This article advances a censure-based case against sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Our argument justifies a retributive “second look” assessment of long-term prison sentences. The article focuses on the censuring element of long-term prison sentences while reconceptualizing penal censure as a dynamic and responsive concept. By doing so, the article explores the significance of the prisoner’s life after sentencing (largely ignored by retributivists) and promotes a more nuanced approach to censure-based proportionality. Policy-makers may welcome this approach (...) as a way to control excessive prison sentences while remaining within a retributive penal framework. Although we are making a general argument about the need for responsive censure within a retributive sentencing regime, the case for this approach is particularly compelling at the present time. Almost all Western nations, and particularly the US, impose very lengthy, often life sentences of imprisonment for a wide range of offences, thereby affecting large numbers of prisoners. (shrink)

Scholars depict punishment as a dialogue. However, in the context of a life sentence the question emerges whether a penal dialogue is feasible. This paper seeks to explore the responsive work of life-sentenced prisoners during their parole hearings. Drawing on qualitative analysis of sentencing remarks and parole board hearings in Israel, the paper theorizes how these life prisoners negotiate their strict, exclusionary and stigmatizing sentencing communication, on the one hand, and the possibility of re-integration and inclusion, on the other. As (...) the findings suggest, the applicants responsively negotiate their flawed character, stigma and citizenship. The analysis reveals the intricate mechanism of penal dialogue in a case of a life sentence and sheds light upon the possibilities and limitations of communicative theory when considering the full meaning of the penal experience. (shrink)

The relationship between the purposes of sentencing and imprisonment can be variously conceptualized. The paper theorizes and contrasts two models of sentencing and prison relations—continuity and separation. The continuity model assumes continuity between sentencing and prison regime. Under this model, all sentencing purposes may impact prison regime. The separation model distinguishes between the purposes of sentencing and of imprisonment. Under the separation model, the retributive element of imprisonment is completely fulfilled by depriving the prisoner of liberty. Retributive considerations can affect (...) only the duration of the sentence, while prison regime is determined solely according to rehabilitation/risk and prison security considerations. The paper problematizes the separation model as it suffers from two difficulties: (a) the idea that the retributive element of imprisonment is fully fulfilled by depriving the prisoner’s liberty undermines the “hard treatment” element of the retributive punishment. Relatedly, since no prison regime can deprive a person solely of liberty no custodial sentence can be justified; (b) given the inability to isolate the denial of liberty as the only deprivation of imprisonment, the separation model also encourages judges to underestimate and feel less responsible for the full meaning of their decision to imprison. Finally, the paper will argue that liberal prison conditions may (and should) be achieved even when seeing retribution as relevant for prison life and will offer possible ways to do so. (shrink)

Osiurak and Reynaud highlight the critical role of technical-reasoning skills in the emergence of human cumulative technological culture, in contrast to previous accounts foregrounding social-reasoning skills as key to CTC. We question their analysis of the available evidence, yet for other reasons applaud the emphasis on causal understanding as central to the adaptive and collaborative dynamics of CTC.

¿It is more important to me to explain a [philosophical] principle than any other thing that I teach.¿ (Rambam, Mishna Berachot, 9:7)Illuminating Jewish Thought is a contemporary, multi-volume series that surveys the theological foundations of Jewish faith. With the approach and scope of a master educator for undergraduate and rabbinical students at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Wiederblank brings together a wide array of Jewish texts ranging from philosophical to Kabbalistic, ancient to modern, in a clear and accessible source book. In this (...) volume, the author shows the richness of the Jewish scholastic tradition relating to three fundamental yet esoteric topics: free will, the afterlife, and the messianic era. Primary sources are presented in their original language with modern English translation, enabling readers to analyze the texts independently, while the author illuminates and contextualizes these complex concepts. Altogether, Illuminating Jewish Thought reveals the bedrock on which lies the nexus of Jewish belief and practice. (shrink)

