There are many cases in which, by making some great sacrifice, you could bring about either a good outcome or a very good outcome. In some of these cases, it seems wrong for you to bring about the good outcome, since you could bring about the very good outcome with no additional sacrifice. It also seems permissible for you not to make the sacrifice, and bring about neither outcome. But together, these claims seem to imply that you ought to bring (...) about neither outcome rather than the good outcome. And that seems very counterintuitive. In this paper, I develop this problem, propose a solution, and then draw out some implications both for how we should understand supererogation and for how we should approach charitable giving. (shrink)

Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem concerns a situation in which it is morally permissible to do nothing and to save two people but not to save only one. This description seems to entail that we should do nothing rather than save only one. I object to Horton’s solution and challenge a principle he draws attention to, which is required to generate the problem but which Horton regards as beyond dispute.

The All or Nothing Problem is a paradox developed in recent debates about effective altruism. One argues that the paradox can be resolved by rejecting some of its claims in favor of parallel conditional claims. Another contends that the correct solution to the paradox is to reject a wrong bridge principle that is assumed in it. A third draws a distinction between two moral realms, and suggests that the paradox is only of limited relevance to some assertion of (...) effective altruism because it may not exist in certain moral realm. In this article, I argue that those solutions to the All or Nothing Problem is unsatisfactory, and propose an alternative solution. Firstly, I challenge their reasons for a claim in the paradox. Secondly, I propose a holist deontological solution to the All or Nothing Problem. Finally, in order to understand the true nature of the problem, I carry out an analysis of the underlying causes of its more general form. (shrink)

Fetal reduction is the practice of reducing the number of fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, such as quadruplets, to a twin or singleton pregnancy. Use of assisted reproductive technologies increases the likelihood of multiple pregnancies, and many fetal reductions are done after in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, either because of social or health-related reasons. In this paper, I apply Joe Horton’s all or nothing problem to the ethics of fetal reduction in the case of a twin pregnancy. (...) I argue that in the case of a twin pregnancy, there are two intuitively plausible claims: abortion is morally permissible, and it is morally wrong to abort just one of the fetuses. But since we should choose morally permissible acts rather than impermissible ones, the two claims lead to another highly implausible claim: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. Yet, this does not seem right. A plausible moral theory cannot advocate such a pro-death view. Or can it? I suggest ways to solve this problem and draw implications for each solution. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

When Milan Kundera introduces the concept of graphomania, he seems to register only two extremes: the person who writes for a few known people and the person who writes for a very large audience. Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem provides a way of making sense of this conceptualization of the situation, though in a way that breaks with Kundera’s emphasis on a writer’s craving for audience attention.

Supererogatory acts are, in some sense, morally better their non-supererogatory alternatives. In this sense, what is it for one option A to be better than an alternative B? I argue for three main conclusions. First, relative rankings are a type of all-in action guidance. If A is better than B, then morality recommends that you A rather than B. Such all-in guidance is useful when acts have the same deontic status. Second, I argue that Right > Wrong: permissible acts are (...) always better than their impermissible alternatives. If Right > Wrong were false, then morality’s deontic verdicts would sometimes conflict with its relative rankings. Such conflict would undermine the thought that morality is a coherent, authoritative guide to action. Third, the All or Nothing Problem is not a counterexample to Right > Wrong as is commonly thought. Instead, it involves an interesting ranking reversal: whether A > B can depend on whether a certain alternative is added as a third option. (shrink)

Suppose two children face a deadly threat. You can either do nothing, save one child by sacrificing your arms, or save both by sacrificing your arms. Here are two plausible claims: first, it is permissible to do nothing; second, it is wrong to save only one. Joe Horton argues that the combination of these two claims has the implausible implication that if you are not going to save both children, you ought to save neither. This is one instance (...) of what he calls the ALL OR NOTHING PROBLEM. I here present CONDITIONAL PERMISSIONS as the solution. Although saving only one child is wrong, it can be conditionally permissible, that is, permissible given what you are not going to do. You ought to save both children or save neither, but if you are not going to save both, you ought to do the next best thing (save one) or save neither. (shrink)

