Expert-informed public policy often depends on a degree of public trust in the relevant expert authorities. But if lay citizens are not themselves authorities on the relevant area of expertise, how can they make good judgements about the trustworthiness of those who claim such authority? I argue that the answer to this question depends on the kind of trust under consideration. Specifically, I maintain that a distinction between epistemic trust and recommendation trust has consequences for novices judging the trustworthiness of (...) experts. I argue for this by identifying the unique difficulties that emerge when a novice is asked not just to believe expert testimony, but to follow expert recommendations. I outline criteria for novice judgements of expert trustworthiness that have been proposed by Elizabeth Anderson and show that novel problems emerge for her criteria when we shift focus from epistemic trust to recommendation trust. More is needed when we are asked not just to believe the experts but to act as they recommend, because novices looking for trustworthy expert recommendations need to establish whether the recommended course of action supports what is important to them and accords with their values. (shrink)

What do we expect of those whom we trust? Some argue that when we trust we are confident the trusted will act on moral motivations. But often we trust without appraising the trusted’s moral qualities, and sometimes trust expects more than morality demands. I argue for a non-moral commitments account: when we trust a person we expect they will be motivated to act a certain way by a commitment that we ascribe to them. My alternative accommodates an expanded typology of (...) trust’s vulnerabilities, including tragic disappointments that are as painful as betrayal, but without the recompense of moral complaint. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s criticisms of Kant’s account of freedom and renders these criticisms in such a way as to pose a serious challenge to Kantian ethics. My first aim is to explain Nietzsche’s challenge to the principle that being free means acting as a free agent ought to act, which I call Kant’s universalism. My second aim is to show that Kant’s accounts of self-respect is a particularly unconvincing account of how we can make room (...) for virtues within a universalistic framework, and thereby persuade the Kantian that there is something wrong with the underlying universalism principle. (shrink)

How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm argues that standard philosophical answers to these questions presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and conation that undermines an adequate understanding of values and their connection to motivation and deliberation. Rejecting this distinction, Helm argues that emotions are fundamental to any account of value and motivation, and he develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires (...) and evaluative judgements and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and of how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons. (shrink)

Authors critical of corporate power focus almost exclusively on one solution: bringing it under democratic control. However important this is, there are at least two other options, which are rarely discussed: reducing powerful firms’ size and influence, or accepting corporate power as a necessary evil. This article provides a comparative perspective for evaluating all three options. It argues that the trade-offs we face in responding to corporate power have a trilemmatic structure. The pure strategies of accepting powerful firms, breaking them (...) up, or rendering them more accountable are each incompatible with one of three important values: power balance, economies of scale, and minimizing agency costs, respectively. While the latter two concepts are purely economic and efficiency-based, the value of power balance can be grounded in a variety of reasons. Different normative interpretations of power balance are discussed, along with their implications for policy choices within the trilemma. (shrink)

Anselm’s ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch’s ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm’s argument, her distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality’s wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.

How do we punish others socially, and should we do so? In her 2018 Descartes Lectures for Tilburg University, Linda Radzik explores the informal methods ordinary people use to enforce moral norms, such as telling people off, boycotting businesses, and publicly shaming wrongdoers on social media. Over three lectures, Radzik develops an account of what social punishment is, why it is sometimes permissible, and when it must be withheld. She argues that the proper aim of social punishment is to put (...) moral pressure on wrongdoers to make amends. Yet the permissibility of applying such pressure turns on the tension between individual desert and social good, as well as the possession of an authority to punish. Responses from Christopher Bennett, George Sher and Glen Pettigrove challenge Radzik's account of social punishment while also offering alternative perspectives on the possible meanings of our responses to wrongdoing. Radzik replies in the closing essay. (shrink)

Kant famously distinguishes between the methods of mathematics and of metaphysics, holding that metaphysicians err when they avail themselves of the mathematical method. Nonetheless, in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, he insists that mathematics and metaphysics must jointly ground ‘proper natural science’. This article examines the distinctive contributions and unity of mathematics and metaphysics to the foundations of the science of body. I argue that the two are distinct insofar as they involve distinctive sorts of grounding relations – mathematics (...) pertains to formal grounding, while metaphysics concerns material grounding – while they are unified insofar as they treat motion, the fundamental determination of the science of body. (shrink)

