In this article, I consider a number of arguments that assume that beings who have immortal souls occupy a special position in the sphere of moral concern. First, I place these arguments in their historical and cultural contexts. Next, I formulate several conditions of adequacy that all such arguments must satisfy. Subsequently, I distinguish two different general kinds of such arguments: Inclusionary arguments attempt to use the immortality of soul as a criterion for either including someone into a sphere of (...) morality while excluding others or, at least, for elevating someone's position within this sphere. Modifying arguments attempt to strengthen or weaken moral considerations that already apply to a being included into the sphere of morality. I argue that, although some modifying arguments may fulfill all conditions of adequacy, they have very little practical importance. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Indirect Duties View implying that, when our actions have no negative effects on humans, we can treat animals any way we wish. I offer several criticisms of this view. Subsequently, I explore some implications of rejecting this view that rise in the contexts of animal research and veterinarian ethics.

In her very interesting paper, “Peter Singer on Expendability,” L. A. Kemmerer re-examines Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument implying that some being are replaceable and the implications of this argument for the issue of treating animals. I attempt to defend Singer, and more generally utilitarianism , against these objections. I argue that, given a utilitarian outlook, some animals are indeed replaceable. But I also argue that few animals are replaceable in practice.

In this essay, I develop a moderate hierarchical position about the moral status of animals that is based on two factors: on the level of mental development of a being who is affected and on the significance of the interests that are affected. I argue that this view accommodates two different sets of moral intuitions. On one hand, it explains why, in general, humans have the special moral standing that is typically attributed to us. On the other hand, it also (...) allows us to accommodate much of our intuition about how animals ought to be treated. In addition, this view is supported also by plausible general theoretical considerations. Subsequently, I explore some implications of this view for some real-life examples of our interactions with animals, especially, for the practice of raising them for food using industrial methods. I argue that this practice is morally wrong and that the correct approach is to adopt a (nearly) plant-based lifestyle. (shrink)

We elucidate the conditions under which any hypothesis is explanatorily relevant by analyzing several tests of explanatory relevance and explanations based on those tests. A new causal criterion of explanatory relevance is developed and defended. We show how the causal criterion succeeds in establishing, at the very least, a very strong presumption against moral facts.

A central and fundamental problem in moral philosophy is that of understanding how moral principles and theories can be justified. It involves finding rational solutions to both theoretical problems and to substantial moral questions . According to Moral Intuitionism, some normative judgments, usually called moral intuitions, justify moral principles and theories. Typically, moral intuitionists promise a method that is supposed to yield progress toward finding the answers to ethical disputes and controversies. ;I argue, first, that all versions of moral intuitionism (...) must assume that there are moral facts and that moral judgments are descriptions of these facts. Next, I consider whether these assumptions are defensible. I focus on an argument based on a claim that we have no reason to believe that any moral facts exist, because no such facts need to be postulated in our best explanations of anything. I analyze several recent replies to this line of attack, and I argue that none meets the challenge. ;Finally, I propose a reply which seems to meet a number of relevant theoretical requirements: it allows us to say that some moral judgments are true because they correspond to facts, and those judgments are sometimes justified. I argue, however, that even this version of moral realism has serious flaws. It implies that the content of moral language is community relative. That is, such sentences as 'Jews ought to be exterminated' have to be treated as ambiguous, expressing several different propositions, some true and some false. In consequence, when a Nazi issues such a judgment, he may be making a claim that is neither false nor unjustified. ;I conclude that Moral Intuitionism does not help to reach rational solutions to moral disputes and disagreements. Therefore, this view should be rejected, and we should look elsewhere for a method that would solve both theoretical and substantial problems of justification in ethics. (shrink)

Peter Railton argues that normative realism is justified because the non-moral goodness of an individual has explanatory uses. After having equated moral rightness with a kind of impersonal social rationality, he argues that rightness, so defined, helps to explain various social phenomena. If he is right, then moral realism would be justified, too. Railton’s argument fails, however, on both counts. Several crucial steps in his reasoning are unsupported and are likely to be false. The explanations he proposes may be dismissed (...) in favor of better explanations that do not use any normative or moral terms. Some of us may share RaiIton’s moral standards. There is no reason, however, to embrace his metaethical position as welI. His arguments do not support either normative or moral facts. (shrink)

Peter Railton argues that normative realism is justified because the non-moral goodness of an individual has explanatory uses. After having equated moral rightness with a kind of impersonal social rationality, he argues that rightness, so defined, helps to explain various social phenomena. If he is right, then moral realism would be justified, too. Railton’s argument fails, however, on both counts. Several crucial steps in his reasoning are unsupported and are likely to be false. The explanations he proposes may be dismissed (...) in favor of better explanations that do not use any normative or moral terms. Some of us may share RaiIton’s moral standards. There is no reason, however, to embrace his metaethical position as welI. His arguments do not support either normative or moral facts. (shrink)

