BackgroundThe global expansion of biobanks has led to a range of bioethical concerns related to consent, privacy, control, ownership, and disclosure. As an opportunity to engage broader audiences on these concerns, bioethicists have welcomed the commercial success of Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. To assess the impact of the book on discussion within the media and popular culture more generally, we systematically analyzed the ethics-related themes emphasized in reviews and articles about the book, and (...) in interviews and profiles of Skloot.MethodsWe conducted a content analysis of a population of relevant English-language articles and transcripts (n = 125) produced by news organizations and publications in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain/Ireland, and Australia/New Zealand. We scored each article for the emphasis and appearance of 9 ethics-related themes. These were informed consent, welfare of the vulnerable, compensation, scientific progress, control/access, accountability/oversight, privacy, public education, and advocacy.ResultsThe informed consent theme dominated media discussion, with almost 39.2 percent of articles/transcripts featuring the theme as a major focus and 44.8 percent emphasizing the theme as a minor focus. Other prominent themes and frames of reference focused on the welfare of the vulnerable (18.4 percent major emphasis; 36.0 percent minor emphasis), and donor compensation (19.2 percent major; 52.8 percent minor). Ethical themes that comprised a second tier of prominence included those of scientific progress, control/access, and accountability/oversight. The least prominent themes were privacy, public education, and advocacy.ConclusionsThe book has been praised as an opportunity to elevate media discussion of bioethics, but such claims should be re-considered. The relatively narrow focus on informed consent in the media discussion generated by Skloot’s book may limit the ability of ethicists and advocates to elevate attention to donor control, compensation, patenting, privacy, and other ethical issues. Still, ethicists should view the book and a pending major TV film translation as opportunities to highlight through media outreach, consultation exercises and public forums a broader range of bioethical concerns that would otherwise be under-emphasized in news coverage. Such efforts, however, need to be carefully planned and evaluated. (shrink)

Recently Robert Forman has attempted to muster support for the largely abandoned position that mystical experiences cross-culturally include an unmediated, non-relative core. To reopen the debate he has solicited essays from likeminded scholars for his book, The Problem of Pure Consciousness. Predictably the focus of the volume rests on the refutation of the position most notably expounded by Steven Katz in his influential article of 1978, ‘Language, Epistemology and Mysticism’.

What methodology should philosophers follow? Should they rely on methods that can be conducted from the armchair? Or should they leave the armchair and turn to the methods of the natural sciences, such as experiments in the laboratory? Or is this opposition itself a false one? Arguments about philosophical methodology are raging in the wake of a number of often conflicting currents, such as the growth of experimental philosophy, the resurgence of interest in metaphysical questions, and the use of formal (...) methods. This outstanding collection of specially-commissioned chapters by leading international philosophers discusses these questions and many more. It provides a comprehensive survey of philosophical methodology in the most important philosophical subjects: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics. A key feature of the collection is that philosophers discuss and evaluate contrasting approaches in each subject, offering a superb overview of the variety of methodological approaches - both naturalistic and non-naturalistic - in each of these areas. They examine important topics at the heart of methodological argument, including the role of intuitions and conceptual analysis, thought experiments, introspection, and the place that results from the natural sciences should have in philosophical theorizing. The collection begins with a fascinating exchange about philosophical naturalism between Timothy Williamson and Alexander Rosenberg, and also includes contributions from the following philosophers: Lynne Rudder Baker, Matt Bedke, Greg Currie, Michael Devitt, Matthew C. Haug, Jenann Ismael, Hilary Kornblith, Neil Levy, E.J. Lowe, Kirk Ludwig, Marie McGinn, David Papineau, Matthew Ratcliffe, Georges Rey, Jeffrey W. Roland, Barry C. Smith, Amie L. Thomasson, Valerie Tiberius, Jessica Wilson, and David W. Smith. (shrink)

_Kant and Applied Ethics_ makes an important contribution to Kant scholarship, illuminating the vital moral parameters of key ethical debates. Offers a critical analysis of Kant’s ethics, interrogating the theoretical bases of his theory and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses Examines the controversies surrounding the most important ethical discussions taking place today, including abortion, the death penalty, and same-sex marriage Joins innovative thinkers in contemporary Kantian scholarship, including Christine Korsgaard, Allen Wood, and Barbara Herman, in taking Kant’s philosophy in new (...) and interesting directions Clarifies Kant’s legacy for applied ethics, helping us to understand how these debates have been structured historically and providing us with the philosophical tools to address them. (shrink)

