Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults? In two pre-registered studies (N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved. In both studies, children had a weaker tendency to prioritize humans over animals than adults. They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and many valued the (...) life of a dog as much as the life of a human. While they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized ten pigs over one human. By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even one hundred dogs or pigs. Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an alternative to hermeneutic fictionalism, an alternative I call indifferentism, with the same advantages as hermeneutic fictionalism with respect to ontological issues but avoiding some of the problems that face fictionalism. The difference between indifferentism and fictionalism is this. The fictionalist about ordinary utterances of a sentence S holds, with more orthodox views, that the speaker in some sense commits herself to the truth of S. It is only that for the fictionalist this is truth (...) in the relevant fiction. According to the indifferentist, by contrast, we are simply non-committal – or indifferent – with respect to some aspects of what is literally said in our assertive utterances. (shrink)

_Liberal Utilitarianism and Applied Ethics_ explores the foundations of early utilitarianism and, at the same time, the theoretical bases of social ethics and policy in modern Western welfare states. Matti Hayry sees the main reason for utilitarianism's growing disrepute among moral philosophers is that its principles cannot legitimately be extended to situations where the basic needs of the individuals involved are in conflict. He is able to formulate a solution to this fundamental problem by arguing convincingly that by combining (...) a limited version of liberal utilitarianism and the methods of applied ethics, we are able to define our moral duties and rights. _Liberal Utilitarianism and Applied Ethics_ will appeal to students and teachers of philosophy who are interested in the doctrine of utilitarianism or in ethical decison-making. (shrink)

Should we make people healthier, smarter, and longer-lived if genetic and medical advances enable us to do so? Matti Häyry asks this question in the context of genetic testing and selection, cloning and stem cell research, gene therapies and enhancements. The ethical questions explored include parental responsibility, the use of people as means, the role of hope and fear in risk assessment, and the dignity and meaning of life. Taking as a starting point the arguments presented by Jonathan Glover, (...) John Harris, Ronald M. Green, Jürgen Habermas, Michael J. Sandel, and Leon R. Kass, who defend a particular normative view as the only rational or moral answer, Matti Häyry argues that many coherent rationalities and moralities exist in the field, and that to claim otherwise is mistaken"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Conversation analytical methodology was used to specify the new opening practices in Finnish mobile call openings, which differ systematically from Finnish landline call openings. Since the responses to a mobile call orient to the summons identifying the caller, answers have changed and diversified. A known caller is greeted. The self-identification opening that was canonical in Finnish landline calls is mainly used for answering unknown callers, while channel-opener openings involve orientation to ongoing mutual business between the speakers. Some of these changes (...) reflect real-time coordination of the social action that the mobility of mobile phones enables. In all, the adoption of new ways of answering a call shows that people orient themselves to affordances that new technologies allow them. Mobile phone communication opens a salient new area both for the analysis of talk-ininteraction itself and also for understanding communicative behaviour in the era of ubiquitous information technology. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeanism in the philosophy of mathematics consists of two main parts: the logicist thesis, that mathematics (or at least branches thereof, like arithmetic) all but reduce to logic, and the platonist thesis, that there are abstract, mathematical objects. I will here focus on the ontological thesis, platonism. Neo-Fregeanism has been widely discussed in recent years. Mostly the discussion has focused on issues specific to mathematics. I will here single out for special attention the view on ontology which underlies the neo-Fregeans’ (...) claims about mathematical objects, and discuss this view in a broader setting. (shrink)

In this paper three questions concerning quality of life in medicine and health care are analysed and discussed: the motives for measuring the quality of life, the methods used in assessing it, and the definition of the concept. The purposes of the study are to find an ethically acceptable motive for measuring the quality of life; to identify the methodological advantages and disadvantages of the most prevalent current methods of measurement; and to present an approach towards measuring and defining the (...) quality of life which evades the difficulties encountered and discussed. The analysis comprises measurements both in the clinical situation concerning individual patients and in research concerning whole populations.Three motives are found for evaluating the quality of human life: allocation of scarce medical resources, facilitating clinical decision making, and assisting patients towards autonomous decision making. It is argued that the third alternative is the only one which does not evoke ethical problems. (shrink)

The problem, or cluster of problems, of the unity of the proposition, along with the cluster of problems that tend to go under the name of Bradley’s regress, has recently again become a going concern for philosophers, after having for some time been regarded as primarily of historical interest. In this paper, I distinguish between the different problems that tend to be brought up under the heading of the unity of the proposition, and between different related regress arguments. I present (...) my favored solutions to these problems. (shrink)

Oystein Linnebo's book Thin Objects is partly devoted to defending the view that some objects are “thin” in that their existence does not impose any substantive demands on the world. In this paper, I discuss the concern that the defense relies on there being entities that serve as the referents of predicates. Linnebo thus seems to assume the thinness of those entities. In the course of my discussion, I also discuss what Linnebo says about the role of criteria of identity (...) in his discussion of reference and existence. (shrink)