The all-or-nothing problem, formulated by Joe Horton, presents us with a situation in which you can do nothing or save one child or save two. It is dangerous to save any, making doing nothing morally permissible, but there is no extra danger in saving two, so it seems wrong to just save one. But then doing nothing is morally better than saving one. I present a solution in response to this problematic result, which is that (...) doing nothing is not an accurate description of a permissible option. (shrink)

In his paper, ‘Twin pregnancy, fetal reduction and the ‘all or nothing problem’, Räsänen sets out to apply Horton’s ‘all or nothing’ problem to the ethics of multifetal pregnancy reduction from a twin to a singleton pregnancy. Horton’s problem involves the following scenario: imagine that two children are about to be crushed by a collapsing building. An observer would have three options: do nothing, save one child by allowing their arms to be crushed, or (...) save both by allowing their arms to be crushed. Horton offers two intuitively plausible claims: it is morally permissible not to save either child and it is morally impermissible to save only one of the children, which taken together lead to the problematic conclusion that if an observer does not save both children, then it is better to save neither than save only one. Räsänen applies this problem to the case of 2-to-1 MFPR, arguing ultimately that, in cases where there is no medical reason to reduce, the woman ought to bring both fetuses to term. We will argue that Räsänen does not provide adequate support for the claim, crucial to his argument, that aborting only one of the fetuses in a twin pregnancy is wrong, so the ‘all or nothing’ problem does not arise in this context. Furthermore, we argue that the scenario Räsänen presents is highly unrealistic because of the clinical realities of 2-to-1 MFPR, making his argument of limited use for real-life decision making in this area. (shrink)

If doing good is often beyond the call of duty, instances of the All or Nothing Problem abound. I have argued elsewhere that we should solve this problem by accepting a principle that I call Optimific Altruism, which has interesting implications both for the correct account of supererogation and for our obligations to give to charity. However, Theron Pummer and Daniel Muñoz have argued that we should instead solve this problem by rejecting an inference rule that (...) I call Conditional Obligation. I here recap my preferred solution and argue against this alternative. (shrink)

In Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, the agent has three options: a permissible act that saves no one, a wrongful act that saves only one child, or a supererogatory act that saves two children. Some may argue that if the agent is not going to save two children, she should save none rather than just one. However, this conclusion is counterintuitive. Although there are many proposed solutions to this problem, none of them provides a fully satisfactory answer. (...) In this article, I argue that it is plausible to accept the Individualist Obligation Principle according to which, the agent is morally permitted to fulfill a _prima facie_ obligation to save an individual in grave peril, provided that doing so demonstrates a substantial engagement with the individualized obligations to each individual involved. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a metaphysical solution to the all-or-nothing problem, which rejects the description of the choices in favour of lower-level descriptions.

I introduce an argument for rejecting Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem on the grounds that saving one child is not a genuine option for most people.

I present an example in which the all-or-nothing problem involves adults, rather than children in danger.

This paper presents what I call “the flowchart solution” to Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem. Rather than three options – don’t save any child, save one, or save two – there is a flowchart with a choice of don’t save or save, and then within save, save one or save two.