When examined critically, Kant's views on sex and marriage give us the tools to defend same-sex marriage on moral grounds. The sexual objectification of one's partner can only be overcome when two people take responsibility for one another's overall well-being, and this commitment is enforced through legal coercion. Kant's views on the unnaturalness of homosexuality do not stand up to scrutiny, and he cannot (as he often tries to) restrict the purpose of sex to procreation. Kant himself rules out marriage (...) only when the partners cannot give themselves to one another equally – that is, if there is inequality of exchange. Because same-sex marriage would be between equals and would allow homosexuals to express their desire in a morally appropriate way, it ought to be legalized. (shrink)

When consumers choose to abstain from purchasing meat, they face some uncertainty about whether their decisions will have an impact on the number of animals raised and killed. Consequentialists have argued that this uncertainty should not dissuade consumers from a vegetarian diet because the “expected” impact, or average impact, will be predictable. Recently, however, critics have argued that the expected marginal impact of a consumer change is likely to be much smaller or more radically unpredictable than previously thought. This objection (...) to the consequentialist case for vegetarianism is known as the “causal inefficacy” (or “causal impotence”) objection. In this paper, we argue that the inefficacy objection fails. First, we summarize the contours of the objection and the standard “expected impact” response to it. Second, we examine and rebut two contemporary attempts (by Mark Budolfson and Ted Warfield) to defeat the expected impact reply through alleged demonstrations of the inefficacy of abstaining from meat consumption. Third, we argue that there are good reasons to believe that single individual consumers—not just consumers in aggregate—really do make a positive difference when they choose to abstain from meat consumption. Our case rests on three economic observations: (i) animal producers operate in a highly competitive environment, (ii) complex supply chains efficiently communicate some information about product demand, and (iii) consumers of plant-based meat alternatives have positive consumption spillover effects on other consumers. (shrink)

"This book argues for a mixed view of punishment that balances consequentialism and retributivism. He has published extensively on philosophy and applied ethics. A central question in the philosophy of law is why the state's punishment of its own citizens is justified. Traditionally, two theories of punishment have dominated the field: consequentialism and retributivism. According to consequentialism, punishment is justified when it maximizes positive outcomes. According to retributivism, criminals should be punished because they deserve it. This book defends a mixed (...) view that recognizes the strength of both of these intuitions. By this account, the legislature should develop institutional policies and statutory penalties that maintain the social order, that is, consequentialism. It establishes punishment policies to deter criminal activity. By contrast, the criminal judiciary should give individual defendants what they deserve, that is, retributivism and thus expressing the community's appropriate sense of resentment at being wronged. The book justifies the two-tiered model by showing how it accords with our moral intuitions, our assumptions about how what we know affects our moral obligations, and a commonly held theory of freedom. This approach is developed by engaging classic and contemporary work in the philosophy of law, and shows its advantages over competing approaches from contemporary retributivists and other mixed theorists. The work also defends consequentialism against a longstanding objection that the social sciences give us little guidance regarding which policies to adopt. It draws on cutting-edge criminological research to show how punishment theory can help us to address some of our most pressing social issues, including the death penalty, drug laws, and mass incarceration. The book will also be of interest to legal philosophers, social scientists, especially criminologists, sociologists, economists, and political scientists"--. (shrink)

Given that natural selection is so powerful at optimizing complex adaptations, why does it seem unable to eliminate genes (susceptibility alleles) that predispose to common, harmful, heritable mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder? We assess three leading explanations for this apparent paradox from evolutionary genetic theory: (1) ancestral neutrality (susceptibility alleles were not harmful among ancestors), (2) balancing selection (susceptibility alleles sometimes increased fitness), and (3) polygenic mutation-selection balance (mental disorders reflect the inevitable mutational load on the thousands (...) of genes underlying human behavior). The first two explanations are commonly assumed in psychiatric genetics and Darwinian psychiatry, while mutation-selection has often been discounted. All three models can explain persistent genetic variance in some traits under some conditions, but the first two have serious problems in explaining human mental disorders. Ancestral neutrality fails to explain low mental disorder frequencies and requires implausibly small selection coefficients against mental disorders given the data on the reproductive costs and impairment of mental disorders. Balancing selection (including spatio-temporal variation in selection, heterozygote advantage, antagonistic pleiotropy, and frequency-dependent selection) tends to favor environmentally contingent adaptations (which would show no heritability) or high-frequency alleles (which psychiatric genetics would have already found). Only polygenic mutation-selection balance seems consistent with the data on mental disorder prevalence rates, fitness costs, the likely rarity of susceptibility alleles, and the increased risks of mental disorders with brain trauma, inbreeding, and paternal age. This evolutionary genetic framework for mental disorders has wide-ranging implications for psychology, psychiatry, behavior genetics, molecular genetics, and evolutionary approaches to studying human behavior. (Published Online November 9 2006) Key Words: adaptation; behavior genetics; Darwinian psychiatry; evolution; evolutionary genetics; evolutionary psychology; mental disorders; mutation-selection balance; psychiatric genetics; quantitative trait loci (QTL). (shrink)

