Some self-declared defenders of democracy maintain that a suspension of the ‘cosmopolitan agenda’ is necessary to blunt the appeal of insurgent right wing populism. I argue that cosmopolitans should support this ‘inward turn’ when doing so helps to preserve the long-term viability of that agenda. Cosmopolitans must certainly motivate citizens of different countries to support it. However, they must also encourage those citizens to support democracy and inclusion at home, for support for the cosmopolitan agenda becomes less likely in its (...) absence. Therefore, cosmopolitans should support the inward turn when doing so makes it harder for right wing populists to erode popular support for democracy, inclusion, and the cosmopolitan agenda. Practically speaking, then, cosmopolitanism should not look that different from liberal nationalism in the short-term. Unlike liberal nationalists, though, cosmopolitans should only prioritize the defense of democracy and inclusion at home for practical reasons – not normative reasons. Accordingly, cosmopolitanism should look different from liberal nationalism in the long run, but not radically so. I engage with the empirical literature on public opinion and pay special attention to Lea Ypi’s argument for ‘statist cosmopolitanism.’. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the...

This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the sorts of no-holds-barred political contestation favoured by autocratic nationalists – excessive polarization. I then argue that liberal nationalists do not recognize the degree to which ‘in-group’ racial solidarity motivates members of the racial/ethnic majority to preserve their status, and that the liberal nationalist approach to defending minorities’ rights therefore risks either emboldening the (...) majority to embrace autocracy or consolidating social hierarchies between the majority and minorities. On these bases, I show that democrats must seek to not only detach race/ethnicity from nationality but also redress those problematic racial/ethnic hierarchies. This suggests the need to develop liberal nationalism into multiculturalist nationalism. Multiculturalist nationalism, however, promises a sort of bounded solidarity that does not include all citizens: it makes use of targeted political antagonism against anti-democrats like White supremacists and Identitarians to help diffuse any social antagonism that might exist among minorities, inclusive members of the majority, and cultural conservatives. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the sorts of no-holds-barred political contestation favoured by autocratic nationalists – excessive polarization. I then argue that liberal nationalists do not recognize the degree to which ‘in-group’ racial solidarity motivates members of the racial/ethnic majority to preserve their status, and that the liberal nationalist approach to defending (...) minorities’ rights therefore risks either emboldening the majority to embrace autocracy or consolidating social hierarchies between the majority and minorities. On these bases, I show that democrats must seek to not only detach race/ethnicity from nationality but also redress those problematic racial/ethnic hierarchies. This suggests the need to develop liberal nationalism into multiculturalist nationalism. Multiculturalist nationalism, however, promises a sort of bounded solidarity that does not include all citizens: it makes use of targeted political antagonism against anti-democrats like White supremacists and Identitarians to help diffuse any social antagonism that might exist among minorities, inclusive members of the majority, and cultural conservatives. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the sorts of no-holds-barred political contestation favoured by autocratic nationalists – excessive polarization. I then argue that liberal nationalists do not recognize the degree to which ‘in-group’ racial solidarity motivates members of the racial/ethnic majority to preserve their status, and that the liberal nationalist approach to defending (...) minorities’ rights therefore risks either emboldening the majority to embrace autocracy or consolidating social hierarchies between the majority and minorities. On these bases, I show that democrats must seek to not only detach race/ethnicity from nationality but also redress those problematic racial/ethnic hierarchies. This suggests the need to develop liberal nationalism into multiculturalist nationalism. Multiculturalist nationalism, however, promises a sort of bounded solidarity that does not include all citizens: it makes use of targeted political antagonism against anti-democrats like White supremacists and Identitarians to help diffuse any social antagonism that might exist among minorities, inclusive members of the majority, and cultural conservatives. (shrink)

How should the ‘liberal democratic mainstream’ be fortified (or recovered) so that its members can consolidate to defeat anti-democrats? I argue for a value-pluralistic orientation to liberal democratic politics that accomodates not just the good of conflict (championed by ‘democratic agonists’), but also the good of unity. This approach, I show, accommodates various forms of contestation, but also recognizes the need to purposefully cultivate unity, and thus can be said to balance a ‘tragic ethos’ with a ‘progressive patriotic ethos’: the (...) former encourages citizens to become more vigilant in the struggle against oppression, and the latter, to share in a sense of unity and to honour liberal democracy’s vital role in preventing tyranny. Such an approach would surely not be free of tension. However, I argue that it can help liberal democrats indeed consolidate and practice ‘fugitive antagonism’ against the enemies of liberal democracy when necessary. I advance my thesis by engaging in a critical conversation with the democratic agonistic tradition, paying special attention to Chantal Mouffe, William Connolly, and Steven Johnston’s visions of democratic politics. _Contemporary Political Theory_ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00604-2. (shrink)

