Last week, we talked a bit about the Anderson-Belnap logic of entailment, as discussed in Priest’s Introduction to Non-Classical Logic. For a quite different approach to entailment, we’ll look next week at Neil Tennant’s account. Doing things rather out of order, this week I’d like to say something more basic about the problems to which both Anderson and Belnap, on the one hand, and Tennant on the other, are responding. This will give me the chance for a bit of (...) nostalgic philosophical time-travelling, revisiting work by Casimir Lewy and Timothy Smiley from the Cambridge of fifty years ago. (shrink)

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, Australia and.

An influential model holds that obsessive–compulsive disorder is caused by distinctive personality traits and belief biases. But a substantial number of sufferers do not manifest these traits. I propose a predictive coding account of the disorder, which explains both the symptoms and the cognitive traits. On this account, OCD centrally involves heightened and dysfunctionally focused attention to normally unattended sensory and motor representations. As these representations have contents that predict catastrophic outcomes, patients are disposed to engage in behaviors and mental (...) rituals designed to forestall these outcomes or to produce more precise information. The same representations also cause the cognitive traits characteristic of sufferers. (shrink)

It is sometimes objected that we cannot adopt skepticism about moral responsibility, because the criminal justice system plays an indispensable social function. In this paper, I examine the implications of moral responsibility skepticism for the punishment of those convicted of crime, with special attention to recent arguments by Saul Smilansky. Smilansky claims that the skeptic is committed to fully compensating the incarcerated for their detention, and that this compensation would both be too costly to be practical and would remove the (...) deterrent function from incarceration. I argue that the skeptic is not committed to full compensation of the offender, and that the costs of such compensation would in any case be far smaller than Smilansky thinks. In fact, I claim, the costs of the criminal justice system to which the skeptic is committed might be very much lower than the costs – economic, social and moral – we currently pay as a consequence of our system of punishment. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently argued that agents need not be conscious of the reasons for which they act or the moral significance of their actions in order to be morally responsible for them. In this paper, I identify a kind of awareness that, I claim, agents must have in order to be responsible for their actions. I argue that conscious information processing differs from unconscious in a manner that makes the following two claims true: (1) an agent’s values (...) ought to be identified with attitudes of which she is conscious, because having a value entails having a set of dispositions produced by conscious attitudes alone, and (2) that only actions settled upon by conscious deliberation are deeply attributable to agents, because only such actions express the agent’s evaluative stance. (shrink)

According to the ego-depletion account of loss of self-control, self-control is, or depends on, a depletable resource. Advocates of this account have argued that what is depleted is actually glucose. However, there is experimental evidence that indicates that glucose replenishment is not necessary for regaining self-control, as well as theoretical reasons for thinking that it is not depleted by exercises of self-control. I suggest that glucose restores self-control not because it is a resource on which it relies, but because it (...) serves as a signal of environment quality. I suggest that the evidence is better explained by a rival opportunity costs model of self-control than by the ego-depletion account. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, Joshua Blanchard has identified a novel problem: the problem of unwelcome epistemic company. We find ourselves in unwelcome epistemic company when we hold a belief that is also held mainly or most prominently by those we regard as morally or epistemically bad. Blanchard argues that some, but not all, unwelcome epistemic company provides higher-order evidence against our belief. But he doesn't provide a test for when company is unwelcome or a diagnosis of why (...) it is unwelcome. I provide both. On my disjunctive test, unwelcome epistemic company provides us with a defeater when either there is a match between the content of the belief and the properties that make our company unwelcome, or there is reason to suspect that the belief arose via a shared, unreliable, causal process. (shrink)

We are all apt to alter our beliefs and even our principles to suit the prevailing winds. Examples abound in public life, but we are all subject to similar reversals. We often accuse one another of hypocrisy when these kinds of reversals occur. Sometimes the accusation is justified. In this paper, however, I will argue that in many such cases, we don’t manifest hypocrisy, even if our change of mind is not in response to new evidence. Marshalling evidence from psychology (...) and evolutionary theory, I will suggest that we are designed to update our beliefs in response to social signals: as these signals change, we change our minds, often without even noticing. (shrink)