Several philosophers (e.g., Ehring (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 30:461–480, 1996 ); Funkhouser (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 40:548–569, 2006 ); Walter (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37:217–244, 2007 ) have argued that there are metaphysical differences between the determinable-determinate relation and the realization relation between mental and physical properties. Others have challenged this claim (e.g., Wilson (Philosophical Studies, 2009 ). In this paper, I argue that there are indeed such differences and propose a “mechanistic” account of realization that elucidates why these differences hold. This (...) account of realization incorporates two distinct roles that mechanisms play in the realization of mental (and other special science) properties which are implicit, but undeveloped, in the literature—what I call “constitutive” and “integrative” mechanisms. I then use these two notions of mechanism to clarify some debates about the relations between realization, multiple realizability, and irreducibility. (shrink)

Most ethics guidelines for distributing scarce medical resources during the coronavirus pandemic seek to save the most lives and the most life‐years. A patient’s prognosis is determined using a SOFA or MSOFA score to measure likelihood of survival to discharge, as well as a consideration of relevant comorbidities and their effects on likelihood of survival up to one or five years. Although some guidelines use age as a tiebreaker when two patients’ prognoses are identical, others refuse to consider age for (...) fear of discriminating against the elderly. In this paper, I argue that age is directly relevant for maximizing health benefits, so current ethics guidelines are wrongly excluding or deemphasizing life‐stage in their triage algorithms. Research on COVID‐19 has shown that age is a risk factor in adverse outcomes, independent of comorbidities. And limiting a consideration of life‐years to only one or five years past discharge does not maximize health benefits. Therefore, based on their own stated values, triage algorithms for coronavirus patients ought to include life‐stage as a primary consideration, along with the SOFA score and comorbidities, rather than excluding it or using it merely as a tiebreaker. This is not discriminatory because patients ought to have equal opportunity to experience life‐stages. The equitable enforcement of that right justifies unequal treatment based on age in cases when there is a scarcity of life‐saving resources. A consideration of life‐stage would thus allow healthcare workers to responsibly steward public resources in order to maximize lives and life‐years saved. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers of religion have sought to defend the rationality of religious belief by shifting the burden of proof onto the critic of religious belief. Some have appealed to extraordinary religious experience in making their case. Religious Experience, Justification, and History restores neglected explanatory and historical considerations to the debate. Through a study of William James, it contests the accounts of religious experience offered in recent works. Through reflection on the history of philosophy, it also unravels the philosophical use (...) of the term justification. Matthew Bagger argues that the commitment to supernatural explanations implicit in the religious experiences employed to justify religious belief contradicts the modern ideal of human flourishing. (shrink)

Recently, epistocrats have challenged the value of democracy by claiming that policy outcomes can be improved if the electorate were narrowed to empower only those with sufficient knowledge to inform competent policy decisions. I argue that by centering on contesting how well regimes employ extant knowledge in decision-making, this conversation has neglected to consider how regimes influence the production of knowledge over time. Science and technology studies scholars have long recognized that political systems impact the productivity of expert research. I (...) argue that in order to evaluate which regime is “smarter,” we must consider not only how well they employ existing knowledge in decision-making, but we must also assess how those regimes influence the ongoing production of policy-relevant knowledge. Thus, I offer an instrumental defense of democracy based on its capacity to encourage a superior pattern and quality of expert research to inform policy decisions over time. Epistocracy may be effective at employing extant knowledge in the short run, but in the long run, democracy is a superior environment for producing knowledge to inform policy decisions. (shrink)

Kant is gaining popularity in business ethics because the categorical imperative rules out actions such as deceptive advertising and exploitative working conditions, both of which treat people merely as means to an end. However, those who apply Kant in this way often hold businesses themselves morally accountable, and this conception of collective responsibility contradicts the kind of moral agency that underlies Kant's ethics. A business has neither inclinations nor the capacity to reason, so it lacks the conditions necessary for constraint (...) by the moral law. Instead, corporate policies ought to be understood as analogous to legal constraints. They may encourage or discourage certain actions, but they cannot determine a person's maxim - which for Kant is the focus of moral judgment. Because there is no collective intention apart from any intentions of the individual agents who act as members of the corporation, an organization itself has no moral obligations. This poses a dilemma: either apply the categorical imperative to the actions of particular businesspeople and surrender the notion of collective responsibility, or apply a different moral theory to the actions of businesses themselves. Given the diffusion of responsibility in a bureaucracy, the explanatory usefulness of collective responsibility may force business ethicists to abandon Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