The Journal of Chinese Philosophy initiates this volume on the origins of philosophy and their relations in philosophical languages, be it Chinese or Greek or European as not merely derived from the Greek. Given this understanding we see how a philosophical issue could be discussed significantly from both the European-Western position and the Chinese perspective. Each position and perspective embodies a different historicity and viewpoint as experienced in the vision and pursuit of reality and humanity. The contrast between the European (...) and Chinese traditions of philosophy is impressive and yet mutually stimulating as shown in the works of Heidegger and post-Heideggerian authors. The authors of this book illustrate how the European-Western and Chinese approaches could be complementary and yet together could be philosophically insight-productive. (shrink)

This book investigates how citizens who have differences and disagreements ought to relate to one another in a liberal democracy. Specifically, this book advances a metaphor of citizenship that I call 'role-based constitutional fellowship.' Role-based constitutional fellowship, I argue, is a desirable way for citizens to relate to one another in conditions of modern pluralism, where multiple races, ethnicities, religions, and economic statuses exist ('difference') and where citizens adhere to and pursue competing political interests, creeds, and objectives ('disagreement'). Under role-based (...) constitutional fellowship, citizens share a sense that they are united in a common aim and that they are largely committed to doing what is necessary to pursue that aim - that they are fellows. I describe this sense of fellowship as constitutional and role-based. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

The hermeneutical dimensions of Chinese philosophy from the Changes of Zhou through its Confucian, Daoist, and contemporary developments have been a creative inspirational source and guiding intellectual thread in the thought of Chung-ying Cheng. Cheng's extensive engagement with the Classic of Changes, its role in the formation of the Chinese philosophical tradition and its comparative interconnections with occidental philosophies, has disclosed its deep hermeneutical orientation. The Yijing encompasses processes of empirical observation, empathetic feeling, and self-reflection in the generation (...) of “images,” or prototypical models that are “form-objects” or “process-events,” which performatively enact a comprehensive ontological and situationally appropriate understanding of nature, society, and one self. I examine three issues in outline arising from Cheng's works in this situation: to what extent Chinese philosophy is hermeneutical with respect to modern European understandings of hermeneutics, and the possibility of the distinctive “onto-generative hermeneutics” that has been articulated for over forty years in the context of Chinese and Western thought in Cheng's prolific works concerning the Yijing. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright offers an account of causal powers, and argues that it explains some important general features of scientific method. Patricia Cheng argues that this theory is superior as a psychological theory of learning to standard models of conditioning. I extend and develop the theory, and argue that it provides the best explanation of a number of problem cases for philosophical theories of causation, including preemption, overdetermination and puzzles about transitivity. Hitchcock and Halpern & Pearl on ‘actual causes’ Problems (...) and morals 2.1 Puzzles about prevention 2.2 Counterfactuals Causal powers 3.1 Generative causal power 3.2 Preventative causal power Net and component powers ‘Actual’ or ‘successful’ causes Solutions to puzzle cases Conclusion. (shrink)

Although legal terms are conventionally considered to have self-referential, self-closed meaning independent of context, a legal term only acquires its meaning within a given context. As long as the context varies, the meaning of the same legal term as a signifier may change correspondingly. Based on case studies by applying semiotics, we argue that a legal term is just a sign within its sign system; a legal term as an individual sign does not have any inherent meaning, and its meaning (...) can only exist in the relationship with other signs or sign systems. In other words, a legal term only denotes in a particular temporal and spatial context. Through this study, we conclude four propositions about a legal term as a sign: first, the connection of a legal term with a legal concept is relatively arbitrary; second, the meaning of a legal term exists in a sign system; third, a legal term can be subject to multiple interpretations; fourth, the defining of a legal term may be affected by other sign systems. (shrink)