State agents’ misconduct (SAM), such as the violations carried out by the police or prosecution, may harm an offender’s rights during the criminal process in various ways. What, if anything, can retributivism, as an offense-focused theory that looks to the past, offer in response to SAM? The goal of this essay is to advance a retribution-based framework for responding to SAM within the criminal process. Two retribution-based arguments are provided. First, a retribution-based response to SAM aims to protect the legitimacy (...) of the criminal process. Such an argument is based on how the crime and punishment connect to the moral standing of the state and that connection’s meaning for the legitimacy of the trial (legitimacy-based argument). Second, a retribution-based response to SAM aims to consider the offender’s side of the penal dialogue and promote a more accurate calibration of the penal suffering (compensation-based argument). Based on these arguments, the essay theorizes the legal response for SAM in US and non-US traditions through the retributive lens. The essay concludes with a call for expanding the multiple roles for retributive logic to include the actions of law-enforcement actors and addresses what that expansion means for the justice of the criminal process. (shrink)

Retributivism is one of the most prevalent theories in contemporary penal theory. However, despite its popularity it is frequently argued that too little attention has been paid to the implications of retributivism for prison management and prison life, including prison visits and furlough. More so, it has been questioned both whether the various forms of retributivism found in the philosophical literature on criminal punishment have anything to say about what prison life ought to be like and whether they are able (...) to criticize deeply contested rules and practices, such as those that deny inmates contact with family-members for the sake of prison discipline. In this paper, we argue that prison visits and furlough have a crucial role in a prison system based on retributivist principles. In particular, we argue that the communicative theory of punishment has important theoretical resources for proving a strong and compelling rationale for both furlough and visitation on retributivist grounds. Besides exploring this rationale, we also discuss the practical implications of this view for the penal policy. (shrink)

Scholars depict punishment as a moral dialogue between the community and the offender, which addresses both the offender’s crime and character. However, how the penal message evolves vis a vis that crime and character as it passes through the different stages of the criminal process has remained under-theorized. This article, building on communicative theory, explores the interrelation between crime and character along the penal process, from sentencing, through prison, to parole release. We argue that in the penal dialogue the relationship (...) between crime and character evolves in a dynamic way through three phases: separateness (sentencing), fusion (prison), and re-distinction (parole) of crime and character. The proposed analysis develops the communicative meaning of the penal process, provides a normative account of the work of punishment administration authorities, and explores applications of our proposed normative analysis for the administration of the punishment. (shrink)

This article seeks to reveal, conceptualize, and analyze a trend in the development of the retributive theory of punishment since the beginning of the 21st century. We term this trend “retributarianism.” It is reflected in the emergence of retributive approaches that through expanding the concepts of censure and culpability extend the relevant time-frame for assessing the deserved punishment beyond the sentencing moment. These retributarian approaches are characterized by the individualization of retributivism. On one hand, retributarianism shares with classic retributivism the (...) rhetoric of justice, a focus on the moral evaluation of the severity of the offense, and the primary importance ascribed to maintaining proportionality. On the other hand, it shares with utilitarianism the possibility of taking into account, in addition to the severity of the offense, the offender’s personal circumstances, with a future-oriented perspective that also considers developments subsequent to the commission of the offense. This article analyzes the emergence of retributarianism, suggests possible explanations for its development, and assesses its possible implications for penal theory and policy. (shrink)

Fitouchi et al.'s moral disciplining approach highlights the significant role social evaluations of self-control appear to play in human moral judgment. At the same time, attributing the wide range of puritanical concerns to a singular focus on self-control seems unwarranted. A more pluralistic approach would enrich understanding of moral judgment in all its cultural and historical diversity.