There is an ongoing debate about whether multifetal pregnancy reduction from twins to singletons (2-to-1 MFPR) is morally permissible. By applying the all or nothing problem to the cases of reducing twin pregnancies to singletons, Räsänen argues that an implausible conclusion seems to follow from two plausible claims: (1) it is permissible to have an abortion and (2) it is wrong to abort only one fetus in a twin pregnancy. The implausible conclusion is that women considering 2-to-1 MFPR (...) for social reasons ought to abort both fetuses rather than just one. To avoid the conclusion, Räsänen suggests that it is best to carry both fetuses to term and give one for adoption. In this article, I argue that Räsänen’s argument fails for two reasons: the inference from (1) and (2) to the conclusion rests on a bridge principle that does not work in certain circumstances, and there is good reason to reject the claim that it is wrong to abort only one fetus. (shrink)

Are philosophers moral experts, and if so, what does this imply for their proper role in moral decision-making? The dominant view on this subject argues that philosophers have superior moral understanding, but they are not better judges of what is morally right. Consequently, philosophers cannot and should not have an authoritative role in moral decision-making. In this article, I challenge this view and argue that an examination of the intimate connection between two capacities – to understand and to judge – (...) reveals that it is both inconsistent and simplistic. It is inconsistent because, all things being equal, if philosophers better understand moral problems, they are also better judges of them. It is simplistic because it adopts an all-or-nothing approach to moral expertise, while expertise is in fact conditional. Inspired by the psychological literature on expertise, I claim that we should not ask whether philosophers are moral experts but rather under which conditions they successfully execute their expertise. The conclusion of the dominant view needs to be reconsidered to reflect the conditional nature of philosophers' expertise. Although more empirical research is required, I offer several hypotheses for future endeavours that demonstrate what a conditional view of philosophers' moral expertise could look like. -/- . (shrink)

Daniel Breazeale - All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 665-667 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Daniel Breazeale University of Kentucky Paul W. Franks. All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. viii + 440. Cloth, $49.95. Paul Franks' All or Nothing is in no sense (...) an introduction to or history of German idealism, but an immensely sophisticated philosophical engagement with a specific complex of problems that occupied Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and others—problems they believed themselves to have inherited from Kant's transcendental philosophy, as well as from its criticism by Jacobi, Maimon, Schulze, and others. According to Franks, these thinkers were involved in a common systematic project of "ultimate" or "absolute" grounding, while adopting various strategies to avoid "the Agrippan Trilemma," according to which any effort to justify an ultimate first principle must involve either the purely arbitrary assertion or stipulation of the principle in question, an infinite regress of explanatory principles, or a viciously circular justification of the principle in.. (shrink)

Inflicting harm is generally preferable to inflicting death. If you must choose between the two, you should generally choose to harm. But prenatal harm seems different. If a mother must choose between harming her fetus or aborting it, she may choose either, at least in many cases. So it seems that prenatal harm is particularly objectionable, sometimes on a par with death. This paper offers an explanation of why prenatal harm seems particularly objectionable by drawing an analogy to the all-or- (...) class='Hi'>nothing problem. It then argues that this analogy offers independent support for the ‘voluntarist’ view that at least some parental role obligations are grounded in the choice to be a parent. (shrink)

How could it be wrong to exploit—say, by paying sweatshop wages—if the exploited party benefits? How could it be wrong to do something gratuitously bad—like giving to a wasteful charity—if that is better than permissibly doing nothing? Joe Horton argues that these puzzles, known as the Exploitation Problem and All or Nothing Problem, have no unified answer. I propose one and pose a challenge for Horton’s take on the Exploitation Problem.

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

On one common reading, Kant's epistemology involves an "all-Or-Nothing" principle: the mind achieves either objective knowledge or nothing at all. But then we cannot account for dreams. L w beck maintains that the categories also function in non-Veridical contexts (including dreams), But do not serve to distinguish these from veridical contexts. I argue that the categories determine coherence both within and among different contexts of experience, And hence determine which are veridical.