Skeptics of the moral case against industrial farming often assert that harm to animals in industrial systems is limited to isolated instances of abuse that do not reflect standard practice and thus do not merit criticism of the industry at large. I argue that even if skeptics are correct that abuse is the exception rather than the rule, they must still answer for two additional varieties of serious harm to animals that are pervasive in industrial systems: procedural harm and institutional (...) oppression. That procedural and institutional harms create conditions under which abuse is virtually inevitable only increases the skeptic's burden. (shrink)

This article offers two further philosophical engagements with the writings of the Apostle Paul. The recent work of Francois Laruelle on Paul in his turn to Christian non-theology is placed in dialogue with Nishitani Keiji’s account. This effort is accomplished by briefly grounding the discussion in Friedrich Nietzsche’s interpretation, where Paul is cast as the inventor of Christianity and the primary influence in the religion’s turn to a doctrinal and world-denying form of existence. As described here, Laruelle follows the broad (...) outline of Nietzsche’s interpretation, where Paul once more deviates from the example of Christ and is guilty of encouraging a turn away from the world towards concepts of transcendence and life after death. Nishitani, on the other hand, and despite his affection for Nietzsche’s thought, sees in Paul’s life and writings a turn towards immanence, and offers a heavily contrasting read of Paul, one which deserves greater attention. (shrink)

During the coronavirus pandemic, communities have faced shortages of important healthcare resources such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical staff, ICU beds and ventilators. Public health officials in the U.S. have had to make decisions about two major issues: which infected patients should be treated first, and which people who are at risk of infection should be inoculated first. Following Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, adopted guidelines have tended to value both whole lives and life-years. This process of collective moral reasoning has revealed (...) our common commitment to both Kantian and utilitarian principles. For Kant, respecting people’s rights entails that we ought to value whole lives equally. Therefore we ought to allocate resources so as to maximise the number of patients who survive to discharge. By contrast, the principle of utility has us maximise life-years so that people can satisfy more of their considered preferences. Although people are treated impartially in the utilitarian calculus, it does not recognise their equal worth. Subjecting Kantian ethics and utilitarianism to the process of reflective equilibrium lends support to the idea that we need a pluralistic approach that would accommodate our moral intuitions regarding both the equal value of whole lives and the additive value of life-years. (shrink)

Two of the major arguments against performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), appealing to fairness and the protection of athletes’ health, have serious flaws. First, there is no relevant moral distinction between the use of PEDs and the use of other performance enhancers that introduce unfairness and that we accept nonetheless. Second, prohibiting PEDs for athletes’ own good ignores the fact that adult athletes are constantly making tradeoffs to improve performance and pursue excellence, including sacrificing their health. We should not paternalistically impose our (...) values on them. On the other side, arguments to allow ‘safe’ PEDs provide no normative criterion to determine the acceptable level of risk, thus begging the question. The reasonable athlete argument solves both sets of problems: it justifies a ban on some performance-enhancing drugs based on health and fairness, while avoiding paternalism, and it also establishes a non-arbitrary standard to determine which drugs ought to be allowed. First, if unsafe PEDs were allowed, some athletes would refuse to take them out of concern for their health. This is a reasonable decision even though it would put them at a competitive disadvantage against athletes who choose to use unsafe PEDs. It would be unfair for clean athletes to suffer a competitive disadvantage for acting reasonably. Therefore, PEDs that pose significant health risks should be prohibited for all athletes. Second, it would be unreasonable for athletes to refuse, on principle, relatively safe and effective PEDs, so a blanket prohibition is also unjustified. Which drugs and which doses to allow should be determined not by athletes’ actual choices but by the hypothetical choices of the reasonable athlete. The resulting sport-specific drug policy would carve a justifiable middle path between complete prohibition and complete permission. (shrink)

Non-reductive physicalists have long held that the special sciences offer explanations of some phenomena that are objectively superior to physical explanations. This explanatory “autonomy” has largely been based on the multiple realizability argument. Recently, in the face of the local reduction and disjunctive property responses to multiple realizability, some defenders of non-reductive physicalism have suggested that autonomy can be grounded merely in human cognitive limitations. In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. By distinguishing between two kinds of abstraction (...) I show that the greater explanatory relevance of some special science predicates (to certain explananda) is both non-anthropocentric and not solely based on considerations of multiple realizability. This shows that the explanatory autonomy of the special sciences is safe from the local reduction and disjunctive property strategies, even if they are successful responses to the multiple realizability argument. (shrink)