Is copyright a property right? Common law and civil law jurists have debated that issue for over three centuries. It remains at the heart of battles over copyright’s scope and duration today, even if its import lies principally in the rhetorical force of labeling a right as "property," not in any doctrinal consequence flowing directly from that label. In parallel to their common law and civil law counterparts, presentday rabbinic jurists engage in lively debate about whether Jewish law recognizes copyright (...) as a property right. And, as in secular law but for different reasons, that issue has significant repercussions in Jewish law. As discussed in rabbinic court decisions and writings, whether Jewish law accords authors a right of ownership in their works impacts such issues as whether it is permissible, without license from the author or publisher, to copy and distribute software and sound recordings, perform music in wedding halls, make copies for private and classroom use, and download songs from the Internet. There are numerous, and at times profound, differences in the terminology, form of argument, doctrinal specifics, and overarching legal framework of Jewish and secular law. Nonetheless, the arguments within the Jewish law debate have some intriguing parallels with those of secular copyright law. In fact, one finds the direct, if largely unstated, influence of secular copyright just below the surface in the debate in Jewish law about whether copyright is property. (shrink)

Ron Mallon explores how thinking and talking about kinds of person can bring those kinds into being. He considers what normative implications this social constructionism has for our understanding of our practices of representing human kinds, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, and for our own agency.

In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology. This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. It then investigates how development became irrelevant with the Evolutionary Synthesis. It concludes with an examination of the contrasts (...) that persist between mainstream evolutionary theory and evo-devo. This book will appeal to students and professionals in the philosophy and history of science, and biology. (shrink)

Williams, Ron As I consider the list of previous AHOY recipients since the inaugural award in 1983, I can only say that this is an immeasurable honour. It means much to me because, for almost ten years now, Humanism has been there for my family. In 2005-2006, when separation of church and state school issues first crept into our lives, the Humanist Society of Queensland was to appear as the only beacon of secularist activism upon the deep northern horizon. So (...) in 2006 Andrea and I joined the HSQ. (shrink)

It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such 'arguments from reference.' Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross-cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture (Machery et al. 2004). We argue that accommodating this variation within a theory of reference undermines arguments from reference.

In recent years, there has been a flurry of work on the metaphysics of race. While it is now widely accepted that races do not share robust, bio-behavioral essences, opinions differ over what, if anything, race is. Recent work has been divided between three apparently quite different answers. A variety of theorists argue for racial skepticism, the view that races do not exist at all.[iv] A second group defends racial constructionism, holding that races are in some way socially constructed.[v],[vi] And (...) a third group maintains racial population naturalism, the view that races may exist as biologically salient populations albeit ones that do not have the biologically determined social significance once imputed to them.[vii] The three groups thus seem to disagree fundamentally upon the metaphysical character of race. (shrink)

Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the relationship between morally educative practices and the institutions that house them have been widely noted. We propose a taxonomy of the ways in which the pursuit of external goods by institutions undermines the pursuit of the internal goods of practices. These comprise substitution, where the institution replaces the pursuit of one type of good by another; frustration, where opportunities for practitioners to discover goods or develop new (...) standards of excellence are frustrated by institutional priorities and resource allocation; and injustice, which undermines the integrity of relationships within the organization and/or with partners. These threats, though analytically distinct, are often mutually reinforcing. This conceptual contribution is illustrated both by the extant literature and by a novel context, the three-ring circus. (shrink)

The so-called "adaptationism" of mainstream evolutionary biology has been criticized from a variety of sources. One, which has received relatively little philosophical attention, is developmental biology. Developmental constraints are said to be neglected by adaptationists. This paper explores the divergent methodological and explanatory interests that separate mainstream evolutionary biology from its embryological and developmental critics. It will focus on the concept of constraint itself; even this central concept is understood differently by the two sides of the dispute.

ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from (...) the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries. (shrink)

Among race theorists, the view that race is a social construction is widespread. While the term ‘ social construction’ is sometimes intended to mean merely that race does not constitute a robust, biological natural kind, it often labels the stronger position that race is real, but not a biological kind. For example, Charles Mills writes that, ‘‘the task of those working on race is to put race in quotes, ‘race’, while still insisting that nevertheless, it exists ’’. It is to (...) ‘‘make a plausible social ontology neither essentialist, innate, nor transhistorical, but real enough for all that’’. Racial constructionism, thus conceived, is a metaphysical position that contrasts both with the view that race is an important biological kind and with the more recent claim that race does not exist. The desire for a constructionist metaphysics of race emerges against the background of a cluster of normative disputes, including. (shrink)

Synthesizing situated cognition, reinforcement learning, and hybrid connectionist modeling, a generic cognitive architecture focused on situated involvement and interaction with the world is developed in this book. The architecture notably incorporates the distinction of implicit and explicit processes.