The book develops, defends, and applies a "Dual Scale" model of weighing reasons to resolve various issues in ethics. It tells you everything you ever wanted to know about weighing reasons and probably a lot of stuff you didn't want to know too. It addresses, among other things, what the general issue of weighing reasons is; what it is to weigh reasons correctly; whether reasons have more than one weight value (e.g., justifying, requiring, and/or commending weight); whether weight values are (...) context sensitive; how to tell what the weights of reasons are; how reasons for are related to reasons against; and how the weights of reasons aggregate. After addressing such issues, it explains a number of puzzling phenomena in ethics, such as the All or Nothing Problem, the normative significance of small improvements, and the intransitivity of the makes-it-permissible-to-act-against relation. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'all or nothing (AON)'. AON presents a false dilemma by suggesting that there are only two options – either all or nothing – when in fact there are many more options in the middle ground between those two extremes. AON also happens in the political arena anytime a politician insists that being against one of the policies is equivalent to being against all of them. Often (...) people adopt a kind of all or nothing attitude when it comes to supporting a candidate or political party. Of course, the argument suggests that gun laws would be completely ineffectual – criminals would still find ways to buy guns. But AON also appears in politics when people are proposing or drafting laws and policy. (shrink)

In this work, the first overview of the German Idealism that is both conceptual and methodological, Paul W. Franks offers a philosophical reconstruction that is...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:For the Love of Nothing:Auden, Keats, and DeconstructionJo-Anne Cappeluti"Authors can be stupid enough, God knows, but they are not quite so stupid as a certain kind of critic seems to think. The kind of critic, I mean, to whom, when he condemns a work or a passage, the possibility never occurs that its author may have foreseen exactly what he is going to say"—W. H. AudenIDeconstruction by definition (...) is an exercise of the intellect's predilection to disprove and deny aesthetic experience. Deconstruction is in love with denying this "nothing," but is seemingly unaware of how attempting demystification entangles the intellect all the more with the imagination. And it is the imagination that creates aesthetic experience, the very entity critics deny even exists. This dynamic is especially true of deconstruction looking at the Romantic mode of poetry: the poetry of poets who serve as their own subject. Analyzing the internalized quests of these poets, deconstruction offers a drama of itself too much in love with demystifying aesthetic experience, attempting and always failing, intellectually, to reduce it to nothing.Poets who write in the Romantic mode of poetry are in love with this "nothing"; they present internalized quests filled with their acute awareness of the aesthetic—and highly indeterminate—nature of being human. At the core of this indeterminacy is the ongoing debate between imagination and intellect, the first interested in exploring what is there, in human consciousness, the second prone to demystifying it. Poets who write in this mode learn that such improvable yet actual aesthetic experience or "nothing" is germane to being human. Any attempt [End Page 345] to escape it intellectually will only lead back to the imagination that presents it.Poets who write in the Romantic mode of poetry are so familiar with the way in which this aesthetic nature of human existence involves the unresolved conflict between imagination and intellect that these poets present in their poetry a response to the criticism that denies it. John Keats and W. H. Auden are two poets who show this dynamic and who, not by coincidence, have a lot in common. Deconstruction, however, sees Auden and Keats—however separately—as poets who wake up at mid-career to the fallaciousness of the imagination and subsequently turn their talent to making nothing happen in their poetry: undermining its aesthetic nature. Keats's Endymion and Auden's "Caliban to the Audience" are frequently cited as prime examples of this demystification process. As I will argue, however, both of these poems deliberately dramatize the self-thwarting attempts of the intellect to dissect and dismiss what it claims is nothing.1Keats dramatizes this dynamic in Endymion, drawing attention to the way in which this "Brain-sick shepherd prince" claims—actually over-protests—to have loved "nothing" after his miraculous experience beneath the ocean with the strangely indeterminate creature, Glaucus (pp. 134, 206).2 Auden offers as well a detailed description of this dynamic in "Caliban to the Audience," the last section of The Sea and The Mirror, A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest. In this poem, the strangely indeterminate, begged question of existence, Caliban, reveals in great detail his audience's futile attempt to demystify what upsets them.My argument concludes with a discussion of the way in which these poems dramatize deconstruction's unintentional witness to the "real Word" of the imagination (CP, p. 444).3As poets who write in the Romantic mode, exploring what is there in their consciousness, Keats and Auden find a great indeterminacy inherent in their human nature: an unresolved problem that they explore—rather than try to solve. Auden, in fact, links himself to Keats, finding in Keats's idea of the chameleon poet his (Auden's) central idea of the poet as actor for the imagination. Like Keats, Auden takes the imagination quite seriously and fuses Keats's sense of the imagination with Coleridge's: observing that poetry records the poet's experiences in which the (Primary) imagination is drawn to certain "sacred" beings and events. In "Making, Knowing and Judging," Auden declares that the "impression made upon the imagination by any sacred being is of... (shrink)