Postcolonial science studies entails ostensibly contradictory critical and empirical commitments. Science studies scholars influenced by Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers embrace forms of realist, radical empiricism, while postcolonial studies scholars influenced by Jacques Derrida trace the limits of the knowable. This essay takes their common use of the term cosmopolitics as an unexpected point of departure for reconciling Derrida’s program with Stengers’s and Latour’s. I read Derrida’s critique of hospitality and Stengers’s and Latour’s ontological politics as necessary complements for conceiving (...) a care-oriented subalternist cosmopolitics, a process of composing common worlds that remains attentive to the limits of representation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Physician‐Assisted Suicide Refusing Life‐Saving Medical Treatment Organ Donation: Opt‐in or Opt‐out? Autonomy and the Body.

Current theoretical account of judgment has a difficult time saying anything positive about the experience of judging and, when they do offer positive accounts, they seem to overlook much that we know about the capacity already in our daily lives. Following the work of Martin Heidegger and Hubert Dreyfus, this article provides a phenomenological consideration of the structure of judging that considers judgment not as an intellectual act, but as a comportment. The article proceeds in two parts. The first offers (...) a brief consideration of the assumptions of intellectualist accounts and shows why, ultimately, they may be unable to bring judging into focus. The second section offers a phenomenological account of judging. The argument of section two is that deliberate judgment is a continuation of the structure of judgment understood as comportment and, in turn, that intellectualist accounts come onto the scene too late. (shrink)

Crowdsourcing is an increasingly popular method for researchers in the social and behavioral sciences, including experimental philosophy, to recruit survey respondents. Crowdsourcing platforms, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), have been seen as a way to produce high quality survey data both quickly and cheaply. However, in the last few years, a number of authors have claimed that the low pay rates on MTurk are morally unacceptable. In this paper, I explore some of the methodological implications for online experimental philosophy (...) research if, in fact, typical pay practices on MTurk are morally impermissible. I argue that the most straightforward solution to this apparent moral problem—paying survey respondents more and relying only on “high reputation” respondents—will likely increase the number of subjects who have previous experience with survey materials and thus are “non-naïve” with respect to those materials. I then discuss some likely effects that this increase in experimental non-naivete will have on some aspects of the “negative” program in experimental philosophy, focusing in particular on recent debates about philosophical expertise. (shrink)

This remarkably comprehensive Handbook provides a multifaceted yet carefully crafted investigation into the work of Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest philosophers the world has ever seen. With original contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this authoritative volume first sets Kant’s work in its biographical and historical context. It then proceeds to explain and evaluate his revolutionary work in metaphysics and epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of education, (...) and anthropology. Key Features: • Draws attention to the foundations of Kant’s varied philosophical insights — transcendental idealism, logic, and the bridge between theoretical and practical reason • Considers hitherto neglected topics such as sexuality and the philosophy of education • Explores the immense impact of his ground-breaking work on subsequent intellectual movements Serving as a touchstone for meaningful discussion about Kant’s philosophical and historical importance, this definitive Handbook is essential reading for Kant scholars who want to keep abreast of the field and for advanced students wishing to explore the frontiers of the subject. (shrink)

In this book, Matthew C. Ally explores the changing and increasingly troubled relationship between humankind and planet Earth. Oriented by the seemingly simple example of a woodland pond, he draws together insights from existential philosophy, scientific ecology, and several disciplines in the social sciences and humanities to articulate a strong sense of human belonging in the living Earth community and a binding imperative of participation in the struggle to preserve a habitable planet and build a livable world.

In “Diversifying Effective Altruism’s Longshots in Animal Advocacy”, Matthew C. Halteman acknowledges the value of aspects of the EA method but considers two potential critical concerns. First, it isn’t always clear that effective altruism succeeds in doing the most good, especially where long-shots like foiling misaligned AI or producing meat without animals are concerned. Second, one might worry that investing large sums of money in long-shots like these, even if they do succeed, has the opportunity cost of failing adequately (...) to combat systemic injustice in the shorter term. This chapter explains each of these reservations and goes on to suggest some exciting new initiatives—institution-building in Black veganism, higher education, and religious communities—that could mitigate these reservations, energize and diversify the movement, and remain true to the EA method of supporting underexploited but potentially high-impact causes that produce non-fungible goods otherwise unlikely to be funded. (shrink)