Kant’s preoccupation with architectonics is a characteristic and noteworthy aspect of his thought. Various features of Kant’s argumentation and philosophical system are founded on the precise definitions of the various subdomains of human knowledge and the derivative borders among them. One science conspicuously absent from Kant’s routine discussions of the organization of knowledge is chemistry. Whereas sciences such as physics, psychology, and anthropology are all explicitly located in the architectonic, chemistry finds no such place. In this paper, I examine neglected (...) passages from Kant’s corpus as well as texts regarding chemistry that Kant himself read in order to unveil his views on the definition of chemistry and its relations with the other sciences. These considerations reveal chemistry to be the science that studies the changes of matter into new kinds. Yet Kant idiosyncratically believes that such a change requires an infinite division of matter, effected by chemical forces. Although this understanding of chemical change dovetails with Kant’s dynamical, continualist theory of matter, it implies that chemistry cannot be reduced to physics. Thus, although chemistry stands alongside empirical physics as an applied natural science in Kant’s architectonic, it remains a distinct, independent science. (shrink)

In the New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz argues chapter by chapter with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenging his views about knowledge, personal identity, God, morality, mind and matter, nature versus nurture, logic and language, and a host of other topics. The work is a series of sharp, deep discussions by one great philosopher of the work of another. Leibniz's references to his contemporaries and his discussions of the ideas and institutions of the age make this a fascinating (...) and valuable document in the history of ideas. The work was originally written in French, and the version by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, based on the only reliable French edition, first appeared in 1981 and has become the standard English translation. It has been thoroughly revised for this series and provided with a new and longer introduction, a chronology on Leibniz's life and career and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Thorough comparison of Immanuel Kant’s and Christian Wolff’s divergent appraisals of the science of psychology reveals various ways in which Kant fundamentally altered the Wolffian philosophical apparatus that he inherited. Wolff conceived of a thoroughgoing interplay between empirical and rational psychology, of combining different sorts of cognition in psychology, and of a mathematical science of the soul, or psychometrics. Kant however rejected each of these particular theses and deemed psychology to be no natural science, “properly so-called.” This chapter details these (...) departures from Wolff, explains their basis, and concretizes an underlying contrast in Kant’s and Wolff’s respective philosophical approaches. Namely, whereas Wolff’s philosophical system is malleable, allowing for the combination of various kinds of cognition and methods, in Kant’s Critical philosophy, everything has its proper, preordained niche. At bottom, it is the unyielding rigor of Kant’s system that results in his pessimistic evaluation of the prospects for psychology. (shrink)

In his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant accounts for the possibility of an acting-at-a-distance gravitational force, demonstrates the infinite divisibility of matter, and derives analogues to Newtonian laws of motion. The work is his major statement in philosophy of science, and was especially influential in German-speaking countries in the nineteenth century. However, this complex text has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. The chapters of this Critical Guide clarify the accounts of matter, motion, the mathematization of nature, space, (...) and natural laws exhibited in the Metaphysical Foundations; elucidate the relationship between its metaphysics of nature and Kant's critical philosophy; and describe the historical context for Kant's account of natural science. The volume will be an invaluable resource for understanding one of Kant's most difficult works, and will set the agenda for future scholarship on Kant's philosophy of science. (shrink)

The public sphere should be regulated so the distribution of political speech does not correlate with the distribution of income or wealth. A public sphere where people can fund any political speech from their private holdings is epistemically defective. The argument has four steps. First, if political speech is unregulated, the rich predictably contribute a disproportionate share. Second, wealth tends to correlate with substantive political perspectives. Third, greater quantities of speech by the rich can “drown out” the speech of the (...) poor, because of citizens’ limited attention span for politics. Finally, the normative problem with all this is that it reduces the diversity of arguments and evidence citizens become familiar with, reducing the quality of their political knowledge. The clearest implication of the argument is in favour of strict contribution limits and/or public funding for formal political campaigns, but it also has implications for more informal aspects of the public sphere. (shrink)

In 1999, Barton Beebe critiqued a “golden age” of space law in the 1950s and 1960s in which obscure legal issues concerning space exploration and aliens were addressed. This article describes a more recent “golden age” in legal scholarship, namely that relating to virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. The author examines the motivations of legal scholars who write about legal issues at this new technological frontier. She concludes that although new technology is often a site (...) of new legal problems, a focus on technological aspects of particular issues cannot always be justified. (shrink)

