Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. Some have recently claimed that the implementation of such method in the form of ameliorative projects is truth-driven and should thus be epistemically constrained, ultimately at least (Simion 2018; cf. Podosky 2018). This paper challenges that claim on the assumption of a social constructionist analysis of ideologies, and provides an alternative, pragmatic and cognitive framework for determining the legitimacy of ameliorative conceptual projects overall. The upshot is that one should (...) not ameliorate for the sake of truth or knowledge, in the case of ideologies—at least, not primarily. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable (...) method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise. (shrink)

Many prominent accounts of free will and moral responsibility make use of the idea that agents can be responsive to reasons. Call such theories Reasons accounts. In what follows, I consider the tenability of Reasons accounts in light of situationist social psychology and, to a lesser extent, the automaticity literature. In the first half of this chapter, I argue that Reasons accounts are genuinely threatened by contemporary psychology. In the second half of the paper I consider whether such threats can (...) be met, and at what cost. Ultimately, I argue that Reasons accounts can abandon some familiar assumptions, and that doing so permits us to build a more empirically plausible picture of our agency. (shrink)

I address three topics. First, I argue that the issue of corporate moral responsibility is an important one for business ethics.Second, I examine a core argument for the claim that the corporate organization is a separate moral agent and show it is based on anunnoticed but elementary mistake deriving from the fallacy of division. Third, I examine the assumptions collectivists make about whatit means to say that organizations act and that they act intentionally and show that these assumptions are mistaken (...) in their failure to understand the nature of intentional causality and of “as-if” intentionality. In exposing these mistakes I set out my own view in the form oftwo theses, the first of which states that individual members of an organization are always causally responsible for any corporate act,and the second of which states that attributions of intentions to corporations are always either descriptive or prescriptive attributionsof “as if” intentionality. (shrink)

Revisionism in the theory of moral responsibility is the idea that some aspect of responsibility practices, attitudes, or concept is in need of revision. While the increased frequency of revisionist language in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is striking, what discussion there has been of revisionism about responsibility and free will tends to be critical. In this paper, I argue that at least one species of revisionism, moderate revisionism, is considerably more sophisticated and defensible than critics have (...) realized. I go on to argue for the advantages of moderate revisionist theories over standard compatibilist and incompatibilist theories. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

This book gives an overview of paraconsistent logics - that is logics which allow for inconsistency. Although allowing for inconsistency, paraconsistent logics are worth considering: Logical systems are worth considering in their own right since we can learn about very abstract structural properties of logics and the concepts employed within them such as negation, necessity and consistency. Some non-classical logics are especially of interest from a philosophical perspective since they alone offer the possibility of solving or even stating some philosophical (...) problems. These introductory lectures argue from a philosophical perspective that some paraconsistent logics are of interest or even the best candidates for dealing with specific philosophical problems. Although logic is seen from the point of view of its philosophical use, various formal systems are described, compared and employed. (shrink)

In recent years, reflection on the relationship between individual moral responsibility and determinism has undergone a remarkable renaissance. Incompatibilists, those who believe moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism, have offered powerful new arguments in support of their views. Compatibilists, those who think moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, have responded with ingenious counterexamples and alternative accounts of responsibility. Despite the admirable elevation of complexity and subtlety within both camps, the trajectory of the literature is somewhat discouraging. Every dialectical stalemate between (...) incompatibilists and compatibilists seems to be superseded by a similar though often more subtle stalemate.1 The stalemates have two sources. On the one hand, incompatibilists again and again find powerful intuitive support from our folk concept. On the other hand, compatibilists seem right to insist that even if determinism were true, this would not mitigate our need for a concept of responsibility. (shrink)

Was ist George Berkeleys Auffassung des sinnlich wahrnehmbaren Naturgeschehens? Sie zu erklären und nachzuvollziehen ist Ziel des Bandes. Er zeigt, dass Berkeley das Naturgeschehen als einen göttlichen Diskurs sieht; das visuell Wahrgenommene ist dabei die Sprache. Berkeley beharrt darauf, diese These der göttlichen Sprache wörtlich auszulegen, da sie Grundlage eines seiner Ansicht nach einzigartigen Gottesbeweises ist. Um Berkeleys Argumentation zu verstehen, muss man sich auch mit den (historischen) Umständen beschäftigen, in welchen er diese These entwickelt und verteidigt. Deshalb wird sie (...) im ersten Teil in ihren diachronen und synchronen historischen Kontext eingebettet. Die zweite Hälfte ist dann einer kritischen Rekonstruktion von Berkeleys These gewidmet. (shrink)

