In this article, we engage critically with the understanding of majority‐minority relations in a liberal democracy as relations of toleration. We make two main claims: first, that appeals to toleration are unable to capture the procedural problems concerning the unequal socio‐political participation of minorities, and, second, that they do not offer any critical tool to establish what judgements the majority is entitled to consider valid reasons for action with respect to some minority. We suggest supplementing the reference to toleration with (...) a specific interpretation of respect for persons; all persons should be treated equally as self‐legislators and as if they were opaque to our judgement as regards their agential abilities, on which their capacity for self‐legislation supervenes. Minorities are disrespected in this sense whenever are treated merely as the addressees of the rules constraining the formulation and pursuit of their life‐plans, rather than as their co‐authors on an equal footing with the majority, and whenever their treatment in politics and society is considered as legitimately influenced by the majority's judgement of their agential abilities, either directly or by indirect inference from the evaluation of the content of their beliefs and practices. (shrink)

The concept of feasibility has received a significant amount of scrutiny in recent years. Despite the diversity of accounts, all agree on the assumption that feasibility considerations have a practical function in guiding action. However, the two most important accounts (by Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, and by Wiens) seem to scarcely speak to this practical function because they provide a third-personal reconstruction of feasibility constraints. In this paper, I argue that, to understand feasibility constraints in a way that matters for guiding (...) action, we should switch from a third-personal to an agent-centered perspective. I show that relevant constraints can be Barriers, Limitations, Boundaries, and Rubber Walls to the extent that they concern nomic impossibilities (Barriers), resources (Limitations), agents’ abilities (Boundaries) or other people’s unwillingness (Rubber Walls). Understanding constraints through the lens of their qualitatively different natures opens the way for addressing the problem of how to respond to them. (shrink)

Although the idea of dignity has always been applied to human beings and although its role is far from being uncontroversial, some recent works in animal ethics have tried to apply the idea of dignity to animals. The aim of this paper is to discuss critically whether these attempts are convincing and sensible. In order to assess these proposals, I put forward two formal conditions that any conception of dignity must meet and outline three main approaches which might justify the (...) application of dignity to animals: the species-based approach, moral individualism and the relational approach. Discussing in particular works by Martha Nussbaum and Michael Meyer I argue that no approach can convincingly justify the extension of dignity to animals because all fail to meet the formal conditions and do not provide an appropriate basis for animal dignity. I conclude by arguing that the recognition of the moral importance of animals and their defense should appeal to other normative concepts which are more appropriate than dignity. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of pluralism in democratic societies, by exploiting some insights from the debate about the epistemology of disagreement. First, by focusing on the permissibility of experiments on nonhuman animals for research purposes, we provide an epistemic analysis of deep normative disagreements. We understand that to mean disagreements in which epistemic peers disagree about both the substantive content of an ethical issue and the correct justificatory reasons for their contrary claims. Second, we argue for a compromise solution (...) in which the reasons for reaching it are not prudential but grounded on the recognition of epistemic peerhood. (shrink)

The principle of equal consideration of interests is a very popular principle in animal ethics. Peter Singer employs it to ground equal treatment and solve the problem of the basis of equality, namely the problem of why we should grant equal treatment despite the variability of people’s features. In this paper, I challenge Singer’s argument because ECOI does not provide plausible grounds to presume that the interests of diverse individuals are actually equal. Analyzing the case of pain and the interest (...) in not suffering in particular, I contend that there are some insurmountable epistemic and axiological problems in accounting for the equality of interests. Besides criticizing ECOI as a basis of equality, I argue that we need to rely on an equality of moral status. I conclude by providing some considerations on the relation between equality and the principle of proportionality. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan has recently provided a forceful defense of methodological anti-speciesism against speciesists’ claim that species standard is a meaningful criterion to assess the value of lives and the nature of deprivation. In this paper I discuss McMahan’s favored account (the Intrinsic Potential Account) to assess the value of life and the nature of deprivation and challenge its overall ethical and methodological tenability. I level three charges against the Intrinsic Potential Account. I argue, first, that it cannot be consistent with (...) some widely held egalitarian moral intuitions. Second, it is unconvincing in its justification of the idea of equal respect for persons. Third, it is unclear how it can make sense of the value of individual capacities without referring to some species-based standard. Although I remain neutral with respect to the debate between anti-speciesists and speciesists, I argue that anti-speciesists cannot rely on McMahan’s arguments. (shrink)