Rationalist accounts of self-knowledge are motivated in important part by the claim that only by looking to our reasons to discover our beliefs and desires are we active in relation to them and only thereby do we take responsibility for them. These kinds of account seem to predict that self-knowledge generated using third-personal methods or analogues of these methods will tend to undermine the capacity to exercise self-control. In this light, the insistence by treatment programs that addicts acknowledge that they (...) are addicts seems puzzling. I argue that because addicts—and perhaps ordinary akratics, to some extent at least, too—are vulnerable to losing control of their actions via losing control over their beliefs, advising them to look to their reasons for actions is counterproductive and facilitates loss of control. In contrast, an insistence on what I call impersonal self-knowledge, knowledge of some of one's states and dispositions generated by third-personal means, may help to reestablish control. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Storrs McCall and E.J. Lowe sketch an account of indeterminist free will designed to avoid the luck objection that has been wielded to such effect against event‐causal libertarianism. They argue that if decision‐making is an indeterministic process and not an event or series of events, the luck objection will fail. I argue that they are wrong: the luck objection is equally successful against their account as against existing event‐causal libertarianisms. Like the event‐causal libertarianism (...) their account is meant to supplant, the process view cannot offer a reasons explanation of the agent’s choice itself; that choice is explained by nothing except chance. The agent therefore fails to exercise freedom‐level control over it. (shrink)

It is very widely held that Frankfurt-style cases—in which a counterfactual intervener stands by to bring it about that an agent performs an action but never actually acts because the agent performs that action on her own—show that free will does not require alternative possibilities. This essay argues that that conclusion is unjustified, because merely counterfactual interveners may make a difference to normative properties. It presents a modified version of a fake barn case to show how a counterfactual intervener can (...) make the difference between an agent knowing a fact or merely truly believing that fact, by eliminating veretic epistemic luck. If counterfactual interveners can make this kind of difference to the epistemic status of agents, the essay argues, there is no reason why they can't make an analogous difference to agents' moral responsibility. It concludes that reflection on these cases reveals that despite the mountains of words spilled on the topic, we still don't fully understand what role access to alternative possibilities plays in whether or not agents are morally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

This is a study of Aristotle's moral philosophy as it is contained in the Nicomachean Ethics. Hardie examines the difficulties of the text; presents a map of inescapable philosophical questions; and brings out the ambiguities and critical disagreements on some central topics, inclduing happiness, the soul, the ethical mean, and the initiation of action.

In medieval writers we find a distinction between body as a substance – corpus-substantia – and body as a quantity – corpus-quantitas (or quantum). One of the earliest uses of this distinction is in works written by Robert Grosseteste in the 1220s. In this paper I explore his use and understanding of this distinction. I argue that he understands corpus-substantia as such as a dimensionless composite of a first corporeal form, corporeity, and prime matter. Corporeity itself is an active power (...) for three dimensions. Through its infinite and necessary self-multiplication corporeity extends the prime matter it informs into three dimensions, thereby resulting in corpus-quantum. I explore how Grosseteste’s conception of corporeity, though probably based on ideas found in Avicenna, diverges from different understandings of Avicenna’s conception of corporeity proposed by medieval and modern commentators. (shrink)

This article uses Christopher Southgate's work and engagement with other scholars on the topic of evolutionary theodicy as a case study in the dialogue of science and Christian theology. A typology is outlined of ways in which the voices of science and the Christian tradition may be related in a science–theology dialogue, and examples of each position on the typology are given from the literature on evolution and natural evil. The main focus is on Southgate's evolutionary theodicy and the alternative (...) proposal by Neil Messer. By bringing these two accounts into dialogue, some key methodological issues are brought into focus, enabling some conclusions to be drawn about the range and limits of fruitful methodological possibilities for dialogues between science and Christian theology. (shrink)

Nicholas Agar has recently argued that it would be irrational for future human beings to choose to radically enhance themselves by uploading their minds onto computers. Utilizing Searle’s argument that machines cannot think, he claims that uploading might entail death. He grants that Searle’s argument is controversial, but he claims, so long as there is a non-zero probability that uploading entails death, uploading is irrational. I argue that Agar’s argument, like Pascal’s wager on which it is modelled, fails, because the (...) principle that we (or future agents) ought to avoid actions that might entail death is not action guiding. Too many actions fall under its scope for the principle to be plausible. I also argue that the probability that uploading entails death is likely to be lower than Agar recognizes. (shrink)

Cushman argues that the function of rationalization is to attribute mental representations to ourselves, thereby making these representations available for future planning. I argue that such attribution is often not necessary and sometimes maladaptive. I suggest a different explanation of rationalization: making representations available to other agents, to facilitate cooperation, transmission, and the ratchet effect that underlies cumulative cultural evolution.