As ecologically and socially oriented food initiatives proliferate, the significance of these initiatives with respect to conventional food systems remains unclear. This paper addresses the transformative potential of alternative food networks by drawing on insights from recent research on food and embodiment, diverse food economies, and more-than-human food geographies. I identify several synergies between these literatures, including an emphasis on the pedagogic capacities of AFNs; the role of the researcher; and the analytical and political value of using assemblage and actor-network (...) thinking to understand the far-reaching forces and power disparities confronting proponents of more ethical and sustainable food futures. (shrink)

In the philosophy of climate science, debate surrounding the issue of variety of evidence has mostly taken the form of attempting to connect these issues in climate science and climate modeling with philosophical accounts of what has come to be known as “robustness analysis.” I argue that an “explanatory” conception of robustness is the best candidate for understanding variety of evidence in climate science. I apply the analysis to both examples of model agreement, as well at to the convergence of (...) evidence from both model and non-model sources. (shrink)

本书论述了艺术与想象力、艺术门类的相互关系、艺术与社会的参照分析、生活对艺术的启示、艺术欣赏三总体等。.

In some recent works, Crupi and Iacona have outlined an analysis of ‘if’ based on Chrysippus’ idea that a conditional holds whenever the negation of its consequent is incompatible with its antecedent. This paper presents a sound and complete system of conditional logic that accommodates their analysis. The soundness and completeness proofs that will be provided rely on a general method elaborated by Raidl, which applies to a wide range of systems of conditional logic.

In computer simulations of physical systems, the construction of models is guided, but not determined, by theory. At the same time simulations models are often constructed precisely because data are sparse. They are meant to replace experiments and observations as sources of data about the world; hence they cannot be evaluated simply by being compared to the world. So what can be the source of credibility for simulation models? I argue that the credibility of a simulation model comes not only (...) from the credentials supplied to it by the governing theory, but also from the antecedently established credentials of the model building techniques employed by the simulationists. In other words, there are certain sorts of model building techniques which are taken, in and of themselves, to be reliable. Some of these model building techniques, moreover, incorporate what are sometimes called “falsifications.” These are contrary-to-fact principles that are included in a simulation model and whose inclusion is taken to increase the reliability of the results. The example of a falsification that I consider, called artificial viscosity, is in widespread use in computational fluid dynamics. Artificial viscosity, I argue, is a principle that is successfully and reliably used across a wide domain of fluid dynamical applications, but it does not offer even an approximately “realistic” or true account of fluids. Artificial viscosity, therefore, is a counter-example to the principle that success implies truth – a principle at the foundation of scientific realism. It is an example of reliability without truth. (shrink)

Written in debate format, this book covers developing fields such as social cognition, as well as classic areas such as memory, learning, perception and categorization. The links between emotion and memory, learning, perception, categorization, social judgements, and behavior are addressed.