Plato's political thought gave rise to a number of concepts and issues - such as the idea of a normative theory, the philosophical foundation of politics, the philosopher-kings, the standard of utopian theory - which have played a significant role on Western political and philosophical thought. -/- This volume aspires to bring out Plato's concept of efficacy in a normative theory. -/- By efficacy, the author means the way in which the theory conceives of its practical realization. If in the (...) Republic this issue is particularly problematic, in the Laws, instead, the claim of realizability becomes the main concern. -/- By defining the concept of efficacy and going through the main works of Plato, this conceptual and textual analysis aims to shed a new light on Plato's political thought, which is neither a utopia, nor a short term political program, but the first normative theory encompassing a theory of efficacy. (shrink)

(2013). On Justice and Other Values: G.A. Cohen's Political Philosophy and the Problem of Trade-offs. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 1-24. doi: 10.1080/05568641.2013.774721.

Federico Zuolo | : Most contemporary Western laws regarding the treatment of animals in livestock farming and animal slaughter are primarily concerned with the principle that animal suffering during slaughter should be minimized, but that animal life may be taken for legitimate human purposes. This principle seems to be widely shared, intuitively appealing and capable of striking a good compromise between competing interests. But is this principle consistent? And how can it be normatively grounded? In this paper I (...) discuss critically this principle. I argue that this principle can be justified on the ground of respect for the value commitment toward animal welfare, which is held by many people. The advantage of this perspective is its inclusiveness: it can justify without contradiction the principle at stake and allow for the admissibility of religious slaughter while promoting animals’ interest in not suffering. This justification also has the advantage of being compatible with the cultural and religious pluralism of contemporary societies. | : La plupart des lois contemporaines portant sur le traitement des animaux, leur élevage et les techniques d’abattage en usage en Occident se préoccupent principalement du principe selon lequel la souffrance des animaux doit être minimisée durant l’abattage, mais reconnaissent que les animaux peuvent être tués à des fins humaines légitimes. Ce principe semble être largement accepté par la société, séduisant intuitivement et susceptible de constituer un bon compromis entre des intérêts concurrents. Mais ce principe est-il cohérent? Et quel peut être son fondement normatif? Dans cet article, j’aborde ce principe de manière critique. J’affirme que ce principe peut être justifié dans le cadre du respect de l’engagement envers le bien-être des animaux, lequel est soutenu par de nombreuses personnes. L’avantage de cette perspective est son caractère inclusif : elle permet de justifier de manière non contradictoire le principe en question et rend acceptable l’abattage rituel tout en faisant la promotion de l’intérêt des animaux à la non-souffrance. Cette justification présente également l’avantage d’être compatible avec le pluralisme culturel et religieux qui caractérise les sociétés contemporaines. (shrink)

Singer has argued against the permissibility of killing people on the grounds of the distinction between conscious and self-conscious animals. Unlike conscious animals, which can be replaced without a loss of overall welfare, there can be no substitution for self-conscious animals. In this article, I show that Singer's argument is untenable, in the cases both of the preference-based account of utilitarianism and of objective hedonism, to which he has recently turned. In the first case, Singer cannot theoretically exclude that a (...) self-conscious being's stronger preferences may only be satisfied by killing another self-conscious being. In the second case, he fails to demonstrate that the rules of ordinary morality, demanding that killing be strictly forbidden, could not frequently be overruled by the principles of esoteric morality. In both cases, his theory cannot solve the classical utilitarian problem of prohibiting the killing of people in secret. (shrink)

In this article I provide a conceptual analysis of an underexplored issue in the debate about effective altruism: its theory of effectiveness. First, I distinguish effectiveness from efficiency and claim that effective altruism understands effectiveness through the lens of efficiency. Then, I discuss the limitations of this approach in particular with respect to the charge that it is incapable of supporting structural change. Finally, I propose an expansion of the notion of effectiveness of effective altruism by referring to the debate (...) in political philosophy about realism and the practical challenge of normative theories. I argue that effective altruism, both as a social movement and as a conceptual paradigm, would benefit from clarifying its ideal, taking into account the role of institutions, and expanding its idea of feasibility. (shrink)

The idea of cooperation has been recently used with regard to human–animal relations to justify the application of an associative theory of justice to animals. In this paper, I discuss some of these proposals and seek to provide a reformulation of the idea of cooperation suitable to human–animal relations. The standard idea of cooperation, indeed, presupposes mental capacities that probably cannot be found in animals. I try to disentangle the idea of cooperation from other cognate notions and distinguish it from (...) exploitation, use, and relationship. The upshot is a minimal taxonomy of human–animal relations that covers most possibilities, from the worst type of relation to that which is most favourable to animals’ welfare. In this taxonomy, cooperation is a form of relation where animals are used to produce a valuable good in a way that is compatible with their ethological features and without being harmed. (shrink)