Despite an extensive amount of research studying the influence of significant others on an individual's ethical behavior, researchers have not examined this variable in the context of organizational group boundaries. This study tests actual and perceptual sharing and variation in ethical reasoning and moral intent within and across functional groups in an organization. Integrating theory on ethical behavior, group dynamics, and culture, it is proposed that organizational structure affects cognitive structure. Departmental boundaries create stronger social ties within the group as (...) well as intergroup biases between the groups. Thus individuals will be more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent with members of their own functional group (in-group) than with members of other functional groups (out-group). Additionally, they will perceive that they are more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent with in-group members than with out-group members. Responding to two versions of two ethical scenarios, respondents contrasted their own ethical behavior to their expected ethical behavior of in-group and out-group members. Empirical results confirmed the hypotheses. Organizational group boundaries create actual as well as perceptual sharing and variation in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Furthermore, when comparing perceptual sharing to actual sharing, results show that individuals understate their sharing of ethical reasoning and moral intent with out-group members and overstate their sharing with in-group members. As organizational boundaries can create actual and perceived differences between groups that could lead to inter-group conflict, suggestions for management focus on removing or blurring inter-group boundaries. (shrink)

Neuroscientists and clinicians often speak of addictive drugs ‘hijacking’ the brain. Earp et al. want to do to the notion of addiction what drugs allegedly do to the brains of addicts; hijack it and put it to other purposes. There are, as they point out, clear commonalities between addiction and being in love. But there are also very important differences. These differences are significant enough to entail that it is at best highly misleading to describe love as an addiction. Hijacking (...) addiction in this way is a move we should resist, both to better understand addiction and love, and to promote better responses to each.If anything justifies the hijacking metaphor with regard to... (shrink)

Libertarianism in all its varieties is widely taken to be vulnerable to a serious problem of present luck, inasmuch as it requires indeterminism somewhere in the causal chain leading to action. Genuine indeterminism entails luck, and lack of control over the ensuing action. Compatibilism, by contrast, is generally taken to be free of the problem of present luck, inasmuch as it does not require indeterminism in the causal chain. I argue that this view is false: compatibilism is subject to a (...) problem of present luck. Taken by itself, the compatibilist problem with present luck is less serious than the analogous problem confronting libertarianism. However, its effects are just as devastating for the entire account of freedom: the present luck confronting compatibilism is sufficient to undermine the compatibilist response to distant – constitutive – luck. (shrink)

Christopher Franklin argues that the hard luck view, which I have recently defended, is misnamed: the arguments turn on absence of control and not on luck. He also argues that my objections to agent-causal libertarianism depend on a demand, for a contrastive explanation that guarantees the choice the agent makes, which would be question-begging in the dialectical context. In response to the first objection, I argue that though Franklin may be right that it is absence of control that matters to (...) freedom and not luck, we often are unable to discern whether an agent lacks sufficient control without asking whether the event is lucky for the agent; hence we cannot dispense with worries about luck in favor of concern about control. In response to the second worry, I argue that though Franklin is right in claiming that there is a perfectly good explanation regarding how the agent-causal power is exercised, it is not an adequate explanation given the context, because the same kind of explanation is available on event-causal theories. Agent-causal libertarians aim to avoid the luck objection which they acknowledge is powerful against event-causal libertarians; if it is true that they can offer nothing more than the latter kinds of theories in the way of control over actions, they fail in their aim. (shrink)