Healers: Extraordinary Clinicians at Work, by David Schenck and Larry R. Churchill, and What Patients Teach: The Everyday Ethics of Health Care, by Churchill, Joseph B. Fanning, and Schenck are both important and thought‐inspiring books. For the first, Schenck and Churchill recruited fifty practitioners, mostly physicians but some clinicians who practice alternative therapies, “identified by their peers as excellent healers,” and interviewed them to find out what they did to establish a good relationship with their patients. The results of their (...) interviews and how they wrote their book makes this the best and most concrete understanding of a necessary step to healing that I have read. What Patients Teach examines the patients’ perspective about forming relationships with their clinicians. The patients’ clinicians were asked to nominate patients to be interviewed to help answer the question. This volume, while important, is less extraordinary than the first because we hear less what the patients want to say and more what the authors want to tell us. That aside, taken together, these two books are a major advance in the literature of healing. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Thinking Clearly About Death. By Jay F. Rosenberg.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:690 BOOK REVIEWS Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible. By RICHARD J. BLACKWELL. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1991. Pp. 272. $29.95 {cloth). Although this well-hound, manageable volume, complete with an artistic seventeenth-century dust jacket, has not received an official ecclesiastical "imprimatur," nevertheless, it is (according to this Dominican reviewer) both free from doctrinal error and filled with true and useful historical, philosophical, and theological information. Seemingly no (...) other case in the history of our western intellectual tradition has generated more controversy, more ill feeling, and more mutual misunderstanding across more lines of intellectual, political, and religious division than the "Galileo affair." Few people today are equipped historically, scientifically, philosophically, and theologically to discuss accurately the wide range of issues surrounding this unfortunate incident. A seasoned veteran of the strong historical, philosophical tradition of the Jesuit-run St. Louis University, and himself an active member of the Roman Catholic Church, Richard J. Blackwell, historian of philosophy and philosopher of science, has done a marvelous service to the academic community hy presenting us with this volume. In this well-researched, well-argued, and very readable manuscript, Blackwell helps to place Galileo's intellectual and ecclesiastical struggle within the broader historical, philosophical, religious, and theological context of rthe late 16th and early 17th centuries. Quoting the words of Olaf Pedersen, Blackwell considers the Galileo affair " not only as an episode in the history of science, but also as an important event in the history of theology" {p. 3). His principal purpose in writing this book is " to study the Galileo affair from this perspective " and, in particular, to understand "the role played by the Bible in the Galileo affair" (p. 3). Without attempting to praise, to blame, or to excuse, Blackwell sets out to understand precisely how it was that the historical, religious, and theological factors came to have such a profound effect on the scientific and philosophical questions of Galileo's time. He argues convincingly that the Roman insistence on upholding the traditional interpretation of certain key biblical passages can he understood adequately only within the historical and religious climate of postTridentine theology, Jesuit obedience, and strict adherence to the Thomistic synthesis of philosophy and theology. Toward this end, Blackwell brings together for the first time certain important texts, concepts, and historical arguments that help to alleviate some of the " murkiness " blurring our view of the Galileo affair, and help to make that incident more intelligible to our modern minds. BOOK REVIEWS 691 Blackwell argues that the Roman hierarchy was not so much concerned with the content of the new astronomy as it was determined to reassert itself as the authentic interpreter of Scripture and tradition. According to Blackwell, the new astronomy challenged not only the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of Thomas Aquinas, but, perhaps more importantly, it challenged the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman hierarchy in its role as interpreter and teacher of the Apostolic faith. How could the new astronomy be anything but a hypothetical model, when it so clearly contradicted the words of Scripture as in· terpreted by the Church Fathers? How could mere mathematicians and astronomers insist on philosophical propositions that seemed to make the Bible false? No single individual was invested with the authority to interpret the Bible for the whole body of believers, as the Church had so painfully learned from the lessons of the Protestant Reformers. That authority lay solely with the "Church," that is, with the Roman hierarchy, the Pope in union with a council, as was clear from the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent. Moreover, strict obedience was the order of the day as many Jesuit thinkers so agonizingly came to realize. Blackwell divides his own text into seven chapters: (1) Trent and Beyond; (2) Bellarmine's Views Before the Galileo Affair; (3) Gali· leo's Detour into Biblical Exegesis; (4) Foscarini's Bombshell; (5) The Bible at Galileo's Trial (6) The Jesuit Dilemma: Truth or Obedience ; and (7) Reflections on Truth in Science and in Religion. In the first two chapters, he establishes a context for the Galileo affair by discussing :the theological interpretation and importance of the Council of Trent... (shrink)

An analysis of a valenced corpus of English words revealed that words that rhyme with slurs are rated more poorly than their synonyms. What at first might seem like a bizarre coincidence turns out to be a robust feature of slurs, one arising from their phonetic structure. We report novel data on phonaesthetic preferences, showing that a particular class of phonemes are both particularly disliked, and overrepresented in slurs. We argue that phonaesthetic associations have been an overlooked source of some (...) of the more peculiar, arational aspects of slurs. We conclude by drawing broader morals about the evolution of the lexicon. (shrink)