Healthy eating policies have become a hot and thorny domain of public concern because they affect people’s liberties, life prospects, and public expenditures. However, what policies state institutions may legitimately enforce is a controversial matter. Is state paternalism for the sake of public health permissible? Could people be incentivized to eat in a healthier manner? Barnhill and Bonotti’s recent book tackle these issues in a manner that seeks to combine the liberal values of state neutrality and antipaternalism, as well as (...) the effectiveness and legitimacy of food policies. To do so, they rely on the accessibility model of public reason. Although Barnhill and Bonotti’s proposal fills an important gap in the field and the accessibility model of public reason overcomes some strictures of the Rawlsian account, their account of public reason faces some practical challenges. Indeed, the institutionalization of their framework seems to need the figure of a moderator of a deliberative panel. However, this figure would create a tension between the public reason framework and the common requirements of deliberative accounts. (shrink)

This article examines the notion of moral progress in Kant's moral system. Moral progress is required (and it is recognized as a duty of virtue in the "Metaphysics of Morals") insofar as it is a consequence of the assumption that human beings are responsible for their moral characters. Nevertheless, moral progress is metaphysically impossible, since individual "Gesinnung" is placed in a noumenical dimension, which, by definition, is independent of both time and empirical conditions. This leads Kant to conclude, in his (...) "Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason", that there can be no actual improvement in one's character. In light of this I argue that the problems with moral progress may help us shed new light on some paradoxes of Kantian morals that have not been solved by his later reformulation. (shrink)

The ‘agents’ of toleration can be divided into three categories: public institutions, groups and individuals. If it is mostly accepted that both public institutions and individuals are capable of toleration, it is not clear that such a capacity can be attributed to groups, although in daily discourse we seem ready to say that a certain social group is (in)tolerant. This article aims to address this issue by investigating the relationship between collective agency and social groups. Formal groups (e.g. corporations) have (...) internal rules and collectively recognized decision-making procedures that constitute a collective behaviour. However, it is not clear if and in what sense such a capacity is also upheld by informal groups. This article discusses some competing criteria to define informal groups and proposes the shared convictions criterion. In conclusion, this criterion is applied to toleration-related issues, so as to reconcile our ordinary understanding of groups’ toleration with a more technical analysis. (shrink)

In this article, we engage critically with the understanding of majority-minority relations in a liberal democracy as relations of toleration. We make two main claims: first, that appeals to toleration are unable to capture the procedural problems concerning the unequal socio-political participation of minorities, and, second, that they do not offer any critical tool to establish what judgements the majority is entitled to consider valid reasons for action with respect to some minority. We suggest supplementing the reference to toleration with (...) a specific interpretation of respect for persons; all persons should be treated equally as self-legislators and as if they were opaque to our judgement as regards their agential abilities, on which their capacity for self-legislation supervenes. Minorities are disrespected in this sense whenever are treated merely as the addressees of the rules constraining the formulation and pursuit of their life-plans, rather than as their co-authors on an equal footing with the majority, and whenever their treatment in politics and society is considered as legitimately influenced by the majority's judgement of their agential abilities, either directly or by indirect inference from the evaluation of the content of their beliefs and practices. (shrink)

When groups feature in political philosophy, it is usually in one of three contexts: the redressing of past or current injustices suffered by ethnic or cultural minorities; the nature and scope of group rights; and questions around how institutions are supposed to treat a certain specific identity/cultural/ethnic group. What is missing from these debates is a comprehensive analysis of groups as both agents and objects of social policies. While this has been subject to much scrutiny by sociologists and social psychologists, (...) it has received less attention from a normative and philosophical point of view. This volume asks: what problems are posed to political philosophy by a collection of individuals who act or are treated in a collective way? Focusing not only on ways in which institutions should treat groups, but also on the normative implications of considering groups as possible social agents, when acting either in vertical relations with the state or in horizontal relations with other groups (or individuals), this book explores these issues from both theoretical and practical perspectives, combining questions about the nature of groups, and their social and political impacts, with the particular, pressing considerations to which such groups give rise. (shrink)

By reference to the illustrative case of the supranational regulation of local systems of food production, we aim to show the importance of identifying issues of international legitimacy as a discrete component – alongside issues of global distributive justice – of the liberal project of public justification of supranational collective decisions. Therefore, we offer the diagnosis of a problem but do not prescribe the therapy to cure it.