The impact of gender on assessments of leadership performance and leadership potential was examined through two clusters of leadership behaviors, one set related to traditional constructions of leadership labeled directing others and another associated with contemporary constructions of leadership labeled engaging others. Based on data collected from a sample of 91 senior leaders in one US financial services organization over a 3-year period prior to Covid-19, the results showed a negative relationship between directing others behaviors and leadership potential ratings for (...) females and a positive relationship between these variables for males. A negative relationship between engaging others behaviors and performance assessments was also found for females. This study highlights the continuing bias in leadership assessments of women and explores the contradictions between the perception and the reality of women's leadership. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce the notion of a Frankfurt Enabler, a counterfactual intervener poised, should a signal for intervention be received, to enable an agent to perform a mental or physical action. Frankfurt enablers demonstrate, I claim, that merely counterfactual conditions are sometimes relevant to assessing what capacities agents possess. Since this is the case, we are not entitled to conclude that agents in standard Frankfurt-style cases retain their responsibility-ensuring capacities. There is no principled rationale for bracketing counterfactual interveners (...) in standard Frankfurt-style cases, but admitting their relevance when they are Frankfurt enablers. I argue that the intuition that we ought to bracket counterfactual interveners is, at bottom, an expression of a mistaken internalist view about the mental. (shrink)

If Knobe is right that ordinary judgments are normatively suffused, how do scientists free themselves from these influences? I suggest that because science is distributed and externalized, its claims can be manipulated in ways that allow normative influences to be hived off. This allows scientists to deploy concepts which are not normatively suffused. I suggest that there are good reasons to identify these normatively neutral concepts with the folk concepts.

I am grateful to the commentators, for their kind words and for their probing challenges. They range in the views they express, from those who seem to think I have not gone far enough in questioning the value of autonomy to those who think I have not challenged it at all. Given this diversity, it seems best to address their remarks sequentially.J D Trout is sympathetic to my project, and highlights his own work which supports it.1 Indeed, Trout's work—together with (...) Michael Bishop and his own stand-alone writing—was an important influence on the views I advanced in the original paper. Unsurprisingly, given the influence his views have had on mine, I find little to disagree with in Bishop's proposals. What I find most useful in his commentary is his insistence that, given the data about human decision-making, some aspect of autonomy is threatened no matter what approach we take. As he points out, while policies that ‘depreciate a person's momentary wish’ might be seen as threatening some aspect of autonomy, policies that allow for unconstrained choice show at least an equal degree of ‘contempt for autonomy’ by making it probable that the agent makes a choice that she regrets because it is not in accordance with her own values. In the original paper I had argued that properly understood, autonomy supports policies that provide soft constraints on choice—constraints that steer and nudge, but which do not prevent the agent who insists on a particular course of action from taking it. Bishop may be right in suggesting that autonomy is not …. (shrink)

Neil Messer brings together a range of theoretical and practical questions raised by current research on the human brain: questions about both the 'ethics of neuroscience' and the 'neuroscience of ethics'. While some of these are familiar to theologians, others have been more or less ignored hitherto, and the field of neuroethics as a whole has received little theological attention. Drawing on both theological ethics and the science-and-theology field, Messer discusses cognitive-scientific and neuroscientific studies of religion, arguing that they (...) do not give grounds to dismiss theological perspectives on the human self. He examines a representative range of topics across the whole field of neuroethics, including consciousness, the self and the value of human life; the neuroscience of morality; determinism, freewill and moral responsibility; and the ethics of cognitive enhancement. (shrink)

In their recent article “A Gentle Ethical Defence of Homeopathy,” Levy, Gadd, Kerridge, and Komesaroff use the claim that “lack of evidence is not equivalent to evidence of lack” as a component of their ethical defence of homeopathy. In response, this article argues that they cannot use this claim to shore up their ethical arguments. This is because it is false.

A collection of papers from a conference entitled ‘Eastern Orthodox and Western Christian Approaches to Bioethics’ is presented in this issue. This Editorial introduces the papers and identifies recurrent themes and questions: first, the complex relationship between faith, ethics, law and professional practice; secondly, the modes and tasks of Christian ethics or moral theology in relation to bioethical issues; thirdly, the kinds of service that academic theologians should offer to the churches, their leaders and Christians in relevant professions; fourth and (...) finally, the continuity or discontinuity between different Christian traditions. (shrink)