I argue that the completeness of physics is composed of two distinct claims. The first is the commonly made claim that, roughly, every physical event is completely causally determined by physical events. The second has rarely, if ever, been explicitly stated in the literature and is the claim that microphysics provides a complete inventory of the fundamental categories that constitute both the causal features and intrinsic nature of all the events that causally affect the physical universe. After showing that these (...) claims are distinct, I argue that they can be used to solve a difficulty with existing responses to the exclusion problem—namely, that these existing responses also undermine the powerful causal argument for physicalism. Recognizing that there are two kinds of completeness opens up room for the nonreductive physicalist to solve the exclusion problem while also endorsing a modified, cogent causal argument for a kind of physicalism compatible with her position. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how different views about the vertical and horizontal structure of reality affect the debate between reductive and nonreductive physicalism. This debate is commonly assumed to hinge on whether there are high-level, special-science properties that are distinct from low-level physical properties and whether the alleged multiple realizability of high-level properties establishes this. I defend a metaphysical interpretation of nonreductive physicalismin the absence of both of these assumptions. Adopting an independently motivated, discipline-relative account of natural properties and (...) appealing to a phenomenon I call “multiple determinativity,” in which a single physical property simultaneously realizes different kinds of special-science properties, is sufficient to show that some special-science properties are irreducible to physical properties and that nonreductive physicalism is not merely a terminological variant of reductive physicalism. (shrink)

This essay traces the ontological and political limits of Bruno Latour’s conceptualization of the ‘common world’. Latour formulates this concept in explicating how modernist scientific and political institutions require a metaphysical foundation that is anti-democratic in rigidly partitioning nature from society. In the stead of nature/society, Latour proposes a ‘cosmopolitics’ in which we recognize our embroilment in systems comprised of heterogeneous human and nonhuman actors, and seek to innovate appropriate procedures for governing such systems and composing a more peaceful common (...) world. However, feminist and postcolonialist science studies scholars have argued that Latour’s project fails to apprehend the experiences of subjects marginalized by scientific and political structures of representation. Thus, science studies scholars seem to be faced with a problem; to avoid ontological dissonance and contradiction in integrating Latour’s program with feminist and postcolonialist critiques we must defer his claims that the cosmopolitical program entirely supersedes contemporary social movements and oppositional politics. I offer an alternative. Namely, I argue that Latour’s formulations of cosmopolitics’ procedures and the common world’s boundaries actually require an incipient model of the limits of democratic representation. I modify Latour’s proposed system of representation by reading it against Dipesh Chakrabarty’s concept of ‘subaltern pasts’, which are unassimilable to academic historical narratives (in their attribution of agency to nonhuman gods, for example). This reading emphasizes how Latour does not adequately theorize and politicize the partially autonomous reality of those excluded from the common world and thus fails to attend to how this externalization replicates the violence of modernist representational institutions. (shrink)

This article attempts to show that Heidegger’s phenomenology may shed light on political phenomena. It pursues this project by arguing that Heidegger’s phenomenology is an appropriation of Aristotle’s practical philosophy and his conceptualization of phronesis. I argue that, in Being and Time, Heidegger’s ‘circumspection’, which is a capacity for making sense of practical situations, is a translation of phronesis. Heidegger argues, though, that the sight of circumspection is foreshortened by the rules and norms of ‘the one’. In division 2, ‘conscience’ (...) becomes a sharpening of the vision of phronesis, which sees through the one. I then defend Heidegger’s appropriation of phronesis and argue that Heidegger’s concept of conscience, which takes up a critical stance toward plurality, may actually be a proper vision of practical wisdom under modern conditions. I substantiate this claim by turning to an unlikely source to bolster Heidegger’s reading of phronesis and the modern public, Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

This paper draws on work in the sciences of the mind to cast doubt on some assumptions that have often been made in the study of self-control. Contra a long, Aristotelian tradition, recent evidence suggests that highly self-controlled individuals do not have a trait very similar to continence: they experience relatively few desires that conflict with their evaluative judgments and are not especially good at directly and effortfully inhibiting such desires. Similarly, several recent studies have failed to support the view (...) that self-control capacities are constituted, at least in part, by excellent inhibitory executive function ability. I propose an alternative “indirect harmony” hypothesis about trait self-control. According to this hypothesis, if there is a character trait of being highly self-controlled, it consists in motivational harmony within the mind that is brought about through the effective use of indirect resistance strategies that prevent occurrent motivational conflict from emerging in the first place. If this hypothesis is correct, high trait self-control in actual humans does not fit neatly into the traditional categories of either continence or temperance. I conclude by drawing out several implications this hypothesis has for future research on trait self-control and its relation to executive functions. (shrink)