An explanation for why the Bisa do not perform a traditional dance to express their identity is all-or-nothing reasoning: “We would have to water it down for this audience and that is not a Bisa dance.”.

Judges and juries often make factual decisions even if the facts are disputed and there is no clear-cut evidence available. Despite this common state of uncertainty, verdicts are thought of as having clear winners and losers––either the plaintiff wins and receives a full remedy, or the defendant wins and the plaintiff gets nothing. In private disputes, factfinders base their binary factual determinations on the preponderance of the evidence. There are, however, several doctrines that allow for partial remedy, discounted by (...) the probability that the facts support the plaintiff’s case, given the available evidence (proportional liability). This Article offers a general theory for proportional liability in private law. It identifies three types of factual uncertainty—mutual uncertainty, unilateral uncertainty, and institutional uncertainty—and shows that legal economists should support proportional liability when the state of uncertainty is shared by the parties and the court (mutual uncertainty), and they should adopt an all-or-nothing rule whenever the information is observable but unverifiable (institutional uncertainty). In cases where one party holds private information (unilateral uncertainty), proportional liability is sometimes, but not always, superior to an all-or-nothing rule. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of nature in classical Chinese culture through dialogue with the work of François Jullien. I understand nature negatively as precisely what never appears as such nor ever can be exactly apprehended and defined. For perception and expression entail inevitably human mediation and cultural transmission by semiotic and hermeneutic means that distort and occult the natural in the full depth of its alterity. My claim is that the largely negative approach to nature that Jullien finds in (...) sources of Chinese tradition can also be found in the West, particularly in its apophatic currents or countercurrents that contest all along the more powerful positive conceptions and systems for construing and mastering the natural world. These insights grow especially from the critique of idolatry, in which worship of nature, in concrete, objective forms taken as gods, is negated. Bringing out this negative-theological matrix can give us a perspective on Jullien’s treatment and expose some of his own biases notably in favor of immanence to the exclusion of metaphysical transcendence. Comparative philosophy serves in this negative-theological key self-critically to identify blind spots in one’s own culture. (shrink)

One important trend in the debate over expressivism and cognitivism is the emergence of ‘hybrid’ or ‘ecumenical’ theories. According to such theories, moral sentences express both beliefs, as cognitivism has it, and desire-like states, as expressivism has it. One may wonder, though, whether the hybrid move is as novel as its advocates seem to take it to be—or whether it simply leads us back to the conceptions of early expressivists, such as Charles Stevenson or Richard Hare. Michael Ridge has recently (...) argued that we ought not to see Hare as a hybrid expressivist because Hare’s approach allows for moral sentences that do not express any descriptive beliefs at all. Yet, Ridge’s reading has been challenged by John Eriksson, who even goes as far as to claim that modern hybrid expressivists should follow in Hare’s footsteps because it is Hare’s framework that actually provides a solution to the so-called ‘Frege-Geach problem’. In the present paper, I first want to show that we can defend Eriksson’s reading with regard to the official version of Hare’s theory. I will, secondly, argue that, in line with what we may take to be Ridge’s critical perspective on Hare, this official version faces serious difficulties, resulting from the possibility of unknown speaker standards. Thirdly, I will demonstrate that a modern reconstruction of Hare in terms of what I will refer to as ‘de dicto beliefs’, though in principle possible, will not allow us to solve the ‘Frege-Geach problem’. (shrink)