This collection focuses on how troubled times impact upon the law, the body politic, and the complex interrelationship among them. It centres on how they engage in a dialogue with the imagination and literature, thus triggering an emergent (but thus far underdeveloped) field concerning the 'legal imagination'. Legal change necessitates a close examination of the historical, cultural, social, and economic variables that promote and affect such change. This requires us to attend to the variety of non-legal variables that percolate throughout (...) the legal system. The collection probes 'the transatlantic constitution' and focuses attention on imagination in a common law context that seems to foster imagination as a cultural capability. The book is divided into four parts. The first part begins with a set of insights into the historical development of legal education in England and concludes with a reflection on the historical transition of England from an absolute monarchy to a republic. The second part of the volume examines the role that imagination plays in the functioning of the courts. The third part focuses on patterns of thought in legal scholarship and detects how legal imagination contributes to the process of producing new legal categories and terminology. The fourth part focuses on patterns of thought in legal scholarship, and looks to the impact of the imagination on legal thinking in the future. (shrink)

Kant’s denial that psychology is a properly so-called natural science, owing to the lack of application of mathematics to inner sense, has garnered a great deal of attention from scholars. Although the interpretations of this claim are diverse, commentators by and large fail to ground their views on an account of Kant’s conception of applied mathematics. In this article, I develop such an account, according to which the application of mathematics to a natural science requires both a mathematical representation and (...) a metaphysical validation for the positive use of this representation to achieve a priori knowledge about nature. The second condition—that of metaphysical validation—has been overlooked in the literature. I show that psychology’s falling short of natural scientific propriety consists not in our lacking sufficient mathematical tools for the representation of inner states, according to Kant. After all, we can represent the mere temporality of inner states with the line and their intensities with numbers. Rather, the problem is that metaphysics does not validate the further use of such mathematical entities for the achievement of a priori knowledge about inner phenomena. (shrink)

Drawing from existing theory and empirical evidence on mindfulness, we posit that trait mindfulness is associated with less accurate memories of immoral conduct. We report three studies that provide evidence of this argument. One significant implication of this finding is that it provides a more balanced and complete view of mindfulness. Specifically, while mindfulness is widely promoted for its positive effects for employee well‐being, mindfulness may inadvertently promote a biased moral self‐perception based on inaccurate memories of one's past immoral conduct. (...) In a fourth study, we explore this implication and demonstrate that memory mediates the negative relationship between trait mindfulness and self‐reported immoral conduct. This research contributes to literatures on mindfulness, memory, morality, and to the growing body of work assessing the importance of mindfulness. (shrink)

Cooper et al. (this issue) develop an interactive activation model of spatial and imitative compatibilities that simulates the key results from Catmur and Heyes (2011) and thus conclude that both compatibilities are mediated by the same processes since their single model can predict all the results. Although the model is impressive, the conclusions are premature because they are based on an incomplete review of the relevant literature and because the model includes some questionable assumptions. Moreover, a competing model (Scheutz & (...) Bertenthal, 2012) is introduced that suggests the two compatibilities are not mediated by the same processes. We propose that more research is necessary before concluding that spatial and imitative compatibilities are mediated by the same processes. (shrink)

In this essay we consider the moral claims of one branch of non-realist theory known as linguistic narrativism theory. By highlighting the moral implications of linguistic narrativism theory, we argue that the “moral vision” expressed by this theory can entail, at worst, undesirable moral agnosticism if not related to a transcendental and supra-personal normativity in our moral life. With its appeal to volitionism and intuitionism, the ethical sensitivity of this theory enters into difficulties brought about by several internal tensions as (...) to what morality and moral judgements involve. We contend that the proponents of linguistic narrativism theory must strongly recognize and take responsibility for the “moral vison” their theory professes, in so far as they want to think of their theory as a morally responsible one. (shrink)

In this paper we delineate the conditions and features of what we call an existential philosophy of history in relation to customary trends in the field of the philosophy of history. We do this by circumscribing what a transgenerational temporality and what our entanglement in ethical relations with temporal others ask of us as existential and responsive selves and by explicating what attitude we need to have when trying to responsibly respond to other vulnerable beings in our historical world of (...) life. (shrink)

The last 20 years have seen the development of a new form of therapy, compassion focused therapy. Although CFT has a growing evidence base, there have been few studies of CFT outside of an Anglo-European cultural context. In this paper, we ask: Might a CFT-based approach be of value for Indigenous Australians? If so, what kind of cultural adaptations might be needed? We report the findings from a pilot study of an arts-based compassion skills training group, in which usual CFT (...) group processes were significantly adapted to meet the needs of Indigenous Australians. At face value, CFT appeared to be a promising approach to enhancing the social and emotional wellbeing of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. However, despite initial consultations with Indigenous health professionals, the first attempts to offer a more conventional group-based CFT to Indigenous clients were largely unsuccessful. Following a review and advice from two Indigenous clients, we combined elements of CFT with visual arts to develop a new approach, “arts-based compassion skills training”. This paper reports an evaluation of this pilot ABCST group. The group had 6 × 4 h sessions of ABCST, facilitated by two psychologists and two artists. There were 10 participants, who attended between 2 and 6 sessions: five were clients, five were health professionals. Between 1 and 3 months later, six of the participants were interviewed. Qualitative analysis of interview data identified that two key processes—creating a positive group atmosphere and channeling compassion skills training through the medium of visual arts—led to four positive outcomes for participants: planting the seeds of new understandings, embodying the skills of compassion, strengthening relationships with others, and evolving a more self-compassionate relationship. We suggest that the preliminary results are sufficiently encouraging to warrant further development of ABCST in Indigenous communities. (shrink)