Social constructionism about race is a common view, but there remain questions about what exactly constitutes constructed race. Some hold that our concepts and conceptual practices construct race, and some hold that the causal consequences of these concepts and conceptual practices also play a role. But there is a third option, which is that the causal effects of our concepts and conceptual practices constitute race, but not the concepts and conceptual practices themselves. This paper reconsiders an argument for the reality (...) of race that grows out of the role of racial kinds in social scientific generalizations. It then uses recent work on the correlation of racial attitudes with behaviors to raise questions about the sufficiency, and perhaps also the necessity, of our concepts and conceptual practices in constituting constructed race, thus understood. (shrink)

This article explicates the interaction between implicit and explicit processes in skill learning, in contrast to the tendency of researchers to study each type in isolation. It highlights various effects of the interaction on learning (including synergy effects). The authors argue for an integrated model of skill learning that takes into account both implicit and explicit processes. Moreover, they argue for a bottom-up approach (first learning implicit knowledge and then explicit knowledge) in the integrated model. A variety of qualitative data (...) can be accounted for by the approach. A computational model, CLARION, is then used to simulate a range of quantitative data. The results demonstrate the plausibility of the model, which provides a new perspective on skill learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In a series of papers Geoff Moore has applied Alasdair MacIntyre’s much cited work to generate a virtue-based business ethics. Central to this project is Moore’s argument that business falls under MacIntyre’s concept of ‘practice’. This move attempts to overcome MacIntyre’s reputation for being ‘anti-business’ while maintaining his framework for evaluating social action and replaces MacIntyre’s hostility to management with a conception of managers as institutional practitioners (craftsmen). I argue however that this move has not been justified. Given the importance (...) MacIntyre places on the protection of practices, the result is that much of Moore’s contribution is misplaced. Business cannot name a practice but business institutions certainly do house practices. The task then is to try to understand the circumstances under which practices might flourish and those under which they might founder in a business context. This is not aided by Moore’s redescription of all businesses as practices. (shrink)

This book is a definitive reference source for the growing, increasingly more important, and interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling, that is, computational psychology. It combines breadth of coverage with definitive statements by leading scientists in this field. Research in computational cognitive modeling explores the essence of cognition through developing detailed, process-based understanding by specifying computational mechanisms, structures, and processes. Computational models provide both conceptual clarity and precision at the same time. This book substantiates this approach through overviews and many (...) examples. (shrink)

De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent’s conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the morally-best manner in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are the appropriateness of the agent’s uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and the practical, moral importance (...) of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith’s argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson’s argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue. (shrink)

Recent work by Joshua Knobe has established that people are far more likely to describe bad but foreseen side effects as intentionally performed than good but foreseen side effects (this is sometimes called the 'Knobe effect' or the 'side-effect effect.' Edouard Machery has proposed a novel explanation for this asymmetry: it results from construing the bad side effect as a cost that must be incurred to receive a benefit. In this paper, I argue that Machery's 'trade-off hypothesis' is wrong. I (...) do this by reproducing the asymmetry between judgments about good and bad side effects in cases that cannot plausibly be construed as trade-offs. (shrink)

Recent historiography of 19th century biology supports the revision of two traditional doctrines about the history of biology. First, the most important and widespread biological debate around the time of Darwin was not evolution versus creation, but biological functionalism versus structuralism. Second, the idealist and typological structuralist theories of the time were not particularly anti-evolutionary. Typological theories provided argumentation and evidence that was crucial to the refutation of Natural Theological creationism. The contrast between functionalist and structuralist approaches to biology continues (...) today, and the historical misunderstanding of 19th century typological biology may be one of its effects. This historical case can shed light on current controversies regarding the relevance of developmental biology to evolution. (shrink)