The author sets out a realist defense of the claim that in the absence of an international enforcement agency, multinational corporations operating in a competitive international environment cannot be said to have a moral obligation to contribute to the international common good, provided that interactions are nonrepetitive and provided effective signals of agent reliability are not possible. Examples of international common goods that meet these conditions are support of the global ozone layer and avoidance of the global greenhouse effect. Pointing (...) out that the conclusion that multinationals have no moral obligations in these areas is deplorable, the author urges the establishment of an international enforcement agency. (shrink)

In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility-characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially historical notion. Some have maintained that responsible agents must have (...) particular sorts of histories, others have argued that no such history is required. Resolution of this contentious issue is connected to a wide range of concerns, including the significance and culpability of different forms of manipulation, the plausibility of important incompatibilist criticisms of compatibilism, and of course, a satisfactory account of moral responsibility. As it turns out, history matters sometimes, but less frequently than we might think. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a substantial amount of work in reverse mathematics concerning natural mathematical principles that are provable from RT, Ramsey's Theorem for Pairs. These principles tend to fall outside of the "big five" systems of reverse mathematics and a complicated picture of subsystems below RT has emerged. In this paper, we answer two open questions concerning these subsystems, specifically that ADS is not equivalent to CAC and that EM is not equivalent to RT.

As the 21st century breaks upon us, no ethical issues in business appear as significant as those being created by the rapidglobalization of business. Globalization has created numerous ethical problems for the manager of the multinational corporation. What does justice demand, for example, in the relations between a multinational and its host country, particularly when that country is less developed? Should human rights principles govern the relations between a multinational and the workers of a host country, and if so, which (...) principles are the correct ones? How should a multinational deal with a government in which corruption is rife? What are the ethical considerations involved in determining whether and how to transfer a risky technology to a country whose people may not be able to safely absorb that technology? What kind of labor and environmental standards should a multinational adopt when operating in a country whose government legislates only very low standards? (shrink)

The Enhanced Indispensability Argument appeals to the existence of Mathematical Explanations of Physical Phenomena to justify mathematical Platonism, following the principle of Inference to the Best Explanation. In this paper, I examine one example of a MEPP—the explanation of the 13-year and 17-year life cycle of magicicadas—and argue that this case cannot be used defend the EIA. I then generalize my analysis of the cicada case to other MEPPs, and show that these explanations rely on what I will call ‘optimal (...) representations’, which are representations that capture all that is relevant to explain a physical phenomenon at a specified level of description. In the end, because the role of mathematics in MEPPs is ultimately representational, they cannot be used to support mathematical Platonism. I finish the paper by addressing the claim, advanced by many EIA defendants, that quantification over mathematical objects results in explanations that have more theoretical virtues, especially that they are more general and modally stronger than alternative explanations. I will show that the EIA cannot be successfully defended by appealing to these notions. (shrink)

Neil Levy (2007) argues that empirical data shows that psychopaths lack the moral knowledge required for moral responsibility. His account is intriguing, and it offers a promising way to think about the significance of psychopaths for work on moral responsibility. In what follows we focus on three lines of concern connected to Levy's account: his interpretation of the data, the scope of exculpation, and the significance of biological explanations for anti-social behavior.

I argue that Plato was right in claiming that justice is more profitable, more rational, and more intrinsically valuable than injustice, and that this is particularly true for business organizations. The research on prisoners’ dilemmas and social dilemmas shows that ethical behavior is more profitable and more rational than unethical behavior in terms of both the negative sanctions on unethical behavior when interactions with stakeholders are iterated, and the positive rewards of habitually ethical behavior when stakeholders can identify those who (...) are predisposed to be ethical. In addition, the psychological research on justice shows that justice is intrinsically valued, both from an outcome and from a process perspective, and so crucial for business organizations, particularly in terms of organizational effectiveness. (shrink)

The income gap between women and men expands with age, culminating in a gender pension gap in old age that is much larger than pay gaps earlier in life. In this article, I question two attempts to justify gender pension gaps. One insists that lower financial contribution justifies women's lower overall pensions. The second states that women must receive less monthly because they live longer. I argue that neither of these reasons is fair in a gender-unjust world. Rather than justifying (...) pension gaps, female longevity is an opportunity to promote gender justice: by subsidizing longer lives, old-age redistribution attenuates lifetime gender inequality. In the case of retirement pensions, the use of age to promote gender equality may be preferable to explicit gender differentiation. There is, then, a feminist case for old-age redistribution. (shrink)