The relations between the majority and minorities in a democracy have been standardly viewed as the main subject matter of toleration: the majority should refrain from using its dominant position to interfere with some minorities’ practices or beliefs despite its dislike or disapproval of such practices or beliefs. Can the idea of toleration provide us with the necessary resources to understand and respond to the problems arising out of majority/minorities relations in a democracy? We reply in the negative and make (...) two main claims: first, that resorting to toleration is not enough to make sense of the problems deriving from the unequal participation of minorities in society, and, second, that it risks sanctioning the asymmetric relation between the majority and minorities informed by the negative judgement of the former towards some belief or practice of the latter. We suggest resorting instead to the idea of equal opacity respect for persons: all persons should be treated equally as moral agents, in accordance with their equally possessing the capacity for self-legislation, and as if they were opaque to our judgement for all those properties of theirs which exceed moral agency. Looking at the majority/minorities relations through such a lens enables us to understand (and appropriately respond to) what is problematic in such relations: the majority often fails to treat minorities as moral agents by failing to take their voices into account on an equal footing, by seeing them merely as recipients of certain provisions affecting them rather than their authors, and by considering them as legitimately exposed to the majority’s (negative) judgment. The purchase of our argument is illustrated by reference to two minorities whose treatment is paradigmatic of the problematic nature of majority/minorities relations across Europe: Muslims and Roma. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Fricker’s influential account of testimonial injustice (hereafter ‘TI’) should be expanded to include cases of TI from mutually neutralising countervailing prejudices. In this kind of case, the hearer is given due credibility by the speaker. I describe a relevant case, defend it from objections, highlight how it differs from extant cases of due-credibility TI and describe its distinctive features. This case demonstrates how paying attention to the way multiple prejudices operate in concert leads to (...) expanding the repertoire of cases of TI and casts light on the harms of TI. (shrink)

O julgamento da ADPF 54 pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal teve como efeito a regulamentação do início da proteção constitucional à vida, silenciada na Constituição Federal de 1988 e na legislação ordinária. Todavia, a tramitação perante o Legislativo de Projeto de Lei prevendo a criminalização da interrupção da gravidez por diagnóstico de anencefalia fetal reacende as tensões acerca dos limites da atuação dos poderes Judiciário e Legislativo na concretização dos direitos fundamentais, as quais serão analisadas no presente trabalho à luz do (...) direito comparado, a fim de compreender como a regulamentação do direito à vida se estabeleceu em outros Estados Democráticos. (shrink)

While some form of loss of control is often assumed to be a common feature of the diverse manifestations of addiction, it is far from clear how loss of control should be understood. In this paper, I put forward a concept of decrease in control in addiction that aims to fill this gap and thus provide a general framework for thinking about addictive behavior. The development of this account involves two main steps. First, I present a view of degrees of (...) control as the degree to which an agent would be responsive to potential or counterfactual sufficient reasons to do otherwise. Second, I sketch an account of the relevant control-undermining factors in addiction that is consonant with my proposed view of degrees of control. Being a high-level functional property, reasons-responsiveness is particularly well suited to frame an account of control-undermining factors that is doubly pluralistic: it encompasses the contribution of factors both internal and external to the agent, and it is consistent with various proposals as to the precise nature of the anomaly taking place in the psychology of addiction. (shrink)

Advancements and deployments of AI-based systems, especially Deep Learning-driven generative language models, have accomplished impressive results over the past few years. Nevertheless, these remarkable achievements are intertwined with a related fear that such technologies might lead to a general relinquishing of our lives’s control to AIs. This concern, which also motivates the increasing interest in the eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) research field, is mostly caused by the opacity of the output of deep learning systems and the way that it is (...) generated, which is largely obscure to laypeople. A dialectical interaction with such systems may enhance the users’ understanding and build a more robust trust towards AI. Commonly employed as specific formalisms for modelling intra-agent communications, dialogue games prove to be useful tools to rely upon when dealing with user’s explanation needs. The literature already offers some dialectical protocols that expressly handle explanations and their delivery. This paper fully formalises the novel Explanation–Question–Response (EQR) dialogue and its properties, whose main purpose is to provide satisfactory information (i.e., justified according to argumentative semantics) whilst ensuring a simplified protocol, in comparison with other existing approaches, for humans and artificial agents. (shrink)

This paper explores the concept of moral expertise in the contemporary philosophical debate, with a focus on three accounts discussed across moral epistemology, bioethics, and virtue ethics: an epistemic authority account, a skilled agent account, and a hybrid model sharing key features of the two. It is argued that there are no convincing reasons to defend a monistic approach that reduces moral expertise to only one of these models. A pluralist view is outlined in the attempt to reorient the discussion (...) about moral expertise. (shrink)

In previous works, an ontology of properties for quantum mechanics has been proposed, according to which quantum systems are bundles of properties with no principle of individuality. The aim of the present article is to show that, since quasi-set theory is particularly suited for dealing with aggregates of items that do not belong to the traditional category of individual, it supplies an adequate meta-language to speak of the proposed ontology of properties and its structure.