This paper investigates the implicative conditional, a connective intended to describe the logical behavior of an empirically defined class of natural language conditionals, also named implicative conditionals, which excludes concessive and some other conditionals. The implicative conditional strengthens the strict conditional with the possibility of the antecedent and of the contradictory of the consequent. $${p\Rightarrow q}$$ p ⇒ q is thus defined as $${\lnot } \Diamond {(p \wedge \lnot q) \wedge } \Diamond {p \wedge } \Diamond {\lnot q}$$ ¬ ◊ (...) ( p ∧ ¬ q ) ∧ ◊ p ∧ ◊ ¬ q. We explore the logical properties of this conditional in a reflexive normal Kripke semantics, provide an axiomatic system and prove it to be sound and complete for our semantics. The implicative conditional validates transitivity and contraposition, which we take to be integral parts of reasoning and communication. But it only validates restricted versions of strengthening the antecedent, right weakening, simplification, and rational monotonicity. Apparent counterexamples to some of these properties are explained as due to contextual factors. Finally, the implicative conditional avoids the paradoxes of material and strict implication, and validates some connexive principles such as Aristotle’s theses and weak Boethius’ thesis, as well as some highly entrenched principles of conditionals, such as conjunction of consequents, disjunction of antecedents, modus ponens, cautious monotonicity and cut. (shrink)

I argue that central to Aristotle’s account of vice is a distinction between two varieties of vicious person: those for whom character change is possible (the curable), and those for whom it is not (the incurable). Recognizing this distinction and drawing out the ideas which ground it shows why Aristotle’s discussions of vice in EN vii and ix 4 are not inconsistent.

The concept of rectifying names [cheng-ming] is a familiar one in the Confucian Analects. It occupies an important, if not central, position in the political philosophy of Confucius. Since, according to Confucius, the rectification of names is the basis of the establishment of social harmony and political order, one might suspect that later political theories of Confucian-ists should be traced back to the Confucian doctrine of rectifying names. It need not be added that the theory of rectifying names, as (...) developed by Hsün Tzu in the third century B. C., served the double purpose of strengthening his political doctrine of government on the one hand and repudiating doctrines of names on the other. (shrink)

Unconscious logical inference seems to rely on the syntactic structures of mental representations (Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum 2018). Other transitions, such as transitions using iconic representations and associative transitions, are harder to assimilate to syntax-based theories. Here we tackle these difficulties head on in the interest of a fuller taxonomy of mental transitions. Along the way we discuss how icons can be compositional without having constituent structure, and expand and defend the “symmetry condition” on Associationism (the idea that associative links and (...) transitions are perfectly symmetric). In the end, we show how a BIT (“bare inferential transition”) theory can cohabitate with these other non-inferential mental transitions. (shrink)

This book examines the logical foundations of visual information: information presented in the form of diagrams, graphs, charts, tables, and maps. The importance of visual information is clear from its frequent presence in everyday reasoning and communication, and also in compution. Chapters of the book develop the logics of familiar systems of diagrams such as Venn diagrams and Euler circles. Other chapters develop the logic of higraphs, Pierce diagrams, and a system having both diagrams and sentences among its well-formed representations. (...) Syntax, semantics, rules of inference and soundness and completeness results are provided for each of the systems. In addition to developing the logic of diagrams, key questions about the status of visual information Hammer discusses, such as the relationship between the language and visually-presented information. (shrink)

This book sets forth a novel theory of distributive justice premised on the fundamental moral equality of persons. It argues that, subject to certain limitations on personal sacrifice, no one should have less valuable resources and opportunities available to him than anyone else, simply invirtue of some chance occurrence the risk of which he did not choose to incur. Applying this principle to the distribution of wealth and income, the specification of property rights, and the allocation of scarce medical resources, (...) Professor Rakowski reaches challenging, often unconventional,conclusions. He further criticizes the economic analysis of law as a normative theory, and develops an alternative account of tort law.Among the topics discussed are the principles by which earnings, wealth, and gifts should be taxed; whether the compulsory removal of organs for transplantation can be justified; how doctors and public officials should make life-or-death decisions when all those endangered cannot be saved; and themorality of killing human beings and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