The dream of the perpetual motion charms us since millennia, the desire of machines substituting men was present already in the imperial China and the classical Rome; the medieval alchemists tried to build automata, automata showed up in the Renaissance princes’ plays. In the Aladdin fable, the sorcerer satisfies on the instant all wishes of the lamp’s owner. In other words, the fiction of omnipotence accompanies humanity from the very beginning. Is God omnipotent? So, why not humanity? Building automatic factories, (...) digital modelling of human work, both makes realistic what looked utopian. It can perhaps be achieved an unmanned production mode, and where machines can produce whatever we can desire, endlessly. Are numbers not from zero to infinity? There is, nonetheless, an obstacle. Human desires are subjective; therefore, from the standpoint of the producers, of the automatic factory’s owner, there is a very difficult problem to go through. How to manage human desires? How to transform the desire itself in an automatic factor of the production? Digital modelling of human work is not enough; the human itself must be modelled. The full control of him/her must be achieved. It means understanding a priori each of his/her desire. It means leading him/her step by step all their lives long. It means, shortly, to transform him/her into automata. The nightmare of a bees’ or ants’ society, the nightmare of losing his/her free will comes closer and looks menacing. It looks like the black clouds of a threatening thunderstorm. (shrink)

Throughout the history, whenever humans encounter a phenomenon for which there was no explanation, a theory was proposed for it. Of course, not necessarily all the theories were purely scientific and many of them were non-scientific, pseudo- scientific, or at best were only slightly influenced by science. But one thing was in common among them: they all were trying to provide as deeper as possible explanations about how the universe works. Although today and in the modern era the exact meaning (...) of theory has changed comparatively, still they must be such that can be tested through scientific procedures in order to confirm or reject. Nevertheless, still sometimes in a common belief, the meaning of "theory" is unprovable or at least unproven conjecture, and surprisingly sometimes confused with hypothesis. Scientific laws are descriptive reports - or theories - that express and predict a range of natural phenomena and explain how they work. Any scientific discourse is carried out in three levels: hypothesis, theory, and law. A hypothesis, is a testable logical conjecture to explain the phenomena we observe in the universe. A hypothesis usually comes with no practical support, or at least not been proven yet. The hypothesis can only be tested through trial and error and tries to offer explanation that provides a reasonable platform for further studies and usually it is the first step in solving a problem or describing a phenomenon. A theory however, is a logical statement about a phenomenon that is derived from rational thinking and is often associated with processes such as observation, study or research and provides standards in such a way that scientific tests can confirm - or reject. A theory used in describing what is usually to happen with the implication that it doesn’t still a fact. Yet a scientific law is a descriptive reports - or theory - that previses a range of natural phenomena and explains how they function. Scientific laws are descriptive summaries of a large set of facts that are tested by scientific evidences and after fact-checking based on their potential ability for measuring future experiences. So it can be said that every theory was first a hypothesis and has the potential to become a law to come. It can also be said that any theory is valid as long as it is not violated by a more conclusive one. (shrink)

I consider a proposal for what the relation between philosophy and fiction is: the same problems appear in both, but fiction explores solutions which are not available to philosophers. I use Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem to illustrate the proposal, but pose an objection to it.