The problem of divine attributes was one of the most intensely debated topics in the 17-18th century Irish philosophy. Simply put, the problem revolves around the ontological question (i) whether human and divine attributes differ in degree or in kind, and the semantical (ii) how we ought to describe these divine attributes by means of our human language. While there was a consensus that analogies play a key role in solving the semantical problem there was a controversy about the kind (...) of speech they allow for. Especially, it was contested if using analogies for divine predication allows for a separate kind of speech, i.e. allows us to speak neither literally nor metaphorically but analogically. The aim of my paper is to contextualize George Berkeley's position on the problem of divine attributes as developed in § 21 of the IV. Dialogue in Alciphron.More specifically and contrary to what most scholars hold, I argue Berkeley fails to follow Cardinal Cajetan with remarkable closeness. Despite paraphrasing parts of Cajetan's De Nominum Analogia in § 21, the solution Berkeley advances is closer to the position of John Duns Scotus – and hence, ironically, with the position Cajetan aimed to reject. (shrink)

I evaluate the adequacy of the three models of international business ethics that have been recently proposed by Thomas Donald son, Gerard Elfstrom and Richard De George. Using the example of the conduct of the aluminum companies in Jamaica, I argue that these three models fail to address the most important of the ethical issues encountered by multinationals because they focus too narrowly on human rights issues and on utilitarian considerations. In addition I argue that these models also evidence an (...) inadequate understanding of microeconomic theory. I end by proposing that these defects can be remedied by a model of ethics that incorporates a theory of moral rights, a utilitarian-based theory of the market, and a theory of justice. (shrink)

Explicitly fictional armchair reconstructions of the past are sometimes taken to be informative about philosophical issues. What appeal a counterfactual genealogy has depends on its speculative accuracy, that is, its accuracy in identifying relevant causal, functional, or explanatory particulars. However, even when speculatively accurate, counterfactual genealogies rarely secure more than proofs of possibility. For more ambitious deployments of genealogy – for example, efforts to show what properties the target concept in fact predicates – genealogies are hamstrung by the possibility of (...) predicative drift, or changes over time in what the concept predicates. Still, even when counterfactual genealogies fail to tell us about our current practices or concepts, they may identify appealing successors. Pettit's (2018 Pettit, Philip. 2018. The Birth of Ethics: Reconstructing the Role and Nature of Morality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]) innovative defense of moral realism and his employment of a counterfactual genealogy provides an illuminating instance of the promise and challenges facing accounts employing counterfactual genealogies. (shrink)

We investigated the source of the visual search advantage of some emotional facial expressions. An emotional face target (happy, surprised, disgusted, fearful, angry, or sad) was presented in an array of neutral faces. A faster detection was found for happy targets, with angry and, especially, sad targets being detected more poorly. Physical image properties (e.g., luminance) were ruled out as a potential source of these differences in visual search. In contrast, the search advantage is partly due to the facilitated processing (...) of affective content, as shown by an emotion identification task. Happy expressions were identified faster than the other expressions and were less likely to be confounded with neutral faces, whereas misjudgements occurred more often for angry and sad expressions. Nevertheless, the distinctiveness of some local features (e.g., teeth) that are consistently associated with emotional expressions plays the strongest role in the search advantage pattern. When the contribution of these features to visual search was factored out statistically, the advantage disappeared. (shrink)

According to an environmental application of Rawlsian principles of justice, the well-ordered society cannot tolerate the perpetration of certain environmental harms. This paper gives an account of those harms committed in the form of ecocide. The concept of ecocide is developed, as well as the ideal of eco-relational pluralism, as conceptual tools for defending citizens’ environmental interests. This paper aims to identify persuasive and reasonably acceptable justice claims for compelling states to curtail environmentally destructive activities through recourse to principles firmly (...) established in the liberal tradition, while simultaneously exploring the limitations of such an approach. (shrink)