Some psychologists aim to secure a role for psychological explanations in understanding contemporary social disparities, a concern that plays out in debates over the relevance of the Implicit Association Test. Meta-analysts disagree about the predictive validity of the IAT and about the importance of implicit attitudes in explaining racial disparities. Here, I use the IAT to articulate and explore one route to establishing the relevance of psychological attitudes with small effects: an appeal to a process of “accumulation” that aggregates small (...) effects into large harms. After characterizing mechanisms of accumulation and considering some candidate examples, I argue that such mechanisms suggest how a contemporary attitude with small effects could figure in the explanation of large disparities, but they do not vindicate the importance of such an attitude since such mechanisms are typically also determined by competing causes. I close by sketching several strategies for advancing a defense of the relevance of attitudes with small effects. (shrink)

forthcoming in Philosophy Compass [penultimate draft .pdf file] A survey of the contemporary social constructionist landscape.

One influential view is that at least some putatively natural human kinds are actually social constructions, understood as some real kind of thing that is produced or sustained by our social and conceptual practices. Category constructionists share two commitments: they hold that human category terms like “race” and “sex” and “homosexuality” and “perversion” actually refer to constructed categories, and they hold that these categories are widely but mistakenly taken to be natural kinds. But it is far from clear that these (...) two commitments are consistent. The sort of mismatch between belief and underlying nature constructionists’ suppose is often taken to indicate a failure of reference. Reliance on a causal-historical account of reference allows the preservation of reference, but unfortunately, constructionists' appropriation of causal historical accounts of reference is beset by difficulties that do not attend natural kind theorists’ appeals to such accounts. Here, I set out these difficulties, but argue that they can be answered, allowing terms for apparently natural human kinds refer to some sort of social construction about which there is massive error. (shrink)

How can there be so much apparent disagreement about what race is, when there is so much agreement on the facts surrounding race? In this paper, I develop this puzzle and consider several interpretations of work in the philosophy of race to try to answer it, several ways of understanding what the metaphysics of race is doing. I consider and reject the possibility that apparent disagreement is metaphysically substantive, and I also consider and reject the view that apparent disagreement primarily (...) reflects semantic disagreements. Instead, I suggest that apparent first-order disagreement over the existence and character of race is a part of a broader, metalinguistic negotiation or conversation about how racial terms can or ought to be used, and I note a range of considerations—including semantic, pragmatic, epistemic, and ethical—that properly play a role in this discussion. (shrink)

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contribution that rules make to reasoning about moral dilemmas. In two experiments, we find (...) that participants show a parallel asymmetry about versions of the dilemmas that have minimized emotional force. In a third experiment, we find that people distinguish between whether an action violates a moral rule and whether it is, all things considered, wrong. We propose that judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicates a complex set of psychological processes, including representations of rules, emotional responses, and assessments of costs and benefits. (shrink)

Corporate management is torn between either focusing solely on the interests of stockholders or taking into account the interests of a wide spectrum of stakeholders. Of course, there need be no conflict where taking the wider view is also consistent with maximising stockholder wealth. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a conflict actually exists by examining the relationship between a company's positive and negative corporate social responsibility activities and equity performance. In general, we find little evidence to (...) suggest that managers taking a wider stakeholder perspective will jeopardise the interest of its stockholders. However, our findings do suggest that the market is not only influenced by the independent CSR activities, but also the totality of these activities and that the facets that they value do vary over time. It seems that most recently, the market has valued most firms that satisfied minimum requirements in the areas of diversity and environmental protection but were most proactive in the area of employee-relations. (shrink)

Controversies over the innateness of cognitive processes, mechanisms, and structures play a persistent role in driving research in philosophy as well as the cognitive sciences, but the appropriate way to understand the category of the innate remains subject to dispute. One venerable approach in philosophy and cognitive science merely contrasts innate features with those that are learned. In fact, Jerry Fodor has recently suggested that this remains our best handle on innateness.