Non‐Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA), introduced by Robert John Russell, is a model of divine action drawing upon insights from quantum mechanics. It presents an intriguing and significant challenge to classical conceptions of divine action with far‐reaching consequences. When applying NIODA to theistic evolution, however, significant questions emerge that require attention. We identify and assess two sets of concerns. The first relates to quantum physics, particularly whether and how quantum occurrences influence mutations and evolution. We argue that the current empirical (...) evidence is ambiguous in its support of the kinds of quantum action that Russell proposes, though emerging data from quantum biology look promising. The second set of concerns is metaphysical, especially concerning the problem of evil. NIODA gives Godextensive agency over evolution and genetics, which has adverse consequences for theodicy. We propose potential solutions to the problems highlighted in our article, both metaphysical and physical, to improve the viability of NIODA's application to theistic evolution. (shrink)

Guilt and shame are self-conscious emotions with implications for mental health, social and occupational functioning, and the effectiveness of sports practice. To date, the assessment and role of athlete-specific guilt and shame has been under-researched. Reporting data from 174 junior elite cricketers, the present study utilized exploratory factor analysis in validating the Athletic Perceptions of Performance Scale, assessing three distinct and statistically reliable factors: athletic shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, and no-concern. Conditional process analysis indicated that APPS shame-proneness mediated the relationship between general (...) and athlete-specific distress. While APPS domains of guilt-proneness and no-concern were not significant mediators, they exhibited correlations in the expected direction with indices of psychological distress and well-being. The APPS may assist coaches and support staff identify players who may benefit from targeted interventions to reduce the likelihood of experiencing shame-prone states. (shrink)

We examine arguments for and against the use of mechanistic evidence in assessing treatment efficacy and find that advocates of EBM+ and their critics have largely been talking past each other due to difference in focus. We explore aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease as a case which may speak to the role of EBM+ in pharmaceutical regulation. The case suggests the debate may be more fruitful if philosophers confine debates to particular domains of medical science and weigh in (...) prospectively instead of relying on historical cases where outcomes are known and which are susceptible to hindsight bias. (shrink)

This book employs philosophical analysis in an endeavour to grasp more firmly some concepts used in moral theory. Analysis is defended here against attackers, especially Rorty. Moral non‐realism is presented as an underlying assumption of the book, and related to the desire for consistency and generality in moral theory. Hare's notion of two levels of morality is defended.

Alan Donagan offered an account of making/allowing in terms of so conducting yourself that what ensues is not or is what would have happened in the course of nature. On a reasonable understanding of ‘the course of nature’, this analysis nearly coincides in its output with the analysis in terms of positive/negative, including relating in the same way to the ‘immobility’ objection to the latter. Differences are discussed, and found to be too recherché to yield decisive intuitions.

A ‘crisis’ is defined as a situation in which if a person does not do something atrocious there will ensue a state of affairs that is even worse. This chapter discusses Anscombe's absolutism about atrocities, and the near‐absolutism of Fried and Williams, and, more sympathetically, Hampshire's view that absolutism ought to be adopted as a policy though not defended as a theory. Issues about atrocity and moral character, about the relevance of an atrocity's involving other agents as well, and about (...) Williams's concept of ‘projects’, are discussed. An account is given of the real conceptual structure that is at work in moralities known as ‘deontological’. (shrink)

Launched in 1999, at a time of radical change for the publishing industry, Persephone Books has become a successful independent publisher of neglected female authors mainly from the 20th-century inter-war period. Publishing being an industry primarily shaped by the differential distribution of symbolic and economic capital, competing principles of cultural legitimacy within an increasingly commercial climate clarify the position of modern publishing at the intersection of culture and commerce. This article explores how Persephone Books’ understated assertion of publishing’s ‘middle ground’ (...) and commitment to the historically reviled ‘middlebrow’ genre have reconciled the perennial tension between culture and commerce to create a thriving yet unintentional publishing brand. (shrink)

pt. I. The mystical ambition.--pt. II. Revelation.--pt. III. Religion and morality.