How ought you to evaluate your options if you’re uncertain about which axiology is true? One prominent response is Expected Moral Value Maximisation, the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected moral value across axiologies. EMVM raises two fundamental questions. First, there’s a question about what it should even mean. In particular, it presupposes that we can compare moral value across axiologies. So to even understand EMVM, we (...) need to explain what it is for such comparisons to hold. Second, assuming that we understand it, there’s a question about whether EMVM is true. Since there are many plausible rivals, we need an argument to defend it. In this paper, I’ll introduce a representation theorem for axiological uncertainty to answer these two questions. Roughly, the theorem shows that if all our axiologies satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, and if the facts about which options are better than which in light of your uncertainty also satisfy these axioms as well as a Pareto condition, then these facts have a relevantly unique expected utility representation. If I’m right, this theorem at once affords us a compelling way to understand EMVM—and specifically intertheoretic comparisons—and a systematic argument for its truth. (shrink)

The normative mechanics of promising seem complex. The strength and content of promissory obligations, and the residual duties they entail upon being violated, have various prima facie surprising features. We give an account to explain these features. Promises have a point. The point of a promise to φ is a promise-independent reason to φ for the promisee’s sake. A promise turns this reason into a duty. This explains the mechanics of promises. And it grounds a nuanced picture of immoral promises, (...) an argument against promissory bare wrongings, and a constraint on theories of why we have promissory obligations at all. (shrink)

Intuitively, we lack the standing to blame others in light of moral norms that we ourselves don't take seriously: if Adam is unrepentantly aggressive, say, he lacks the standing to blame Celia for her aggressiveness. But why does blame have this feature? Existing proposals try to explain this by reference to specific principles of normative ethics – e.g. to rule‐consequentialist considerations, to the wrongness of hypocritical blame, or principles of rights‐forfeiture based on this wrongness. In this paper, I suggest a (...) fundamentally different approach. Employing Timothy Williamson's idea of ‘constitutive rules’ of speech acts, I argue that this feature of blame is simply constitutive of any essentially moral form of disapproval. So if Adam had the standing to disapprove of Celia's aggressiveness in some form, necessarily, this disapproval couldn't be blame. If I'm right, this proposal thus not only answers our main question, but also sheds an interesting novel light on the very nature of blame. If we didn't have a form of disapproval with that feature, we wouldn't have our practice of holding each other to moral norms. (shrink)

Many people think that if you're uncertain about which moral theory is correct, you ought to maximize the expected choice-worthiness of your actions. This idea presupposes that the strengths of our moral reasons are comparable across theories – for instance, that our reasons to create new people, according to total utilitarianism, can be stronger than our reasons to benefit an existing person, according to a person-affecting view. But how can we make sense of such comparisons? In this article, I introduce (...) a constructivist account of intertheoretic comparisons. On this account, such comparisons don't hold independently of facts about morally uncertain agents. They're simply the result of an ideal deliberation in terms of certain epistemic norms about what you ought to do in light of your uncertainty. If I'm right, this account is metaphysically more parsimonious than some existing proposals, and yet has plausible and strong implications. (shrink)

Is it appropriate to blame people unequally if the only difference between them was a matter of luck? Suppose Alice would drive recklessly if she could, Belen drove recklessly but didn’t harm anyone, and Cleo drove recklessly and killed a child. Luck-advocates emphasize that in real life we do blame such agents very unequally. Luck-skeptics counter that people aren’t responsible for factors beyond their control, or beyond their quality of will. I’ll defend a somewhat reconciliatory view. I’ll concede to the (...) skeptics that these agents are equally culpable. Nonetheless, I’ll suggest with the luck-advocates that it’s fitting to blame them unequally. That’s because their culpability is unequally significant for us: Cleo’s culpability concerns us more than Belen’s, and Belen’s more than Alice’s—just like the fault of a close aggressor concerns us more than that of an aggressor far off in place and time. And it’s fitting for us to respond with more blame to faults that concern us more. Indeed, blaming people simply in proportion to their culpability manifests a form of fetishism, or problematic mere-matter-of-principle concern. So while many skeptical tenets may hold, in substance the luck-advocates are right. (shrink)

According to an increasingly popular view among philosophers of science, both causal and non-causal explanations can be accounted for by a single theory: the counterfactual theory of explanation. A kind of non-causal explanation that has gained much attention recently but that this theory seems unable to account for are grounding explanations. Reutlinger :239-256, 2017) has argued that, despite these appearances to the contrary, such explanations are covered by his version of the counterfactual theory. His idea is supported by recent work (...) on grounding by Schaffer and Wilson who claim there to be a tight connection between grounding and counterfactual dependence. The present paper evaluates the prospects of the idea. We show that there is only a weak sense in which grounding explanations convey information about counterfactual dependencies, and that this fact cannot plausibly be taken to reveal a distinctive feature that grounding explanations share with other kinds of explanations. (shrink)