A wealth of research in social psychology indicates that various ethically arbitrary situational factors exert a surprisingly powerful influence on moral conduct. Empirically-minded philosophers have argued over the last two decades that this evidence challenges Aristotelian virtue ethics. John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt have argued that situationist moral psychology – as opposed to Aristotelian moral psychology – is better suited to the practical aim of helping agents act better. The Aristotelian account, with its emphasis on individual factors, invites (...) too much risk of morally bad conduct insofar as it ignores the power of situational factors which lead us astray. Moral agents are often better off detecting and intervening on situational factors to help themselves act better. This paper offers an argument against the claim that situationism enjoys practical advantages over Aristotelian virtue ethics. There is empirical evidence suggesting that people can improve their behavior via Aristotelian strategies of deliberate self-improvement. This evidence also suggests that focusing our ethical attention on morally trivial factors may result in worse overall conduct. Accordingly, Aristotelianism may fare better than situationism on the practical issue of moral improvement. (shrink)

In this paper, I answer a fundamental question facing any view according to which natural selection is a population‐level causal process—namely, how is the causal process of natural selection related to, yet not preempted by, causal processes that occur at the level of individual organisms? Without an answer to this grounding question, the population‐level causal view appears unstable—collapsing into either an individual‐level causal interpretation or the claim that selection is a purely formal, statistical phenomenon. I argue that a causal account (...) of realization provides an answer to the grounding question. By applying this account of realization to the natural selection of melanism in rock pocket mice, I show how an alternative, formal account of realization, favored by proponents of the statistical interpretation, misses biologically important features. More generally, this paper shows how metaphysical issues about realization normally discussed in the philosophy of mind apply to debates in philosophy of biology. Thus, it is a first step toward fleshing out the oft‐noted similarities between debates in these areas. (shrink)

Although Kant defends a cosmopolitan ideal, his philosophy is problematically vague regarding how to achieve it, which lends support to the empty formalism charge. How Kant would respond to the crisis in Syria reveals that judgement plays too central a role, because Kantian principles lead to equally reasonable but opposite conclusions on how to weigh the duty of hospitality to refugees against a state’s duty to its own citizens, the right of prevention towards ISIS against the duty not to harm (...) non-combatants, and the responsibility to protect the people of Syria against the duty of non-interference in its internal affairs. (shrink)

Recourse to a variety of well-constructed arguments is undoubtedly a significant strategic asset for cultivating more ethical eating habits and convincing others to follow suit. Nevertheless, common obstacles often prevent even the best arguments from getting traction in our lives. For one thing, many of us enter the discussion hampered by firmly-entrenched but largely uninvestigated assumptions about food that make it difficult to imagine how even well-supported arguments that challenge our familiar frames of culinary reference could actually apply to us. (...) When an argument contests our cherished food ways, we are inclined almost reflexively to dodge, downplay, or dismiss it, and all the more anxiously if we suspect it’s a good one. Moreover, even when we find such arguments convincing and resolve to change, we often discover to our chagrin that, when the buffet is open, we lack the will to act on our convictions. Whether the obstacle is a lack of imagination or a failure of will, the way to concrete moral progress is blocked. Our aim here is to consider how other modes of philosophical inquiry can help us to overcome these two obstacles that arise at the margins of philosophy’s argumentative contributions to food ethics. In part I, we diagnose these obstacles as common moral malaises—we call them the malaise of imagination and the malaise of will—that create existential unease for moral agents that can curtail their ability to eat in accordance with what they learn from philosophical arguments. We then propose that other modes of philosophical inquiry can serve as therapy for these malaises. In part II, we argue that philosophical hermeneutics (exemplified by Hans-Georg Gadamer) can treat the malaise of imagination by helping us to excavate and revise hidden prejudices that interfere with our ability authentically to engage arguments that challenge entrenched assumptions about food. In part III, we argue that philosophy as care of the self (exemplified by Pierre Hadot) can treat the malaise of will by helping us to identify habits of thought and action that hamper concrete progress toward new dietary ideals and to replace them, through repetitive exercises, with transformed habits. In a brief conclusion, we identify some benefits of this approach. (shrink)