The main question of the paper is that ofwhat vagueness consists in. This question must be distinguished from other questions about vagueness discussed in the literature. It is argued that familiar accounts of vagueness for general reasons failto answer the question ofwhat vagueness consists in. A positive view is defended, according to which, roughly, the vagueness of an expression consists in it being part ofsemantic competence to accept a tolerance principle for the expression. Since tolerance principles are inconsistent, this is (...) an inconsistency view on vagueness. (shrink)

Inspired by the Catholic theologian Hans Küng, this book searches for a model for global ethics by analysing the contemporary philosophical discussion. It demonstrates that the Western model is unable to reckon with exclusivism and difference and presents an alternative model.

The editorial presents the fifteenth ETMU Conference, held at Åbo Akademi University in Turku on 15–16 November 2018, dedicated to the theme "Vulnerabil­ity, Resilience and Resistance in Diverse Societies’. The first two articles of the current issue are based on papers presented at the conference.

Finland is internationally known as one of the leading centers of twentieth century analytic philosophy. This volume offers for the first time an overall survey of the Finnish analytic school. The rise of this trend is illustrated by original articles of Edward Westermarck, Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Jaakko Hintikka. Contributions of Finnish philosophers are then systematically discussed in the fields of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, ethics and social philosophy. Metaphilosophical reflections on (...) the nature of philosophy are highlighted by the Finnish dialogue between analytic philosophy, phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory. (shrink)

I distinguish two kinds of contribution that have been made by recent minimalist accounts of joint action in philosophy and cognitive science relative to established philosophical accounts of shared intentional action. The “complementarists” seek to analyze a functionally different kind of joint action from the kind of joint action that is analyzed by established philosophical accounts of shared intentional action. The “constitutionalists” seek to expose mechanisms that make performing joint actions possible, without taking a definite stance on which functional characterization (...) of joint action is the appropriate one. I elucidate the contrasting methodological underpinnings of these minimalist research programs in accordance with Bechtel and Richardson’s account of the heuristics of decomposition and localization as a research strategy for the study of complex systems. (shrink)

With the considerable attention given to UNESCO's Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, the time has come to take another look at the concept of dignity, on which this document is morally founded. The term “dignity” now appears in many national constitutions and international bioethical statements. It has also become popular among Continental European ethicists, many of whom wish to challenge the particularly American and overtly individualistic principles of “autonomy,” “justice,” “beneficence,” and “nonmaleficence.” a.

:Justice can be approached from many angles in ethical and political debates, including those involving healthcare, biomedical research, and well-being. The main doctrines of justice are liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, luck egalitarianism, socialism, utilitarianism, capability approach, communitarianism, and care ethics. These can be further elaborated in the light of traditional moral and social theories, values, ideals, and interests, and there are distinct dimensions of justice that are captured better by some tactics than by others. In this article, questions surrounding these matters (...) are approached with the hermeneutic idea of a distinction between “American” and “European” ways of thinking. (shrink)

My theme here will be vagueness. But first recall Quine’s arguments for the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference. (I will presume these arguments to be familiar.) If Quine is right, then there are radically different acceptable assignments of semantic values to the expressions of any language: different assignments of semantic values that for all that is determined by whatever it is that determines semantic value are all acceptable, and all equally good. Quine even argued that the indeterminacy (...) is so radical that some sentences are true under some acceptable assignments but false under others.1 Still, Quine does not allow intermediate truth-values or truthvalue gaps. (As I will put it, avoiding the disjunctive formulation: does not allow that there are sentences which are neuter.) Quine holds on to classical logic and bivalence and requires each acceptable assignment to be classical and bivalent.2. (shrink)