In this paper I try to elucidate the differences between theoretical and practical endeavors in philosophy, and then to show that in a sense philosophy has to be theoretical, but— if it claims to be viable—it must be practical as well. First I consider the meaning of the terms theoretical, practical, abstract, and concrete. Then, with the help of Whitehead’s ideas on this topic, I briefly reflect on the method, aims and role of philosophy. I hold that a properly established (...) philosophical approach should have its roots in concrete experience and should include concrete applications. Thus, abstract ideas can be (and indeed often are) transformed into our daily life practices, being applied to solve real problems—personal, social, environmental, etc. The ideas are conveyed from the sphere of philosophy to that of ordinary life. In the next stage I demonstrate this principle using a concrete example, Whitehead’s philosophical system and how it can be fruitfully applied to the sphere of deep ecology. There are many other examples that could be mentioned, but giving a proper demonstration of this application principle requires more space and so I concentrate only on one of these examples. (shrink)

Examines widespread myths about transhumanism and explores the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement.

The book is prefaced by the editors’ original introduction, presenting music philosophy in Germany before and after Kant, as well as a new introduction and ...

This study defends the legitimacy of the Enlightenment project by way of its different realizations in the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Today, Enlightenment as a cosmopolitan project with a global claim is often considered synonymous with Western chauvinism. The assertion of a universally binding reason is all too obviously inconsistent with the much-cited recognition of cultural differences. In contrast, it is the conviction brought forward in this book that an adequately understood Enlightenment is an unconditional right (...) of every person taking an active interest in a self-determined way of life. Only the realization of this conception of Enlightenment can provide the required space for the reciprocal recognition of human differences to freely unfold. (shrink)

Stefan Collini challenges the common claim that universities need to show that they help to make money in order to justify getting more money.

The topic of this thesis is axiological uncertainty – the question of how you should evaluate your options if you are uncertain about which axiology is true. As an answer, I defend Expected Value Maximisation (EVM), the view that one option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. More precisely, I explore the axiomatic foundations of this view. I employ results from state-dependent utility theory, extend them in various ways and interpret (...) them accordingly, and thus provide axiomatisations of EVM as a theory of axiological uncertainty. (shrink)

Das Thema Staatstheorien bezieht sich auf eines der wichtigsten Gebiete der staatsbürgerlichen Erziehung und damit der stabilen freiheitlich-demokratischen Grundordnung überhaupt. Staatstheo-rien sind in verschiedenen Ausprägungen vorhanden und insofern sind Selektionskriterien und Begründungen erforderlich. Die Staats-theorien der Aufklärung werden zu Recht als maßgeblicher Ein-flussfaktor der heutigen westlichen Demokratieformen gesehen. Innerhalb der Aufklärung gibt es eine Kanonbildung der Vertrags- und Staatstheorien: Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu und Rousseau besitzen seit geraumer Zeit einen festen Platz darin. Zwischen Demokratie und politischer Bildung herrscht ein enger und (...) systematischer Zusammenhang. Demokratie bedeutet dabei gleichzeitig Lebens-, Gesellschafts- und Herrschaftsform. Nicht zu-letzt aus dieser fundamentalen und umfassenden Bedeutung für das Zusammenleben in unserer Gesellschaft rechtfertigt sich die Relevanz des Themas Staatstheorien als Gegenstand einer wissen-schaftlichen Abhandlung. Den Leserinnen und Lesern soll die exorbitante Relevanz des The-mas für unser heutiges gesellschaftspolitisches Zusammenleben vor Augen geführt werden. (shrink)

Die Begegnung von Buddhismus und Christentum fordert ein verwandeltes Selbstverständnis philosophischen Denkens. Der japanische Philosoph Keiji Nishitani sieht in der existenziellen Radikalisierung der Frage «Was ist Religion?» bis zum buddhistischen Standpunkt der Leere die Möglichkeit der Überwindung des Nihilismus. Seine Geschichtsinterpretation öffnet in dieser Arbeit den Zugang zu Nietzsches Leib-Denken in seinem Zarathustra. In diesem Rahmen versucht der Verfasser, mit einer Methodenvielfalt und in Auseinandersetzung mit wichtigen abendländischen Denkern die Fraglichkeit jener Frage an ihre Grenze zu treiben.

In contemporary theories of language it is common to appeal to propositions as expressed by utterances of sentences. The aim of this paper is to question this idea, for as I argue, the relationship between sentences and propositions cannot be worked out in any rewarding way.