Although Critchley’s main title promises “very little,” indeed “almost nothing,” his subtitle—“death, philosophy, literature”—announces his grander themes. Critchley’s concern is nothing less than the question of the meaning of human life. At issue is “the radical ungraspability of finitude, our inability to lay hold of death and to make of it a work and to make that work the basis for an affirmation of life”. In addressing this question, Critchley’s premise is the so-called “death of God,” the realization (...) that all attempts to find a redemptive meaning to human life in a divine source or ground outside life and humanity have become untenable. For Critchley, this is at once a personal conviction and a sign of the times, a mark of a ubiquitous nihilism that defines the modern landscape, and which, in its radicalness, puts into question the very meaning of philosophy in its confluence with literature. “For me,” Critchley writes, “philosophy begins from the literal incredibility of the claim [to meaning outside finitude], that the possibility of a belief in God or some God-equivalent, whether vindicated by faith or reason, has decisively broken down. Of course the proper name for this breakdown is modernity and the task of philosophical modernity... is the thinking through of the death of God in terms of the problem of finitude”. He thus claims that “a response to the question of the meaning of life... must be sought within life”. (shrink)

Clauses (1) and (2) guarantee the inclusion of all 'intuitive' natural numbers, and (3) guarantees the exclusion of all other objects. Thus, in particular, no nonstandard numbers, which would follow after the intuitive ones are admitted (nonstandard numbers are found in nonstandard models of Peano arithmetic, in which the standard natural numbers are followed by one or more 'copies' of integers running from minus infinity to infinity)1. What is problematic about this delimitation? I suspect that its hypothetical proponent would see (...) its weakest point in the unexplained concept of successor. However, we logicians know better (or at least some of us are convinced that we do): it is clause (3) which harbours the neuralgic spot, by dint of resisting any reasonable logical formalization to the point of appearing utterly void! There is, of course, no problem with regimenting (1) - we only need an individual constant 0 and a unary predicate constant N (the one whose meaning we are interested in) and we postulate.. (shrink)

Although it is frequently said that logic is a purely formal discipline lacking any content for special philosophical subdisciplines, I argue in this essay that the concepts of predication, and of the properties of objects presupposed by standard first-order logic are sufficient to address many of the traditional problems of ontology. The concept of an object's having a property is extended to provide an intensional definition of the existence of an object as the object's possessing a maximally consistent property combination, (...) consisting, for any property or its complement. Nonexistent objects by the proposed definition are those that either lack both some property and its complement, or have both a property and its complement included in its corresponding property combination. The definition in turn makes it possible to offer solutions based on purely logical concepts of such longstanding metaphysical problems as why there is something rather than nothing, and why there exists exactly one logically contingent actual world, itself a maximally consistent combination of true predication instances or facts. Additionally, the ontology upholds an argument in support of modal actualism and against modal realism, treating all logically possible worlds other than the actual world as predicationally incomplete nonexistent objects or semantic fictions. (shrink)

Biological dysfunction is regarded, in many accounts, as necessary and perhaps sufficient for disease. But although disease is conceptualized as all-or-nothing, biological functions often differ by degree. A tension is created by attempting to use a continuous variable as the basis for a categorical definition, raising questions about how we are to pinpoint the boundary between health and disease. This is the line-drawing problem. In this paper, we show how the line-drawing problem arises within “dysfunction-requiring” accounts of (...) disease, such as those of Christopher Boorse and Jerome Wakefield. We then provide several detailed examples to establish that biological dysfunction cannot provide a boundary. We examine potential ways of resolving the line-drawing problem, either by dropping one of the claims that generates it, or by appealing to additional criteria. We argue that two of these options are plausible, and that each of these can be applied with regard to different diseases. (shrink)

This chapter considers the relation between supererogation and duties (also here referred to as obligations) from a nonconsequentialist point of view. It first considers whether supererogation may sometimes take precedence over positive and negative duties and how this relates to personal costs (including efforts) required to perform one’s duty. It then considers how acquiescence to having large costs imposed on one (even permissibly) can be supererogatory. Finally, it considers how what are usually duties can become supererogatory and how what is (...) usually supererogatory can become a duty. The relation between these topics and the trolley problem, the so-called ‘all or nothing problem,’ and the issue of abortion are examined. (shrink)