This paper considers discussions of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre in management literature. It argues that management scholars who have attempted to appropriate his After Virtue as a supportive text for conventional business ethics do so only by misreading or by ignoring his other work. It shows that MacIntyre does not argue for a reformed capitalism in which individual virtue overcomes institutional vice. Rather he argues that capitalist businesses are inherently vicious and that therefore individual virtue cannot be realised within (...) them. The job of the virtuous is to resist them.2. The paper first presents an account of MacIntyre’s position on management and introduces some of the critical and supportive uses of his work in management scholarship. It focuses on two papers3 typical of the approach taken by conventional business ethicists to his work. These have attempted to deploy concepts developed by MacIntyre while denying the account of management and organisation of which they form a part. The paper provides some tentative hypotheses as to why management scholars have approached MacIntyre in this way. It argues that these attempted appropriations not only have failed but also must fail as conceptual coherence is sacrificed when the account within which those concepts make sense is denied.4. (shrink)

Leading cosmological theories engender a controversial puzzle which has prompted philosophers to propose competing epistemological solutions and physicists to propose methodological changes to cosmology. The puzzle arises from the prediction that every brain on Earth will eventually be vastly outnumbered by physical duplicates formed by random collisions of particles in outer space. Supposing that this prediction is correct, shouldn't you believe that your brain is probably one of these vastly more typical extraterrestrial brains, since you cannot infer your brain's origin (...) from your experiential state? But supposing that your brain is one of these extraterrestrial brains, why be confident in the cosmological theories, since you never actually received testimony supporting these theories? Proposals in the literature either deny the rationality of believing theories that make the prediction or deny the typicality of your brain among its duplicates. This paper argues that these proposals are not entirely satisfactory. Instead, one should be confident in theories making the prediction on the supposition that your brain is one of the extraterrestrial brains. The upshots include that it may be rational to believe that your brain is probably an extraterrestrial brain and that cosmologists should not alter their methodology in response to the puzzle. (shrink)

In recent years, numerous articles and books in the humanities and the social sciences have been devoted to understanding the ascription of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental illness, and other ‘human kind’ concepts to persons. What may be more surprising given the enormous volume of this research and the diversity of its sources is that much of it shares a common commitment to understanding the categories picked out by these concepts in an non- essentialist way. For example, Iris Marion (...) Young suggests of social groups (including races, genders, classes, age groups, and ethnicities) that they. (shrink)

This paper briefly summarizes current thinking in engineering ethics education, argues that much of that ethical instruction runs the risk of being only superficially effective, and explores some of the underlying systemic barriers within academia that contribute to this result. This is not to criticize or discourage efforts to improve ethics instruction. Rather it is to point to some more fundamental problems that still must be addressed in order to realize the full potential of enhanced ethics instruction. Issues discussed will (...) include: intellectual engagement versus emotional engagement; the gravitational pull of curricular structures; the nature of engineering faculty; and the “engineer-ization” of ethics. (shrink)

Recent work proclaims a dominant role for automatic, intuitive, and emotional processes in producing ordinary moral judgment, despite the fact that we have little direct evidence about moral judgment “in the wild.” Indirect support comes via an assumption of dual-process theory: that conscious, reasoning processes are resource intensive. We argue that reasoning that employs consciously available moral rules undermines this assumption, but this has not been appreciated because of a failure to distinguish between explanation and justification. We conclude that it (...) remains unclear what sorts of cognitive processes are dominant in ordinary moral judgments. (shrink)

How should deontological theories that prohibit actions of type K — such as intentionally killing an innocent person — deal with cases of uncertainty as to whether a particular action is of type K? Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, who raise this problem in their paper "Absolutist Moral Theories and Uncertainty" (2006), focus on a case where a skier is about to cause the death of ten innocent people — we don’t know for sure whether on purpose or not — (...) by causing an avalanche; and we can only save the people by shooting the skier. One possible deontological attitude towards such uncertainty is what Jackson and Smith call the threshold view, according to which whether or not the deontological constraint applies depends on our degree of (justified) certainty meets a given threshold. Jackson and Smith argue against the threshold view that it leads to implausible paradoxical moral dilemmas in a special kind of case. In this response, we show that the threshold view can avoid these implausible moral dilemmas, as long as the relevant deontological constraint is grounded in individualistic patient-based considerations, such as what an individual person is entitled to object to. (shrink)