A restrictive view of self-control identifies exercises of self-control with synchronic intrapsychic processes, and pictures diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies not as proper instances of self-control, but as clever ways of avoiding the need to exercise that ability. In turn, defenders of an inclusive view of self-control typically argue that we should construe self-control as more than effortful inhibition, and that, on grounds of functional equivalence, all these diverse strategies might be properly described as instances of self-control. In this paper, I (...) take a fresh look at this debate by focusing on cases of addiction. I argue that addicted agents face a paradigmatic sort of self-control challenge, which makes addiction an important test case for theories of self-control. And I discuss evidence that highlights both the unreliability of synchronic intrapsychic strategies and the crucial role that is played by diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies in successful attempts at achieving abstinence by addicted individuals. Abstaining addicts are a paradigmatic case of agents who successfully exercise self-control, and they mostly do so by relying on diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies. This, I argue, lends further support to an inclusive view of self-control. (shrink)

We argue that microbiome research should be more reflective on the methods that it relies on to build its datasets due to the danger of facing a methodological problem which we call “epistemic misalignment.” An epistemic misalignment occurs when the method used to answer specific scientific questions does not track justified answers, due to the material constraints imposed by the very method. For example, relying on 16S rRNA to answer questions about the function of the microbiome generates epistemic misalignments, due (...) to the different temporal scales that 16S rRNA provides information about and the temporal scales that are required to know about the functionality of some microorganisms. We show how some of these exist in contemporary microbiome science and urge microbiome scientists to take some measures to avoid them, as they may question the credibility of the field as a whole. (shrink)

L’article propose une interprétation théorique du processus de rupture entre les attentes créées par les conversations sur les applications de rencontres et le moment du premier face-à-face. Cet effet est connu par les utilisateurs de ces applications. Néanmoins, il a été moins analysé dans la littérature. Dans un premier temps, l’auteur analyse le processus de désillusion à l’ère de la rencontre en ligne. Ensuite, à travers la phénoménologie sociale et la sociologie interactionniste, l’article présente une interprétation de ce phénomène d’une (...) part par les dynamiques de la rencontre en ligne qui commence dans la sphère des contemporains pour avancer vers la sphère des consociés, selon la théorie socio-phénoménologique et, d’autre part, par la production d’une identité virtuelle qui nécessite confirmation dans la réalité hors ligne, selon la sociologie interactionniste. (shrink)

We propose a new interpretation of the equation E=mc² in special relativity by generalizing ideas of ontological emergence to fundamental physics. This allows us to propose that mass, as a property, can be considered to emerge from energy, using a well-known definition of weak ontological emergence. Einstein’s famous equation gains in this way a clearer philosophical interpretation, one that avoids the problems of previous attempts, and is fully consistent with the kinematic properties of special relativity, while yielding fresh insights concerning (...) the nature of mass. (shrink)

Human cerebral organoids are three-dimensional biological cultures grown in the laboratory to mimic as closely as possible the cellular composition, structure, and function of the corresponding organ, the brain. For now, cerebral organoids lack blood vessels and other characteristics of the human brain, but are also capable of having coordinated electrical activity. They have been usefully employed for the study of several diseases and the development of the nervous system in unprecedented ways. Research on human cerebral organoids is proceeding at (...) a very fast pace and their complexity is bound to improve. This raises the question of whether cerebral organoids will also be able to develop the unique feature of the human brain, consciousness. If this is the case, some ethical issues would arise. In this article, we discuss the necessary neural correlates and constraints for the emergence of consciousness according to some of the most debated neuroscientific theories. Based on this, we consider what the moral status of a potentially conscious brain organoid might be, in light of ethical and ontological arguments. We conclude by proposing a precautionary principle and some leads for further investigation. In particular, we consider the outcomes of some very recent experiments as entities of a potential new kind. (shrink)

We discuss the mathematical structures that underlie quantum probabilities. More specifically, we explore possible connections between logic, geometry and probability theory. We propose an interpretation that generalizes the method developed by R. T. Cox to the quantum logical approach to physical theories. We stress the relevance of developing a geometrical interpretation of quantum mechanics.