This article explores the responses to nihilism offered by Jean-Luc Marion and Martin Heidegger. In particular, this paper offers a response to Steven DeLay’s ‘The vanity of authenticity’; DeLay’s text argues for the superiority of Marion’s response to nihilism through his notion of vanity and, further, argues that this supposed defeat of Heidegger by Marion lays the foundation for the theological turn in philosophy. This paper will instead suggest that Marion has not in fact surpassed Heidegger, that his concept of (...) vanity does not represent a meaningful innovation, and that his answer to nihilism/vanity through love is more similar to Heidegger’s response than either DeLay or Marion acknowledges. DeLay’s reading focuses on Heidegger’s Being and Time, but uses this reading to dismiss Heidegger’s work in its entirety. This paper will, instead, focus on Heidegger’s later work, which is ignored by both Marion and DeLay, offering particular attention to the shift in Heidegger’s response to nihilism as he increases his engagement with the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and introduces the concept Gelassenheit, which generally replaces the terminology of authenticity after the 1940s. (shrink)

In this chapter, Altman gives two separate arguments that, in conjunction, support a mixed theory of punishment. First, he shows that consequentialism is insufficient on its own because it cannot capture the condemnatory function of the law as an expression of the community’s resentment. Second, he shows that retributivism is insufficient on its own because any plausible legal arrangement must be committed to some non-retributivist values. He then argues that the institution of punishment is justified by its costs and benefits, (...) and the distribution of punishment—who is punished and how much—is justified by what offenders deserve. This two-tiered model of punishment makes more sense than an alternative scheme, according to which retributivist reasoning informs criminal lawmaking and consequentialist reasoning informs criminal judgments and sentencing. (shrink)

German Idealism was without doubt one of the most fruitful, influential, and exciting periods in the history of philosophy. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism covers this revolutionary philosophical movement in remarkable detail and includes contributions from 36 of the leading scholars in the field, including Paul Guyer, Terry Pinkard, Violetta Waibel, Jason Wirth, and Günter Zöller. In his introduction, Matthew Altman investigates the meaning of idealism and sets the historical context. Ensuing chapters then consider the philosophical importance of (...) the movement’s four most important thinkers (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel) and explore the areas of philosophy on which they had their greatest impact. A concluding chapter examines the legacy of German Idealism from the nineteenth century to the present day. (shrink)

This essay argues that an adequate account of bad faith cannot be given without taking the second half of Being and Nothingness into consideration. There are two separate but related reasons for this. First, the objectifying gaze of Others provides a necessary condition for the possibility of bad faith. Sartre, however, does not formally introduce analysis of Others until Parts III and IV. Second, upon the introduction of Others, Sartre revises his view of absolute freedom. Sartre's considered view of freedom (...) helps to make sense out of bad faith in a way that does not seem possible were freedom absolute. (shrink)

Several philosophers, known as situationists, have argued that evidence in social psychology threatens to undermine Aristotelian virtue ethics. An impressively large amount of empirical evidence suggests that most people do not consistently act virtuously and lack the ability to exercise rational control over their behavior. Since possessing moral virtues requires these features, situationists have argued that Aristotelianism does not accurately describe the character traits possessed by most people, and so the theory cannot lay claim to various theoretical advantages such as (...) explanatory power and egalitarian character education. In contrast to previous defenses which either downplay the relevance of psychological evidence or revise philosophical conceptions of virtue to fit the data, this paper appeals to previously neglected psychological evidence on self-efficacy and mental contrasting in combination with “non-idealized” interpretations of Aristotelian moral virtue to support the view that the available empirical evidence is compatible with widespread possession of virtuous character. These “non-idealized” interpretations of virtuous character allow for serious deviations from virtuous conduct, especially in the contexts described by the psychology experiments. Furthermore, decades of research on mental contrasting and self-efficacy suggest that subjects in the psychology experiments acted for reasons and possessed the ability to exercise rational control over their behavior. Hence, situationists are mistaken in thinking that, based on the empirical data, Aristotelianism is deprived of various theoretical advantages. (shrink)

For the past thirty years, the late Tom Regan bucked the trend among secular animal rights philosophers and spoke patiently and persistently to the best angels of religious ethics in a stream of publications that enjoins religious scholars, clergy, and lay people alike to rediscover the resources within their traditions for articulating and living out an animal ethics that is more consistent with their professed values of love, mercy, and justice. My aim in this article is to showcase some of (...) the wealth of insight offered in this important but under-utilized archive of Regan’s work to those of us, religious or otherwise, who wish to challenge audiences of faith to think and do better by animals. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a novel response to the exclusion problem. I argue that the nature of the events in the causally complete physical domain raises the “problem of many causes”: there will typically be countless simultaneous low-level physical events in that domain that are causally sufficient for any given high-level physical event. This shows that even reductive physicalists must admit that the version of the exclusion principle used to pose the exclusion problem against non-reductive physicalism is too strong. (...) The burden is on proponents of the exclusion problem to provide a reason to think that any qualifications placed on the exclusion principle will solve the problem of many causes while ruling out causation by irreducible mental events. (shrink)