In the article, Twin pregnancy, fetal reduction and the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there is a moral problem in multifetal pregnancy reduction from a twin to a singleton pregnancy. Drawing on Horton’s original version of the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there are two intuitively plausible claims in 2-to-1 MFPR: aborting both fetuses is morally permissible, aborting only one of the twin fetuses is morally wrong. Yet, with the assumption that (...) one should select permissible choice over impermissible choice, the two claims lead to a counter-intuitive conclusion: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. It would be odd to promote such a pro-death view. Begović _et al_ discuss my article and offer insightful criticism, claiming, that there is no ‘all or nothing problem’ present in 2-to-1 MFPR. In this short reply, I respond to some of their criticism. (shrink)

I first provide an accessible overview of the DWE (Doing Well Enough) logical and semantic framework for representing going beyond the call and its family of kindred concepts in a tightly intergraded way. Next, a module, for representing some basic agent-evaluative notions is developed (“AA” for “Aretaic Assessment”), and then it is integrated with the more act-evaluative notions of DWE, thereby allowing for a representation of suberogation and supererogation (as distinct from going beyond the call) and many other combined deontic (...) and agent-evaluative notions. I then probe more deeply into how the semantic structures for the DWE framework might themselves be generated and then offer some brief reflections on the classic supererogation puzzle, as well as that of supererogatory holes and the all or nothing problem, framing options via the preceding reflections. (shrink)

Why 1 = presence and 0 = absence and the digital world formula is x = xn: an exploration of meaning in a universe of infinite replication. In the beginning was the Zero, and the Zero was with God, and God was the One. —All and Nothing In 1854, the British mathematician George Boole presented the idea of a universe the elements of which could be understood in terms of the logic of absence and presence: 0 and 1, all (...) and nothing—the foundation of binary code. The Boolean digits 0 and 1 do not designate a quantity. In the Boolean world, x times x always equals x; all and nothing meet in the formula x = xn. As everything becomes digitized, God the clockmaker is replaced by God the programmer. This book–described by its authors as “a theology for the digital world”—explores meaning in a digital age of infinite replication, in a world that has dissolved into information and achieved immortality by turning into a pure sign. All and Nothing compares information that spreads without restraint to a hydra—the mythological monster that grew two heads for every one that was cut off. Information is thousand-headed and thousand-eyed because Hydra's tracks cannot be deleted. It shows that when we sit in front of a screen, we are actually on the other side, looking at the world as an uncanny reminder of the nondigitized. It compares our personal data to our shadows and our souls, envisioning the subconscious laid out on a digital bier like a corpse. The digital world, the authors explain, summons forth fantasies of a chiliastic or apocalyptic nature. The goal of removing the representative from mathematics has now been achieved on a greater scale than Boole could have imagined. (shrink)

The book concerns what I take to be the least controversial normative principle concerning action: you ought to perform your best option—best, that is, in terms of whatever ultimately matters. The book sets aside the question of what ultimately matters so as to focus on more basic issues, such as: What are our options? Do I have the option of typing out the cure for cancer if that’s what I would in fact do if I had the right intentions at (...) the right times (e.g., the intention to type the letter T at t1, the intention to type the letter H at t2, the intention to type the letter E at t3, etc.)? If I can’t form intentions voluntarily, does that mean that I don’t have the option of forming the intention that I ought to form? Which options do we assess directly in terms of their own goodness and which do we assess in terms of their relations to the goodness of other options? What do we hold fixed when assessing how good an option is? Do we, for instance, hold fixed the agent’s future beliefs, desires, and intentions? And do we hold fixed the agent’s predictable future misbehavior? Lastly, how do the things that ultimately matter determine the goodness of an option? If one of the things that ultimately matters in determining the goodness of an option is that the option doesn’t involve violating anyone’s rights, do we evaluate the option itself in terms of whether it involves violating anyone’s rights or do we evaluate the option’s prospect in terms of this and then the option in terms of its prospect? And what if there is indeterminacy or uncertainty with regards to whether an option would involve violating someone’s rights? (shrink)