Up to now researchers have maintained that Nietzsche’s philosophy has no concept of social justice or have hardly noticed such a concept. On the contrary, this article argues that social justice plays an important role in Nietzsche’s political thinking. It shows that his conception of justice is modelled after Plato’s antique concept of political justice. The main thesis of the paper is that this conception is embodied in Nietzsche’s notion of a well-ordered state or society. An additional thesis concerns the (...) anthropological basis of what Nietzsche holds to be a just social order. This basis is constituted by his conviction that people are not only fundamentally unequal but also extremely different in worth and rank. (shrink)

I discuss experimental work by Nichols, and Nichols and Knobe, with respect to the philosophical problems of free will and moral responsibility. I mention some methodological concerns about the work, but focus principally on the philosophical implications of the work. The experimental results seem to show that in particular, concrete cases we are more willing to attribute responsibility than in cases described abstractly or in general terms. I argue that their results suggest a deep problem for traditional accounts of compatibilism, (...) and that they may cast some light on the literature surrounding Frankfurt cases. I also suggest a way in which mature philosophical convictions about free will may reflect a contingent process of refining and defending either of two competing strands of intuitions, and suggest that this may partly explain the persistence of philosophical debates about free will. (shrink)

This paper outlines one way of thinking about the problem of free will, some general reasons for dissatisfactions with traditional approaches to solving it, and some considerations in favor of pursuing a broadly revisionist solution to it. If you are looking for a student-friendly introduction to revisionist theorizing about free will, this is probably the thing to look at.

In this paper I criticize libertarianism and skepticism about free will. The criticism of libertarianism takes some steps towards filling in an argument that is often mentioned but seldom developed in any detail, the argument that libertarianism is a scientifically implausible view. I say "take some steps" because I think the considerations I muster (at most) favor a less ambitious relative of that argument. The less ambitious claim I hope to motivate is that there is little reason to believe that (...) extant libertarian accounts satisfy a standard of naturalistic plausibility, even if they do satisfy a standard of naturalistic compatibility. The argument against skepticism about free will tries to show (1) perhaps the most prominent form of skeptical argument against the existence of free will does not work, and (2) there is a good general argument against skepticism about free will. (shrink)

This chapter provides summaries of the chapter of this book and introduces the major themes and debates addressed in the volume. Discussed are Nietzsche’s metaphysics; his philosophy of mind in light of contemporary views; the question of panpsychism of Beyond Good and Evil 36; the rejection of dualism in favour of monism, in particular a monism of value; Nietzsche’s positions on consciousness and embodied cognition in light of recent cognitive science; a conception of freedom and agency based on an intrinsically (...) motivating; embodied sense of self-efficacy; a Nietzschean account of valuing understood as drive-induced affective orientations of which an agent approves; the idea of ressentiment conceived as a process of intentional, not reflectively strategic, self-deception about one’s own conscious mental states; and a defence of a Nietzschean naturalism. (shrink)

La mal llamada “Conquista del Desierto” constituyó una serie de campañas militares ocurridas en el actual territorio patagónico argentino entre los años 1878 y 1885 cuyo resultado fue el asesinato, la violación y sometimiento a la esclavitud de diversos pueblos y comunidades indígenas. Este no fue un caso aislado, sino que se suma a una serie de ataques sistemáticos que han sufrido los indígenas en la Argentina. En los últimos años, a raíz del reclamo y las luchas de los pueblos (...) y comunidades indígenas, así como también de las organizaciones de derechos humanos, se han comenzado a juzgar algunos de estos hechos. En particular, la Masacre de Napalpí (1924) y la Masacre de La Bomba (1947) fueron los primeros que lograron respuestas judiciales favorables. En ambos se determinó que el accionar estatal era constitutivo de un genocidio y, por lo tanto, se debía resarcir a las comunidades actuales. Ahora bien, la Campaña del Desierto, al día de hoy, no tiene respuesta por parte del Estado. Teniendo presente este panorama, nuestro objetivo en este trabajo es reconstruir los diferentes problemas que enfrenta la posibilidad del reclamo judicial. Para ello, comenzaremos describiendo en qué consistió la Campaña del Desierto. Luego, explicaremos la noción de genocidio aplicado a hechos de injusticias históricas. Como tercer paso, reconstruiremos los casos jurisprudenciales que se han preocupado por genocidios indígenas ocurridos en el pasado. Con este panorama revelado, nos enfocaremos en los diferentes problemas jurídicos y políticos que surgen en los reclamos de justicia. (shrink)

The present chapter is concerned with revisionism about free will. It begins by offering a new characterization of revisionist accounts and the way such accounts fit (or do not) in the familiar framework of compatibilism and incompatibilism. It then traces some of the recent history of the development of revisionist accounts, and concludes by remarking on some challenges for them.