IntroductionWith the normalization of COVID-19 prevention and control, a large number of intergenerational audiences with different cognition preferences and value orientations have started to pour into non-acquaintance virtual communities to address their social needs by disclosing their own thoughts, feelings and experiences toward certain topics. To avoid the negative impacts of self-disclosure, this study introduced the concept of social integration into cyber society among non-acquaintance VCs, such as the topic-based VCs. Our theoretical model considers both the psychological antecedents and consequences (...) of VC audiences’ social integration and our findings have implications for public online social life. Moreover, this research could play a guiding role in improving VC audiences’ social integration status in future online learning and telecommuting scenarios.MethodTo assess the theoretical model constructed in this manuscript, we conducted an online survey in two different topic-based VCs among Microblog and yielded 472 useable responses from intergenerational audiences, among which 28.81% were born before 1985, 26.67% were born from 1985 to 1995, and 48.52% were born after 1995. Our sample consisted of 208 individuals from Health Regimen VC and 264 individuals from Star Chasing VC, 200 were men and 272 were women.ResultsOur structural equation model indicated that individuals’ self-disclosure in topic-based VCs might not directly guide them to acquire social integration. However, intimacy and cognitive communion derived from VC audiences’ self-disclosure might not only enhance their social integration, but also improve their psychological well-being. In addition, VC audiences’ social integration mediated the relationship between intimacy and psychological well-being, and the relationship between cognitive communion and psychological well-being. Moreover, VC audiences’ intimacy was found to have a direct influence on their cognitive communion.ConclusionIn the context of topic-based VCs, audiences’ self-disclosure could significantly foster their intimacy and cognitive communion with others, and both intimacy and cognitive communion are conductive to VC audiences’ social integration. Thus, audiences in topic-based VCs who wish to improve their psychological well-being need to disclose themselves and build corresponding psychological foundations to enhance their social integration. Meanwhile, topic-based VCs should pay attention to the cultivation of intimacy and cognitive communion among audiences while encouraging them to reveal themselves. (shrink)

Expanded reprint of the WIREs Science of Belief paper for Julien Musolino, Joseph Sommer, and Pernille Hemmer's The Science of Beliefs: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Cambridge University Press.

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living (...) ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

This chapter demonstrates how Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822) anticipates the famous modern-day distinction between positive and negative liberty in her late eighteenth-century writings. It is argued that, on these grounds, De Grouchy deserves a rightful place in the history of the liberal tradition, a tradition that is typically depicted as the exclusive province of men. To support this claim, this chapter examines De Grouchy’s ideas in comparison with Rousseau’s and Adam Smith’s views on justice and property rights. This sets the (...) context in which De Grouchy introduces her distinction between positive and negative rights, a distinction that maps onto the modern-day divide between negative and positive liberty. It is shown how, in her writings, political issues of rights and justice intersect with moral issues to do with virtue and with the proper education of virtuous citizens who are also free. (shrink)

As an atheist, Dawkins strives to develop a scientific alternative to theism, and while he declares that science is not a religion, he also proclaims it to be a spiritual enterprise. His books are filled with fragmentary sketches of this "spiritual atheism", resembling a great unfinished cathedral. This book systematizes and completes Dawkins' arguments, and reveals their deep roots in Stoicism and Platonism. Expanding on Dawkins' ideas, Steinhart shows how atheists can develop powerful ethical principles, compelling systems of symbols and (...) images, and meaningful personal and social practices. Believing in Dawkins is a rigorous and potent entreaty for the use of science and reason to support spiritually rich and optimistic ways of thinking and living. (shrink)

A recent solution to the Body-Minus problem, which is a problem of material constitution, claims that ordinary proper parts (such as left feet) exist, but the complements of these objects (such as left-foot complements) do not exist. In this paper, I examine a defense of this solution from the worry of arbitrariness and from its ineffectiveness against a revised version of the problem that focuses on the head, and I show that this defense fails.

This paper explores the connective ‘because’, based on the idea that ‘CbecauseA’ implies the acceptance/truth of the antecedentAas well as of the consequentC, and additionally that the antecedent makes a difference for the consequent. To capture this idea of difference-making a ‘relevantized’ version of the Ramsey Test for conditionals is employed that takes the antecedent to be relevant to the consequent in the following sense: a conditional is true/accepted in a state$$\sigma $$σjust in case (i) the consequent is true/accepted when$$\sigma (...) $$σis revised by the antecedentand(ii) the consequent fails to be true/accepted when$$\sigma $$σis revised by the antecedent’s negation. To extend this to a semantics for ‘because’, we add that (iii) the antecedent and (iv) the consequent are accepted/true in the state$$\sigma $$σ. We get metaphysical or doxastic interpretations of these clauses, depending on what we mean by a model and a state. We introduce several semantics known from suppositional conditionals, which we reinterpret for difference-making conditionals and ‘because’. We present a minimal logic for ‘because’ sentences and show how it can be extended in ways that parallel the hierarchy of extensions of the logic of suppositional conditionals. We establish correspondence results between axioms for ‘because’ and properties of states, and prove that the specified logics are sound with respect to the semantics. (shrink)