Utilitarianism could still be a viable moral and political theory, although an emphasis on justice as distributing burdens and benefits has hidden this from current conversations. The traditional counterexamples prove that we have good grounds for rejecting classical, aggregative forms of consequentialism. A nonaggregative, liberal form of utilitarianism is immune to this rejection. The cost is that it cannot adjudicate when the basic needs of individuals or groups are in conflict. Cases like this must be solved by other methods. This (...) is not a weakness in liberal utilitarianism, on the contrary. The theory clarifies what we should admit to begin with: that ethical doctrines do not have universally acceptable solutions to all difficult problems or hard cases. The theory also reminds us that not all problems are in this sense difficult or cases hard. We could alleviate the plight of nonhuman animals by reducing meat eating. We could mitigate climate change and its detrimental effects by choosing better ways of living. These would imply that most people’s desire satisfaction would be partly frustrated, but liberal utilitarianism holds that this would be justified by the satisfaction of the basic needs of other people and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Forthcoming in Darren Bradley (ed.), Carnap and Contemporary Philosophy. -/- This paper is centered on Carnap’s views on rationality. More specifically, much of the focus is on a puzzle regarding Carnap’s view on rationality that Florian Steinberger has recently discussed. Not only is Steinberger’s discussion of significant intrinsic interest: his discussion also raises general questions about Carnap interpretation. As I have discussed in earlier work, there are two very different ways of interpreting Carnap’s talk of “frameworks” – and, relatedly, different (...) ways of interpreting Carnap’s principle of tolerance. Carnap can be interpreted as either a relativist or as what I call a language pluralist. Steinberger’s puzzle arises given the relativist interpretation; I believe the language pluralist interpretation is correct. Most of the discussion will concern the correct interpretation of Carnap, and what this means for Steinberger’s puzzle. While I will not here mount a full defense of the language pluralist interpretation, I will pause to discuss Vera Flocke’s recent criticism of it. Towards the end, I will describe a puzzle regarding rationality different from Steinberger’s. The puzzle that I describe does arise already for the language pluralist. (shrink)

The article examines five controversial views, expressed in Jonathan Swift’s _A Modest Proposal_, Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer’s _Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants_, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva’s “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?”, Julian Savulescu’s “Procreative beneficence: why we should select the best children”, and the author’s “A rational cure for prereproductive stress syndrome”. These views have similarities and differences on five levels: the grievances they raise, the proposals they make, the justifications they explicitly (...) use, the justifications they implicitly rely on, and the criticisms that they have encountered. A comparison of these similarities and differences produces two findings. First, some controversial views based on utilitarian considerations would probably fare better flipped upside down and presented as Juvenalian satires. Secondly, a modicum of humor or modesty could help presenters of controversial views to stir polite critical discussion on the themes that they put forward. (shrink)

I here critically discuss Hilary Putnam's views on ontology, especially as recently expounded in his Ethics without Ontology. In particular, I discuss Putnam's thesis of conceptual relativity and his criticism of the thesis that objectivity requires objects. Although I think that much of what Putnam says is important, and that there are important elements of truth to it, my points will largely be negative. Along the way I will discuss Putnam's and Wittgenstein's views in the philosophy of mathematics, and I (...) will compare Putnam's metaontological views with those of William James, Michael Dummett, Crispin Wright and Simon Blackburn. (shrink)

I critically discuss Douglas Edwards' construal of the debate over truth, and his case for truth pluralism. Toward the end I present a constructive suggestion on Edwards' behalf. This suggestion avoids the problems I have presented, whatever in the end its fate.

Artificial intelligence (AI) governance and auditing promise to bridge the gap between AI ethics principles and the responsible use of AI systems, but they require assessment mechanisms and metrics. Effective AI governance is not only about legal compliance; organizations can strive to go beyond legal requirements by proactively considering the risks inherent in their AI systems. In the past decade, investors have become increasingly active in advancing corporate social responsibility and sustainability practices. Including nonfinancial information related to environmental, social, and (...) governance (ESG) issues in investment analyses has become mainstream practice among investors. However, the AI auditing literature is mostly silent on the role of investors. The current study addresses two research questions: (1) how companies’ responsible use of AI is included in ESG investment analyses and (2) what connections can be found between principles of responsible AI and ESG ranking criteria. We conducted a series of expert interviews and analyzed the data using thematic analysis. Awareness of AI issues, measuring AI impacts, and governing AI processes emerged as the three main themes in the analysis. The findings indicate that AI is still a relatively unknown topic for investors, and taking the responsible use of AI into account in ESG analyses is not an established practice. However, AI is recognized as a potentially material issue for various industries and companies, indicating that its incorporation into ESG evaluations may be justified. There is a need for standardized metrics for AI responsibility, while critical bottlenecks and asymmetrical knowledge relations must be tackled. (shrink)

This paper argues for theoretical modeling and model-construction as central (but not necessarily the only) types of activities that philosophers of social ontology (in the analytic tradition) engage in. This claim is defended through a detailed case study and revisionary interpretation of Raimo Tuomela’s account of the we-perspective. My interpretation is grounded in Ronald Giere’s account of scientific models, and argued to be compatible with, but less demanding than Tuomela’s own description of his account as a philosophical theory of the (...) social world. My approach is also suggested to be applicable to many (but not necessarily all) other methodologically naturalist accounts of collective intentionality and social ontology. (shrink)