The way digital information technologies work and, more specifically, the possibilities for action that technological devices offer to us affect our processes of political belief formation. In particular, there seems to be a close connection between our digital affordances and the increase of the sort of polarization that threatens the proper functioning of democracy. In this paper, we analyze whether the type of polarization linked to the use of digital technologies, and which endangers the health of public deliberation, has to (...) do with the adoption of beliefs whose contents are increasingly extreme—extremism—or, on the contrary, has more to do with increasing our credence in the core beliefs of our political identity—radicalism. (shrink)

There is very little study of Latin American Philosophy in the English-speaking philosophical world. This can sometimes lead to the impression that there is nothing of philosophical worth in Latin American philosophy or its history. The present article offers some reasons for thinking that this impression is mistaken, and indeed, that we ought to have more study of Latin American philosophy than currently exists in the English-speaking philosophical world. In particular, the article argues for three things: (1) an account of (...) cultural resources that is useful for illuminating the fact of cultural differences and variations in cultural complexity, (2) a framework for understanding the value of philosophy, and (3) the conclusion that there is demonstrable value to Latin American philosophy and its study. (shrink)

While Nietzsche's rejection of metaphysical free will and moral desert has been widely recognised, the sense in which Nietzsche continues to use the term freedom affirmatively remains largely unnoticed. The aim of this article is to show that freedom and agency are among Nietzsche’s central concerns, that his much-discussed interest in power in fact originates in a first-person account of freedom, and that his understanding of the phenomenology of freedom informs his theory of agency. He develops a non-reductive drive-psychological motivational (...) theory: reflective judgement and reasons can motivate by means of affective orientations agents have due to their drives. In particular, due to a standing desire or 'instinct for freedom' agents can generate, in mental simulations, the necessary motivational affects to unify their drives in view of certain long-term goals. (shrink)

Proposals for the democratization of technology imply a necessary condition of universal emancipatory technological literacy. However, in the literature on the topic, people’s willingness to assume the cost in time and effort involved in acquiring that knowledge is often taken for granted. In this paper, we apply Anthony Downs’s economic theory of political action in democracy to analyze the cost-benefit ratio of this literacy from the perspective of the individual subject who should acquire it. Our conclusion is that the cost (...) does not rationally justify in an instrumental sense a benefit that, being mainly of an indivisible nature, motivates individuals to avoid their share of the cost to produce it. (shrink)

I examine the extent to which Dennett’s account in Freedom Evolves might be construed as revisionist about free will or should instead be understood as a more traditional kind of compatibilism. I also consider Dennett’s views about philosophical work on free agency and its relationship to scientific inquiry, and I argue that extant philosophical work is more relevant to scientific inquiry than Dennett’s remarks may suggest.

Political egalitarians tend to defend equal distributions of voting power at specific times, as in ‘one election, one vote’. Appealing as it is, the principle seems incompatible with distributing power proportionally to the stakes voters have at different elections, as in ‘one stake, one vote’. This article argues that the tension above stems from the temporal scope ascribed to political equality, as at specific moments of democratic decision-making instead of over entire lives. More specifically, ascribing a lifetime view to political (...) equality renders equality compatible with proportionality at different elections. I first show that storable votes differ from standard votes in their distinctive commitment to lifetime political equality. I then argue that storable voting schemes are compatible with three key reasons to value political equality: equal consideration of interests, relational equality, and non-domination. Finally, storable votes are also consistent with proportionality at specific times. I conclude that the neglected idea of lifetime political equality can, through storable votes, deliver proportionality without inequality. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable (...) method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise. (shrink)

This article describes Catholic natural law tradition by examining its origins in the medieval penitentials, the papal decretals, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and seventeenth-century casuistry. Catholic natural law emerges as a flexible ethic that conceives of human nature as rational and as oriented to certain basic goods that ought to be pursued and whose pursuit is made possible by the virtues. Four approaches to natural law that have evolved within the United States during the twentieth century are then identified, (...) including the traditionalist, proportionalist, right reason, and historicist approaches. The normative implications of these approaches are discussed in relation to ethical issues in the tobacco industry, ITT under Geneen, the marketing of pharmaceuticals, affirmative action, and bribery. It is argued that Alasdair MacIntyre is correct in claiming that the natural law tradition issuperior to the liberal ethics of modern deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)