priverstinės migracijos patirtis bei aiškinamasi, kokios situacijos įvardijamos kaip kritinės individualiame, šeimos bei bendruomenės lygmenyse, taip pat – kokios strategijos pasitelkiamos minėtoms krizėms įveikti.