Doren Recker has criticized the prevailing accounts of Darwin's argument for the theory of natural selection in the Origin of Species. In this note I argue that Recker fails to distinguish between a deductive short argument for the principle of natural selection, and a non-deductive, long argument which aims at establishing that the principle has explanatory power in the various domains of application. I shall try to show that the semantic view of theories, especially in its structuralist form, makes it (...) easy to distinguish between the two arguments and to explain how Darwin's long argument counts as one argument. I also raise a question about Recker's views on Darwin's mid-Victorian background, arguing that Newton's First Rule of Reasoning was not just a constraint on hypotheses involving unobservables, but a general request to keep conjecture and certainty apart. (shrink)

The role of bioethicists amidst crises like the COVID-19 pandemic is not well defined. As professionals in the field, they should respond, but how? The observation of the early days of pandemic confinement in Finland showed that moral philosophers with limited experience in bioethics tended to apply their favorite theories to public decisions, with varying results. Medical ethicists were more likely to lend support to the public authorities by soothing or descriptive accounts of the solutions assumed. These are approaches that (...) Tuija Takala has called the firefighting and window dressing models of bioethics. Human rights lawyers drew attention to the flaws of the government’s regulative thinking. Critical bioethicists offered analyses of the arguments presented and the moral and political theories that could be used as the basis of good and acceptable decisions. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as corona solidarity? Does voluntary mutual aid solve the problems caused by COVID-19? I argue that the answer to the first question is “yes” and to the second “no.” Not that the answer to the second question could not, in an ideal world, be “yes,” too. It is just that in this world of global capitalism and everybody looking out for themselves, the kind of communal warmth celebrated by the media either does not actually exist (...) or is too weak to rule out the uglier manifestations of group togetherness, driven partly by the pandemic. I make my point by offering two approaches to understanding what solidarity is. According to the first, it is essentially partiality: “us” against “them.” According to the second, it can be many things, including the impartial promotion of the good of others. I show that the second reading would make it possible for mutual aid to solve the problems caused by COVID-19 and other crises. This would happen at the expense of conceptual clarity, but that is a minor concern. The major concern is that the more natural manifestations of group togetherness are incited by negative feelings. This is par for the course within the narrower reading of solidarity, but it means that the potentially positive ideas of identity, care, communal values, and special relations are displayed in violent confrontation instead of a calm recognition of the threats that most of us face together. (shrink)

Governmental reactions to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as ethics communication. Governments can contain the disease and thereby mitigate the detrimental public health impact; allow the virus to spread to reach herd immunity; test, track, isolate, and treat; and suppress the disease regionally. An observation of Sweden and Finland showed a difference in feasible ways to communicate the chosen policy to the citizenry. Sweden assumed the herd immunity strategy and backed it up with health utilitarian arguments. This (...) was easy to communicate to the Swedish people, who appreciated the voluntary restrictions approach and trusted their decision makers. Finland chose the contain and mitigate strategy and was towards the end of the observation period apparently hesitating between suppression and the test, track, isolate, and treat approach. Both are difficult to communicate to the general public accurately, truthfully, and acceptably. Apart from health utilitarian argumentation, something like the republican political philosophy or selective truth telling are needed. The application of republicanism to the issue, however, is problematic, and hiding the truth seems to go against the basic tenets of liberal democracy. (shrink)

Lääketieteellisten teknologioiden kehitys voi tulevaisuudessa johtaa siihen, että ihmisten elinikä voidaan moninkertaistaa. Eri filosofisista lähtökohdista tällaisen toiminnan toivottavuuteen voidaan suhtautua eri tavoin. Jonathan Glover ja John Harris ovat tervehtineet mahdollisuutta ilolla ja suositelleet pyrkimistä sen toteuttamiseen. Enemmän elämää on heidän mielestään parempi kuin vähemmän, eikä asiaa tarvitse sen kummemmin monimutkaistaa. Leon Kass ja Jürgen Habermas ovat puolestaan torjuneet ajatuksen kauhistuneina. Elämämme arvo ei riipu sen pituudesta, vaan sen annetusta tai lahjana saadusta sisällöstä. Kirjoituksessa teen selkoa näistä kahdesta vastakkaisesta kannasta koskien (...) ”elämän tarkoitusta” ja lisään joukkoon oman tulkintani epikurolaisesta ajattelusta. Viimeksi mainitun mukaan eliniän huomattavasta lisäämisestä ei olisi ihmisille sen paremmin haittaa kuin hyötyäkään. (shrink)

We study the non-wellfounded sets as fixed points of substitution. For example, we show that ZFA implies that every function has a fixed point. As a corollary we determine for which functions f there is a function g such that . We also present a classification of non-wellfounded sets according to their branching structure.

The main thesis of this paper is that we sometimes are disposed to accept false and even jointly inconsistent claims by virtue of our semantic competence, and that this comes to light in the sorites and liar paradoxes. Among the subsidiary theses are that this is an important source of indeterminacy in truth conditions, that we must revise basic assumptions about semantic competence, and that classical logic and bivalence can be upheld in the face of the sorites paradox.