It seems that we can know moral truths. We are also rather reluctant to defer to moral testimony. But it’s not obvious how moral cognitivism is compatible with pessimism about moral testimony. If moral truths are knowable, shouldn’t it be possible for others to know moral truths you don’t know, so that it is wise for you to defer to what they say? Or, alternatively, if it’s always reasonable to refuse to defer to the wisest among us, doesn’t this show (...) that morality is not genuinely cognitive? There is a tension in our commonsense moral epistemology. In this chapter I (a) explicate this tension, (b) criticize how others have attempted to resolve it, and finally (c) explain how Rossian deontology helps us see that the tension is only apparent: morality is indeed knowable, despite the fact that it is usually wise to refuse to defer to moral testimony. (shrink)

What is group well-being? There is, as of yet, shockingly little philosophical literature explicitly aiming to answer this question. This essay sketches some of the logical space of possible answers, and nudges us to seriously consider certain overlooked options. There are several importantly different ways the well-being of a collective or a group could be related to the well-being of the individuals who constitute it: 1) eliminativism, 2) functionalism, 3) partialism, or 4) the independent view. If the relation between individual (...) and collective well-being is either functional or partial, then we face a further question: What is the direction of constitutive dependence? Does the well-being of a group depend upon the well-being of the well-being of the individuals who compose it, or does the well-being of an individual depend upon the well-being of the groups to which they belong? Or both? These questions raise some puzzles that I begin to resolve. I conclude that there might be a wide variety of ways the well-being of a collective obtains, only some of which are related to the well-being of the individuals who are its members. In the end, I hope to vindicate the thought that an injury to one is an injury to all. (shrink)

The subject of this two-part article is the bearing of Søren Kierkegaard’s writings, and of their reception, upon the development of Religionswissenschaft or the comparative study of religion. This first part opens by taking account of Kierkegaard’s own awareness of, and relationship to, “non-Christian” religions, including his late reading of Schopenhauer; then considers Kierkegaard in juxtaposition with his contemporary F. Max Müller, the Sanskritist and foundational pioneer of comparative religion, and the two men’s contrasting relations to F.W.J. Schelling; and finally (...) examines the interest taken in Kierkegaard by William James, Max Weber, and Gerardus van der Leeuw as early twentieth-century contributors through three different disciplines to the study of comparative religion. (shrink)

Debates about modularity invariably involve a crucial premise about how visual illusions are experienced. This paper argues that these debates are wrongheaded, and that experience of illusions is orthogonal to the core issue of the modularity hypothesis: informational encapsulation.

Scientific modelling is a value-laden process: the decisions involved can seldom be made using 'scientific' criteria alone, but rather draw on social and ethical values. In this paper, we draw on a body of philosophical literature to analyze a COVID-19 vaccination model, presenting a case study of social and ethical value judgments in health-oriented modelling. This case study urges us to make value judgments in health-oriented models explicit and interpretable by non-experts and to invite public involvement in making them.

Living labs are interdisciplinary and participatory initiatives aimed at bringing research closer to practice by involving stakeholders in all stages of research. Living labs align with the principles of participatory research methods as well as recent insights about how participatory ways of generating knowledge help to change practices in concrete settings with respect to specific problems. The participatory, open, and discussion‐oriented nature of living labs could be ideally suited to accompany ethical reflection and changes ensuing from reflection. To our knowledge, (...) living labs have not been explicitly trialed and reported in ethics literature. In this discussion paper, we report and discuss four initial issues that marked the process of setting up a living lab in ethics: (1) determining the goals and expected outcomes of an ethics living lab; (2) establishing operational procedures; (3) selecting communities and defining pilot projects; and (4) adopting a lens to tackle emerging questions and challenges. We explain these four issues and present the paths taken based on the novel and specific orientation, that is, living ethics, at the basis of this project. In alignment with living ethics and É‐LABO, we approach challenges as learning opportunities to ask not only “how” questions but also “why” questions. We hope that this discussion paper informed by our experience helps to clarify the theoretical, methodological, and practical approaches necessary to successfully adopt and employ living labs in ethics. (shrink)